Dark…..Joanna Dark.

When Goldeneye for the N64 was released, FPS games had made a new name for it self, at least for the console market.  While FPS games were already on the PC, it wasn’t exactly a mainstream.  The term “shooter” elvovled into “FPS,” going from  shooting in only 4 or 8 directions to virtually any direction in real life.  On May 22th, 2000, Goldeneye’s “sequel,” was released, or at least it’s better half.  While not exactly an outright “sequel,” Perfect Dark was basically Goldeneye 64 on steroids, but with a completely different theme.  Goldeneye’s big brother, or sister if you will.  Taking Goldeneye 64’s engine, Rareware took what made Goldeneye 64 so great and just went bannanas, pretty much making the “Halo” of the N64.

Perfect Dark introduced a lot of FPS things that we see today, things that we take for granted, and even some things that no other FPS has.  At least, based on what I played, it was the first FPS to have an actual reloading animation, something other than just “bring the gun off screen and back.”  It also had character leaning, the first weapon selection wheel and even a target range for each weapon.  It had co-op play, something that not enough FPS games do.  (Although it was quite funny as the second player was just an unimportant backup named “Velvet Dark” I believe, that for some reason never played a role in the game’s story, or showing up anywhere in the game’s cutscenes.)   It even had “Counter-Co-op” play, a game mode that so far…only Left4Dead does.  It’s the same as co-op only the 2nd player has the option of helping the 1st player, or playing as random enemy soldiers throughout the level.  You had limited health, but your human intelligence and respawning hopefully would make up for it, especially when a 3rd or 4th person could jump in as enemy soldiers and start planning on how to stop the 1st player playing as Joanna.  It’s a great feeling to try and blend in with the AI soldiers and gang up on the 1st player before he can find out which soldiers are AI and which are the other players.  The game also had what it calls a combat simulator, it’s version of multiplayer.  Now, I find it strange that despite all the advances Perfect Dark made to Goldeneye, in various magazine awards Goldeneye STILL won over it.  Goldeneye is only fun when you had other people to play with, unless you constantly play a campaign which everyone has pratically memorized.  Perfect Dark fixed all these with besides 4 player split screen, the addition to add up to 16 AI bots, ranging from extremely stupid to tough as nails.  Granted playing against a bot is never as fun as playing against a friend, but Goldeneye was winning awards for it’s multiplayer presumably you always had company.

Let’s not forget PD’s weapon selection, which, I dare admit, is better than Halo’s, or any other FPS I’ve played.  Besides various types of pistols, SMG’s, assault rifles, (unfournatly one shotgun) it also had unique weapons such as the laptop gun, a laptop looking gun that fires like an assault rifle but could also be deployed on a wall as a portable gun turret.  Also throwing knives, crossbows, a “Gears of War like Lancer” gun called a Reaper, and a tranquilizer that causes your target’s vision to blur, or if you want to get really nasty, get up close an personal with it an “inject” them for an isntant kill.  And the of course, everyone’s favorite cheapskate, the Farsight.  The Farsight was the lazy man’s sniper rifle.  The gun could not be fired accurately with the hip (or not at all I believe) but aiming it caused your character to enter a alien heat like vision and automatically track  a random opponent, no matter where you where.  If for example, you were hiding in one room and your opponent was 3 or 4 rooms nearby, you could bring up the scope and shoot him….through the wall….all 3 or 4 walls.  It wasn’t “completely” cheap however, while the tracking did elimiante the need to actually find the player, you couldn’t control the tracking directly, and it wasn’t like the player would stop moving.  Lose the track, and you had to reposition yourself.  Also because it was splitscreen it’s not like the other player didn’t know you had them in your sights.

