Thursday 5 October 2006
Tony Montana's meteoric rise from down-and-out Cuban refugee to the lord of Miami's criminal underworld is the stuff of movie legend. Scarface has become synonymous with sleazy '80s pop culture and there are more games, films and songs inspired by it than there are stars in the sky. Kind of.
But how do you make a game based on a downbeat crime drama appeal to the drooling masses without turning it into a gaudy shoot-'em-up with car modding and tit shots?
Well, after
We got our first real crack at the newly redesigned Scarface: The World is Yours back in March, and while it was still in early form - having been recently torn apart and redesigned from scratch - it was already shaping up to be much more than just another Grand Theft Auto clone. Tony Montana looked and sounded slick, the city of Miami was intricately detailed and the cars handled much more smoothly than GTA's bar-of-soap-on-wet-tile rides.
The game looks even more polished since then, and we
Friday 31 March 2006
What better place to show off the all-new version of Scarface than the Los Monteros Hotel in sunny Marbella? Well, Miami, the setting of the ultra-violent Brian De Palma film would have been more appropriate but Vivendi's 5-star hospitality recently provided a suitable backdrop to a game that - like its hero Tony Montana - has dragged itself out of the ghetto and truly made good.
It's all about balls in this GTA style driver/shooter and, as Tony says, "he doesn't break
When it was shown at last year's E3 expo, Scarface: The World is Yours got a lukewarm reaction. Its graphics were chunky, the gameplay seemed sketchy and overall it looked like a bad Vice City clone.
"It didn't pop," said Pete Wanat, the game's executive producer, as he explained why the game was essentially torn apart and rebuilt after the showing. "We view this as a long-term franchise. ... We can't mail in the first one."
And so, the entire virtual city of Miami was rebuilt, the driving
Imagine if, after taking a nosedive into a mountain of coke and getting perforated with bullets, Tony Montana hadnt died at the end of Scarface. Hard to believe? Sure. Strips the film of its central message? Hell yes. But for better or worse, thats the premise of Scarface: The World is Yours.
As the game opens, players replay the final scene from the movie, with one important twist: after trading fire with assassins sent by rival drug lord Alejandro Sosa, Tony escapes his burning mansion.
