The virtual junkie's guide to gaming's drug spots

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Turn on, load disc, drop out...

Scarface: The World is Yours | Vivendi | PC, PS2, Wii, Xbox | 2006

Virtual junkies might magnetise to this game like drug vultures circling the one person with coke at a party, but they'll be absolutely bummed to find that while the game is stuffed with more narcotics than a Colombian's suitcase, they aren't ever given the opportunity to sniff from the holy nose-bag. Even though they're playing as cocaine-snorting Olympian, Tony Montana.

Thanks to some newly adopted - and frankly rather flimsy - morals, Montana's nostrils are a powder free-zone. Instead, algorithmically calculated addicts will have to settle for large scale trafficking, swearing like, well, Tony F*cking Montana, killing dirty cock-a-roaches, internal decorating (y'know, cognac fountains, solid gold tigers... that sort of thing) and relinquishing spunk for cash from Montana's mammoth testicles at the local wank bank.

All of which is obviously brilliant, but it's hardly the same as being able to bury your head in a veritable mountain of high grade Bolivian blotto and taking Mr Nosey for an indulgent snuffle through the snow.

Yakuza | Sega | PS2 | 2006

If getting as pissed as a tramp is your idea of the perfect morning/afternoon/evening/four-in-the-am, you absolutely have to haul your pickled liver to one of the bars in Yakuza, where you'll find a wide-range of intoxicating booze juices, including beer, brandy, soju and whisky.

Bizarrely, no matter how much alco-lubricant you imbibe, you miraculously never seem to get drunk and none of the familiar traits of the hopelessly inebriated are evident. No barfing, no falling down, no wetting your pants, no shouting abuse at passing traffic, no irrational urge to eat chilli-spiced carrion. You're absolutely guaranteed a good fight, though.

And if you like to engage in a spot of intimate hand-to-gland combat before slipping into a heavy drunken coma, you can shuffle through the magazine racks in Yakuza's convenience stores, where you'll find pictures of pretty ladies such as therather lovely Goto Yukiko. There doesn't seem to be any Kleenex for sale, though.

Above: Virtual junkies hoping to be challenged by such a gratuitous pile of llello in Vivendi's Scarface will be disappointed that the in-game Tony Montana has gone clean

Matt Cundy
Matt Cundy
I don't have the energy to really hate anything properly. Most things I think are OK or inoffensively average. I do love quite a lot of stuff as well, though.