Perfect Dark will remain a classic for years to come, but the problem is it’s on a console that’s over 10 years old.  Well not anymore.  Hopefully, coming this winter in 09 Xbox Live Arcade will be re releasing Perfect Dark.  The game is supposed to come with new features, but what features we don’t know.  The only new enhancement anyone knows of is that it will be in 1080p and will support up to four in multiplayer.  The shot above are the improved graphics, (the rest is from the original N64) but to be honest it doesn’t look like much of an improvement.  I wouldn’t expect much though other than sharper textures.   Now I never owned Perfect Dark Zero, and I haven’t played it enough to really find out what was so “bad” about it, but I’m wondering if the negative ratings for Zero will have any effect for this XBLA release.  To one not willing to do the research, they’ll base their buying decision off of Perfect Dark Zero and won’t give the original a chance.  As far as enhancements go, I can’t exactly imagine that much to enhance, but up to 4 multiplayer?  What is this, the stone ages?  Give us at least 8.  And even if they don’t improve the graphics much, I also really despise the look of Joanna’s sneaking suit and her hair.  Wearing her sneaking suit, you can really see the N64’s limitations.  Essentially her character model is completly naked with a skin wrapped around it, and she’s built like a stick.   Joanna’s hair in her CG artwork does not even depict what she looks like in-game as you can see below.  The CG you see below is the promotional artwork designed at the game’s first release:

Now it could just be me, but she looks like G.I. Jane with slightly more hair.  Really cut short, kind of looks like a boy if it wasn’t for the lipstick.  It definitely does not match what the XBLA shot is depicting.  I understand this is mostly due to the N64’s limitations, but there are other characters in the game that actually have depth in their hair, not this flat pasted on look that Joanna has.

I’m usually reluctant to buy remade versions of games I already own, but this one is an exepction.  Let’s just hope the whatever improvements Microsoft plans to do are worth it.

I first want to apologize to any of my friends who are reading this who might disagree with me in some factors, but it’s really just how I feel.  None the less, I’m still happy that I have a 360 for exactly what it gives.

In the late 80’s gaming on a PC was a foreign concept to me, but who could blame me or anyone else when the NES was taking over our lives?  Every time whenever friends would come over, the first thing we all headed for was the room with the NES or hip console at the time and the hours would fly by.  Back then, I had…some PC games at the time, if you like monochrome that is.  How how did you load the games up?

c:\ _
c:\ cd/ultima
c:\ ultima.exe

(Do you really hate Windows that much?)

Then the big bad-ass bastard, the birth mother of all FPS games, came Doom.  (Ok, techincally the real birth mother was Wofienstien 3d, and an even older one was a DOS shooter but still all made by Id.  At the time I was playing Faceball  on Gameboy.)  While Doom wasn’t technically the first FPS game to be made, it was the first to be popular.  (And the first to have “heights” in 3d space, or, “Y” coordinates for level designers.)  While I rarely ever got to play it online, shooting up monsters in 3d space was a blast for me.  My control setup?

A – open door/use item
S-  run
D – strafe left
F- strafe right
space bar – shoot
arrow keys – movement
shift – run (at 10x the speed of any FPS game with the fastest character movement)

While not exactly the best kind of setup used for today’s games, it was good enough for me, and I could survive Ultra Violence with it, and sometimes Nightmare, depending on the level.  Eventually, consoles started getting into the 3d gimmick, especially the Nintendo 64.  But no shooters until Goldeneye 64, and it’s sequel (gameplay wise at least,) Perfect Dark 64.  This was the console’s way of introducing the FPS genre for the console users.  Nothing was more fun than inviting your friends over so the whole lot of you could sit at a TV split into four screens while laughing with your friends.  (And then cursing them for looking at your screen.)  Good times, but good times can turn to bad.  During my sophmore year at high school I was later invited to a LAN party at my school’s computer room to play  some uknown FPS game to me, though after playing it now I believe at the time it must of been Quake 3 Arena.  I was told not to change the controls.  WASD?  Mouse 1 to shoot?  What were they thinking?  When I tried using a mouse on DOOM, moving the mouse left and right made you turn, yes, as it does today, but moving the mouse forward MOVED YOU FORWARD, it did not make you look up.  Moving it back made you move back.  I could not see ANYONE being comftable looking like a dumbass constantly thrusting your mouse forward like a retarded duelest just so you can move 30 feet.  So I secretly changed to my little old DOOM setup, expecting this “Quake 3 Arena” to be the same…and probably got one kill.  It wasn’t until my junior year I was at a friends house playing FPS games on the computer and realized how genius the WASD setup actually was, and how it wasn’t about “thrusting.”

