It'll be a big task to get it all back, but not half as big as Montana's planet-sized ego. The game even shows you losing all your status items, reputation and so on right before your eyes. You blast your way out of your mansion amidst a stream of blood and spittle-flecked bad language, and then, of course, have to spend hours gaining back all the things you've lost. In a sense, Scarface's big USP delivered right there in the game's opening sequence - it's ridiculous, insane, intense and above all, entertaining combat right from the word go. The colours warp to match the bloody intensity, the sound changes and you get a 15 second window of opportunity to pick everyone off without having to deign to lock on - and all this with the added benefit of increasing your health for every kill! Jack Thompson's lining up his first lawsuit as we speak. Once Tony flips out, the viewpoint switches (slightly unhelpfully, actually) to a first person viewpoint, presumably to convey the wild-eyed chaos and gory dismemberment to the max. Indeed, it's an incredible tirade of profane abuse that would have dear old Mary Whitehouse spinning in her grave, but also a valuable gameplay mechanic that helps you kill things more efficiently. Either you just build it up gradually by simply shooting everyone, or take gleeful pride in calling their mother a "ho" (among 500 other such choice insults) after you've riddled their decapitated torso with lead. Used like a good old fashioned smart bomb, you can send Tony 'Truckin' Montana over the edge by topping up your 'balls' meter, which you do in one of two ways. With tongue firmly in its cheek, Radical decided to let players take the combat up to 11 with the rather hilarious and gratuitous Blind Rage mode. It's not the most challenging game ever, but that never feels like a particularly bad thing. With familiar two stick third person controls, you can swiftly spray a whole posse of enemies into submission thanks to a generous lock-on system that takes most of the hard work out of the numerous combat situations. With what actually serves as an intro and tutorial to the slick and enjoyable combat mechanics, you start in the aforementioned mansion faced with dozens of Sosa's gun-toting foot soldiers. Coke is itĪnd so begins a surprisingly well put-together take on the genre that sweeps away most of the doubts of its competence in the space of a few minutes with a breathless opening sequence. In that famous end sequence where Tony 'Blummun' Montana (as he's known on family websites) gets shots to pieces by Sosa's goons in his salubrious mansion, Radical wonders what would have become of Tony if he'd have survived that flesh-ripping encounter? His manor destroyed by fire-fights and flame, his territories taken over, would he have the will to fight back and claim sweet revenge? If you've got anything to do with it, he will. But here, Radical goes for Plan B and goes all 'what if?' on us and risks the whole project's credibility before we've even put the disk in the drive. Normally in this situation, developers take one of two routes either a semi-faithful linear interpretation with a few embellishments thrown in (Spider-Man 2), or one 'inspired' by the movie's universe (like, say, The Chronicles of Riddick).
What fans of the 1983 Al Pacino movie might not particularly appreciate is quite how Radical Entertainment has conspired to make a game out of the subject matter. Just when you thought the world had enough GTA-style games for one month, up pops another one to jump aboard the ever-lucrative bandwagon of crime-fuelled gang-busting empire-building epics.īut wait! This one's actually quite interesting in the way Scarface openly pays homage to a game that openly paid homage to Scarface.