I stand corrected.

I bought some shooters for my PC, but chugging along with at 460mhz and an intergraded video card, it was not fun.  So when I got my first job, I decieded to save up my hard working dollars to buy a gaming computer.  (After learning about the harsh realities on how expensive one is)  All my friends was gaming on the computer, and I was always left behind with the controller.  When I did finally get one, shooters were thriving on the PC.  Good times once again, but I’d be lying if I didn’t expereince a little deja vu.  Hardware devleopers with cash signs for eyes started making their evil little Xbox.  While I’m usually hot to trot to buy the next gaming console the minute one is released, my gaming PC put a stop to that.  But as I played more and more shooters, the more shooters on the Xbox became more streamlined, especially when the 360 started coming along.  Although I was a little peeved having to spend a few thousand just too keep my hobby up to par.  I couldn’t bare going back to sticks again, not after having the awesome precision of a mouse.  But as far as top honcho mice go, they got their cookie and now they want their glass of milk.  “Wads” of it, preferabbly in 100’s.

So how do you do that?  Make something that will appeal to the masses.  Or convert.  Make a video game console that only costs just as much as a video card but deliver the same graphics.  But that didn’t stop me, going back to the sticks for me was like going back to the stone ages.  Why would I ever want to back?

That’s when developers started doing what I like to call finanically compenstating, but more commonly known as “dumbing down.”  (And I DON’T mean finacially as in they’ll lose moeny if they don’t.)  A prime example is that in the PC version FEAR, pushing Q and E makes your character lean, an extremely underated tactic that has saved my ass hundreds of times.  This makes your character move slightly to the left or right but keeping his legs still, exposing only the upper portion of your body as well as giving you room to shoot.  If not, it was a fast and quick was to come out of hidding and instnatly back in cover without over doing it.  In the XBOX version, leaning was done by pusing left or right on the D-pad.  This was fine.  In Call of Duty 4, leaning was still done with Q and E.  XBOX?  Niente.  Instead the D-pad has you switching your items.  Now, going back to FEAR, if you read my first FEAR 2 post, I mention that Q and E no longer made you lean.  I neglected to mention that this was made in the final cut.  Why?  Because on the XBOX version you can’t either, all the buttons are already taken up for other actions.  In an effort to make both versions of the game “fair,” leaning was removed altogether.  But tell me, how is it exactly fair to remove a feature based on the fact that one version lacks the buttons for it when both versions can’t play against each other online? If they never see each other, what does it matter if one version has a difference?  Now this is from a gameplay standpoint, but there are others, and for me is a big slap in the face.  Call of Duty’s tradition of having killcams, in which you see a 5 second replay of the player who just killed you from his point of view (making you cry “bullshit” everytime when it replays your player not even firing his weapon at all when you distinctnly remember doing so.) continues in Modern Warefare, it’s 4th in the series.  The killcam is mostly used to see exactly how you died, and hopefully, learn from your mistakes.  (And to make sure the sonofabitch isn’t cheating.)  I remember an update that Infinity Ward announced that they were going to add greandes, airstrikes, and helicopters to the killcam.  Normally it shows your opponent throwing his grenade and then carrying on whether or not he actually pursed you after that, it was boring.  Getting killed by a player’s airstrike or helicopter negated the killcam all together.  With the udpate, the cam would follow the grenade down to wherever it landed, as well as airstrikes, and a 3rd person viewpoint of the helicopter.

Oh yeah, this didn’t make it to the PC version, only the XBOX.  Why?  I have no clue.  At best my guess would be they were too damn lazy to implement this for the PC, but I couldn’t see ANY reason why this was apparently not a good thing to have on the PC, nor why this was difficult.  Infinty Ward did not mention anything regarding that this was only coming to the XBOX, nor did it mention any reasons for not putting on the PC afterwards.

Now I may be complaining about something trivial, after all, essiently it’s celebrating your character’s death, but that’s besides the point.  It’s the attitude.  These qualms are indeed trivial, but it goes beyond that.  Mainly, making ports.  With the exepction of Devil May Cry 4, (based on what I read) and Mass Effect, I have yet to find ANY game that was ported to be in good shape.  It’s about as common as games based off movies.  I can understand if the company releases a game on the PC and then the console relases it years later, since the consoles’ hardware can’t even compete with a PC, but that doesn’t happen anymore.   Now, it’s the other way around; the console comes first, then the PC.  So now we are making a game built for worse hardware and are forcing it on a PC with better yet incompabitle hardware.  Why do they do this?  Everyone would rather concentrate on just making a game for consoles simply because it makes more money.   Another reason could be that they are using the consoles as a guinea pig to see if a game is really going to take off or not.  Then if it does make enough money, they port it to PC.

The real shit that hits the fan is whenever a company says they are making a game for console and PC, (and ACTUALLY DOES make it for PC, not just lie about it and change plans last minute before release *coughSaintsRow2cough*) all versions come out nicely.  The second plans are made to delay the release of the PC version of a game(or decided to make one at all at a later date), I alreayd know the outcome of the game.  Bugs are to be expected with any version, they come and go, but the framerate is just simply HORRENDOUS! And who can blame them?  After working on a game for so many years, I can assure you you are not going to want to come back to it again after it’s release and rework the game’s engine all over again.  It’s understandable that it’s difficult to change a game’s coding just so the computer’s hardware can read it easier, but after seeing that many games made for all versions THE FIRST TIME around come out great, there is just simply no excuse.  Don’t make a port, make a CHANGE.  If it was possible to do it then, there is no reason why it can’t be possible several months later.  Laziness is no excuse, either make a GOOD version of the game, or don’t make it at all.

To comment on an episode of Sealab: 2021, “there is an knife in my eye and you keep twisting it.”  Well theres a knife in my eye and companies are twisting it.  Why do gaming PC’s all have to be so damn expensive?  At an approximate, my Alienware is $3,800.  Yes, you read that right.  Three thousand eight hundred fucking United States of American dollars.  Plus tax.  That is enough to buy NINE Xbox Elites or SIX 80GB PS3’s.  Overpriced?  Yes.  Could I of saved money if I built it myself?  Yes.  But does this sucker ever overheat?  No.  I may of been a fool paying for overpriced hardware, but like I said in my last post I’m no engineer, nor do I plan to be.  Why am I being charged so much for hardware in my PC to play games that make said hardware completly useless?  When I buy a game that has a 256MB video card for RECOMMENDED specs, a 768 MB video card should damn well pass.  The public know that consoles are pretty much dominating the PC for many reasons like this….so why don’t they lower the cost of gaming hardware for PC’s?  Either do that, or make better releases!  We’re paying companies 10 times  EXTRA money than we have to to play the same games that a little console can for a straight 500 bucks, so don’t throw us these crappy ports.

And it looks like the developers know it too.

http://www.onlive.com/

That knife is getting deeper as well.  If the video didn’t explain it well enough, here’s a synopsis.  OnLive is a similar to Gametap, in which you play games instnatly, only you pay for the games instead.  Pay for it once, and it’s yours though, no different than if you had bought it in the store.  Onlive itself is a console, but this console can connect to your TV or PC or MAC as well.  The TV is self explanatory, just plug it in, plug in your Internet cables and there you go.  So what are the system requirements for playing this on a computer?  Windows XP/Vista, or Mac O/S.  That’s it.  This means you can essietnially play games like Crysis on a mom and pop computer, laptop, or any craptacular computer you bought from Costco or those pre-installed software happy computers from HSN.  So how is this done?  To the naked eye, it looks the same.  You play games just as you would.  Push buttons, make your avatar move on the screen.  OnLive is different.  Whether your’re using the controller for your TV, or mouse and keyboard for your computer, all your inputs are sent to the server you are connected to as data, because theres no game software installed.  That data is processed on the server and OnLive plays back a constant streaming video of your inputs on your screen.  In laymans terms, you are making an invisible person play a game on a a computer that DOES have the game installed, and someone is broadcasting that computer’s screen live to your TV or monitor.  This alone, tells me that gaming companies know they are really not doing their job for the PC market and it’s showing.  This service will make gaming rigs……mostly obsolete.  Of course with OnLive, there is a catch.  Listed in the FAQ of OnLive:

• What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?
  OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps.

This ultimatley means that your internet connection is going to be the prime factor of how well quality of video is played back to you, but 5 mbps for 720p?

In the end, it’s of course all a marketing ploy and bad timing on my part, but there shouldn’t be any reason for the current slack in PC games.  Simply put, PC owners have just got

I was never really much of a Space Invaders fan mostly because you could only shoot one bullet at a time, however given the game’s design, that would be too easy.  I was more used to games likes Gradius, Gyruss, or any other kind of shumcks *cough* shmups that didn’t have you stick to a one bullet at a time weapon.

This remake (also previously made on the DS and PSP) changes all that.  While it still is good old Space Invaders, the game takes on a combination of Pac Man’s Championship addition style of gameplay and Lumines’ side for audio and visual.  Just like Pac Man Champ, the game is more fast paced.  Instead of filling up the entire screen with invaders that will just repeat over again once you kill them all, it fills up the screen with fewer invaders that appear in different waves and patterns after each one.  Your little pea shooter fires faster than the oringial (still one bullet at a time however) and will get faster the more invaders you kill as your cannon “levels up.”  Killing mulitple enemies in a row stacks up chains and increases your score multiplier, but stray too far inbetween kills and it will go down.  Don’t get reckless either, as losing a life also drops your cannon down by two levels.

The game takes on a more strategic approach than the original, almost like a puzzle game and shmup combined together.  Invaders come in multiple colors, and if you kill four in a row of the same color without changing, they will drop a powerup.  Green invaders drop a spread gun, (do not think Contra, that would just be insane) red invaders drop a gun that shoots bombs that can explode on impact, killing nearby invaders, and blue invaders, my favorite, drop a super sweet pulse laser where you can simply drill through multiple invaders with just one swoop.  There are also gray invaders which drop shields, protecting you from bullets, and crappy white invaders that don’t drop anything at all.  (However killing them does not break a color combo.)

The game is far from difficult, even the last stage.  Enemy bullets travel very slow and usually only in straight lines.  Some will explode, others will ricochet of walls.  (If your good at weaving in between projectiles in a shmup game, this should be cakewalk for you.)  About the most difficult thing is random invaders that will just start careening towards the ground in a straight line, which means instant death. The game can be finished in less than an hour, and under a half hour hence after.  But as many arcade gamers know, simply finishing the game isn’t the main point of a game like this, it’s getting a high score.  As tempting as it sounds to just use the powerups and shoot as many invaders as you can, that won’t cut it to get a high score.  After finishing the first stage (which was about 10 waves), even without dying, I got a rank of D.  The game  heavily rates you on how well you do with your combos, which means using the powerups all the time isn’t always a good idea, (but they do help to keep your chain combos high) because the powerups can easily shoot adjacent enemies that will break your color combo.  This doesn’t mean you should avoid the powerups all together though.  Holding down RB or LB will freeze the weapons timer, switching you back to your pea shooter for more accurate shots.  (Unfortunately you have to hold it down the entire time you don’t want to use it, so it can get a little confusing constantly letting it go just to shoot off your powerup for half a second.  Powerups only last about 5-6 seconds.)  So if you’re looking to get a high score by just shooting everything in sight, look somewhere else.  Ideally, use powerups to keep chain combos up but using your single shot to pick off certain invaders will keep your score going.

The game sports bonus rounds, caused by shooting certain UFO’s that appear depending on player’s actions.  The rounds give you a random target to kill a specific amount of within the time limit.  This ain’t always easy as often there are other random targets that get in the way.  Successfully finishing one of these rounds will upgrade your current weapon that can simply dominate multiple waves of invaders within seconds.  Your combo count is temporary disabled at hits time, so go crazy.  After about 10 waves, you will face a boss.  Each boss has their own weakness, which isn’t too hard to figure out.  But don’t spend too much time dilly dallying, because losing your lives forces you to restart at the beginning of the stage.

The game’s graphics keeps the player’s cannon, invaders and all projectiles simple to simple pixels, but everything else is changed.  The background is actually an audio visualizer, similar to programs like Windows Media Player or Winamp plugins .  The game’s soundtrack consists mostly of techno and trance riffs, and the main menu and boss music are remix versions of the simple “beep…beep…beep…beep” sound that the invaders made in  the original .  Following Lumines’ example, different things like bullets firing, the player moving, and invaders dying all produce different sound effects that  go in synch with the music, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself tapping your toes.  If you don’t like the audio though, you can turn music and sfx off separately, or just blast some other song over it.

Although the game says it comes with 11 stages, you will only see 5 of them in one setting.  After playing your first game (whether you finish it or not) you will unlock stage mode.  This is where you can see all the game’s stages and go straight to them, but only if you’ve been to it before in Arcade mode.  The stages branch out starting at Stage 3, 3-A, 3-B, etc.  How you get to these I haven’t figured out yet however, it’s not like I was prompted a choice.  And of course, there’s multi-player.  There’s “Survivor,”  in which 2-4 players compete online or locally.  Shooting UFO’s sends extra invaders to the other players’ screens, ala Tetris or other puzzle games.  Unfortuantely, this is played split screen, but it helps so you can look at other’s screens to predict when an attack will happen.  Given that this isn’t a FPS game however, your screen will always be the biggest with the other three on the side, so it’s not much of a big deal.  “Score Attack” has all players play on the same screen (you can move through other players) competing who can get the highest score.  “Co-op” is exactly as it sounds, play through the arcade mode with friends.  Lastly, there’s “Endless” mode, unlockable by playing through all the game’s stages.

Now because of all these updates to the game’s formula, to be honest it doesn’t feel like the original.  (Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to preference.)  The original game was focused on eliminating the oncoming force of invaders before they hit the ground.  The closer they got to the bottom, the faster they would move, making the player nervous and know if he doesn’t react quickly he will die.  Well, the four bases are gone.  Powerups drop like no tomorrow, so while invaders will kill you when they do get to the bottom, they hardly ever do given the advanced weaponry.  (Save for those damn suicide bombers.)  However, being as I never really liked the original, this isn’t much as a problem for me, but it might be for you, depending on your tastes.

I was looking for a decent shmup game on XBLA, that didn’t have the difficult curve or game length of Ikagura, or just have one game mode.  While not exactly my favorite shump, the extra features made to update the gameplay to a more fast paced style of the original was well worth the 800 MS points.

No…no I’m not dead yet.  Just under hibernation.  In a cold dark cave with nothing but an HDTV as my only source of light, my thumbs rubbing up against two sticks, and my speakers blasting with the sounds of bullets, explosions, and 8 year olds (both physically and mentally) waving their cock in my face (and they say gay porn only exists in the form of movies and pictures)  and screaming other similar obscenities in my ear.

Yeah yeah I know, I said that I was gone for a while before when I was rebuilding the site, but amongst trying to write several posts at once, I had realized that strictly talking about games on the PC limited me to about half of the gaming world.  So for numerous reasons (both good and foolish) and decided to get me one of these babies.

Aren’t tax refunds great?  So yeah, you can pretty much blame this guy over here for the reason why this site has been collecting dust recently, but let me enlighten you.  Not every game comes out on the PC, and although without a doubt my PC has the power of about 3 or 4 of these things put together, not everyone has $3,000+ to expereince top of the line.  Yes, I have an overly priced Alienware…I lack the know-how nor have the time to learn how to properly put together a PC “PROFESSIONALY” less the parts some how short circuit or break.  About the most advanced thing I know how to do is adding or removing video cards.  Anyway, it’s clearly obvious that consoles have gone a long way from just pixels and polygons, as well as functionality like online capabilites and hard drives for storage.  I got this so I could have a broader aspect of games, that, and I started missing the ability to rent games instaed of blindly slapping down my debit card for a worthless P.O.S, despite the game having a good but baised review.  So yes, now I get to praise (and complain) about consoles too.  Theres more to this, which I’ll say in the next post.  The last console I ever owned was the PS2, but after a good solid two months of gaming on this thing leaving my PC in the dust, I hopefully have a good understanding on how consoles fare right now.  Stay tuned.

“You need people like me, so you can point your fucking fingers, and say that’s the bad guy!”

If there was one gangster movie that I had to pick to be my favorite, it would definitely be Scarface.  (With my second favorite being “American Gangster.”)  Not because he was one of the first, (the first was actually “The Muskateers of Pig Alley” made in 1912) but because he had a different balance between good and bad that other gangsters didn’t seem to have, but then again maybe the timeline was a factor.  The 70’s had The Godfathe, where being a  gangster meant honor, loyalty, and kissing people on the forehead.  In the 90’s, gangster turned into an adjective; where “being” gangster meant wearing your pants below your underwear and walking with a tilt.  Shirt optional. In my opinion that was just all too common.  Now, in the new millennium you have your really cool and collective gangsters like Denzel Washington who in truth, all they really want to do is to do their business with as little confrontation as possible.  Tony Montana came between all that in the 80’s, a mixed breed, a combination of both total badassness and moral ethics.  Coming right after the Godfather movies,  he wasn’t a ruthless cold-blooded murderer with no conscience, but he wasn’t a pussy either.  Though he defiantly wouldn’t mind some.  Simply put, showing he has no class, with class.  The movie also caused extreme controversy, and was one of few films that actually got a rating of X.  (And not surprisingly, seeing as how standards change, is now just rated R today.)  While the violence does not even compare to today’s films, the swearing has become ironically a preview of what we got today.  (Pacino had evidently “layed down the fuck” 181 times in the movie, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951028-3,00.html)  He’s become a pop icon in the recent years ever since they released a new edition DVD, and a video game.

It’s just too bad that his video game is extremely underrated.  “Scarface:  The World is Yours” is the official video game to Scarface, released around the same time the PS2 was just dying out.  It plays out an alternative to the film’s ending.  The game starts out near the end of the film, where Tony is trapped in his office with Sosa’s men just outside.  You come out and start blasting away and the enemies downstairs, only this time, providing your not actually  high as well as Tony is, the game gives you a chance to turn around and blast the fuck out of the movie ending Schwarzenegger wannabe.  For kicks, you can also just wait to die and see Tony’s death scene in blurry texture form.  That’s right, the game’s graphics is nothing to cry home to.  In fact you might be crying anyway that because the game is darn right ugly, even for it’s time.  The best graphic is Pacino’s ’s face, probably because we all recognize him, and it’s better looking than the women in the game, scars and all.

The game’s storyline adds a fourth step to the three steps to making it in the business: Revenge.  (Sadly, a lot of the content you see in this trailer didn’t make the final cut, including for some reason Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart,” the song being played during it.)  You start by reclaiming your mansion, buying out different business to act as your fronts, and then finally putting a well deserved bullet to Sosa’s head.  (And then let’s you continue on playing so you can get $999,999,999 if your so inclined.)

But wait, haven’t we all played these kind of games before?  Yes and no.  Unlike the GTA series and Saint’s Row series, (as different as the two in terms of realism) this game is radically different.  And we need more game’s like this.  Often in a crime game, your a gangster who’s ultimate goal is to work your way to the top, whether it’s doing missions to earn money, beating up people, racing, robbing a bank, or even throwing feces at people.  This game’s main draw is drug trafficking.  While Saint’s Row does have drug trafficking, it’s only a mini-game.  The World is Yours uses this concept to the fullest.

What made this game different from all the others is what you could do while not a mission.  GTA and Saint’s Row all had minigames to do, but most of them were all optional and yielded very little money, (compared to story missions or property income.) They both had story missions that when completed, would earn you a fat wad of cash.  Both game also let you buy property that when bought, would net you income overtime.   In Scarface, a typical gaming session is usually a series of minigames but they all follow suit:  (remember this is NOT a story mission)

-You (Tony) call Felix to find a lead.  More or less, this is a randomized mission generated every time you want to make a deal, which is great so it’s different every time you do it.  These missions usually involve either assassinating targets, dropping off packages, or defending a target.  In exchange, you are hooked up to make a deal with someone.

-You then find that dealer, who’s location is also randomly generated.  Upon confronting him, you’re shown a meter that fills up when you hold down a button.  When it reaches the top, it starts over from the bottom, going faster and faster each round.  When you let it go, the meter stops growing.   The higher the meter is when you stop it, the less you have to pay to buy the “yeyo.”  The lower it is, the more you pay.  If it’s too low, the deal is off all together, and a fight breaks out.
-If you managed to strike a deal, you can then go to random crackheads and sell them your yeyo, using the same meter minigame mentioned before.
-Go to a bank to launder you money, and save the game.  (Any money and yeyo grams you have on your will disappear when you die.  Saving the game puts all that money in the bank.)
-Further into the game you can do these same deals again, only to buy kilos instead.  When you buy kilos, you store them to one of your storehouses, possibly being attacked while doing so.
-Kilos are the big kahunas, the real money makers.  A kilo distribution run makes you go to all the business buildings you own for you to sell your kilos to them.  (So they can do some “under the table” work on the side.)

These missions don’t further the storyline, but they are required to do.  You need money to buy exotics.  Cars, boats, investments, fine china, all that good stuff.  Buying exotics give you respect.  Gaining respect, furthers the game.  (It’s just too bad that most of these exotics you buy are just furniture.  The game has a “The Sims” like store section in which you can exotics all over you mansion, but aside from that, sitting there is all they do.  You are rarely home in your mansion as it is.)  In addition, the quality of all these drug deals factor in “heat.”  The game has Police heat.  Police heat is usually a meter that fills up when you cause trouble, and the higher it gets, the more difficult it is to avoid the police.  This game handles heat differently.  Police heat only rises when you successfully evade police.  While you are being chased, a separate heat meter shows up.  If this meter goes all the way and you still haven’t evaded the cops (shooting them all day will solve nothing) a huge “YOU ARE FUCKED” sign shows up on screen and it’s game over instantly.  So what’s so bad about the permanent police meter?  It affects your interest rate at banks.  When you save your game at banks, the same meter minigame pops up.  The higher you stop it, the lower the rate you have to pay.  If your police rate is too high, the maximum and minimum rate you can possibly pay increases.  The same goes with Gang heat and making deals.   Gang heat is accumulated from shooting gang members that randomly attack you, or during kilo distribution runs.

This is where Tony’s henchman come into place.  You can use these henchman to do different kind of missions that actually lower your police or gang heat.  Unlike Tony, the henchman can actually harm innocent civilians.  Tony cannot, will not, and will even cuss you out, the player, for trying so.  This is another thing that I like about The World Is Yours.  You actually have threats.  Shooting innocent civilians who can’t fight back is getting old.  There is just no challenge to it.  Then I have to fend off police men that will increase in numbers if I try to defend myself.  I haven’t played a single GTA game where people will actually come up to you and start attacking you, giving some kind of threat or green light to make it feel ok to actually shoot them.  This game will have gangsters attack you providing your gang heat is high enough, and they drop money, ammo and sometimes even yeyo.  And even if you defeat all the gang hideouts, you will still run into them in the never ending mini games.

Somehow I don’t feel the game got the respect it deserves.  The game was horribly ported to the PC.  Not just in optimization, but the controls, were rather…odd, and even after a patch, it didn’t fix the problem.  Not to mention this game doesn’t work anymore on Vista, until someone found a workaround.

I certainly wouldn’t mind a sequel to this game in the near future, hopefully with better support.   The whole drug trafficking thing to me is done really well here.  It needn’t be Scarface again, as I am a bit tired of the 80’s, and it would be hard to continue his storyline once again, but another one of these gems is just begging to be made.  Until that happens, though, it’s time to say good night to the bad guy.