After a somewhat shaky showing at their last press event, Vivendi Universal granted Amped IGO an exclusive, behind-closed-doors showing of their gangster title, Scarface: The World is Yours, and although some minor themes seem to be moving in the wrong direction, Scarface still manages to bring together all of the gangster aspects that make the film such a classic.

At first glance, Scarface looks better than it has in the past and manages to run rather smoothly while in play. Everything in the environment is fully destructible, allowing for a completely new way of gunfighting and combat. Besides the usual arsenal of firearms, Tony Montana is fully equipped with knives, automatics, and of course his fists. Enemies can be locked on by pressing the L1 button, and once targeted, Tony can than select a specific part of the enemy’s body to attack to determine how much damage is inflicted. Shots fired at certain locations such as the arms, legs, or nether regions will cause less damage as head or chest shots. Tony Montana also has the ability to taunt his enemies by pushing the L3 button, which will impact the enemy’s future attacks. Once taunted, enemies will either run away in fright, or taunt back, leaving them vulnerable for fire. However, the same can be said about using Tony to taunt, as it leaves him wide open for prey.

The video that we saw showed Tony Montana battling dozens of Sosa’s men on the balcony of his luscious mansion. However, despite the fact that Tony dies in the flick, the player has the chance to change that outcome by simply shooting the sneaky assassin in the very beginning of the level. After changing the fate of the game, Tony than continues to finish off the goons entering his house and tries to escape to safety. While fighting off the endless gunman, Tony shows off his new skills such as wall shooting, allowing him to hide behind a wall, take close aim of the enemy and than unleash a barrage of bullets under safe cover, and crouching which is useful for dodging enemy fire. After fully ridding his house of enemies, and destroying it in the process, Tony than finds himself wandering the streets of Miami a broken and unrespected man.

The game than breaks down into an open-ended style game, allowing Tony to take on certain missions in order to gain back respect. This plays through fully as money is only a minor factor in the overall game. As you start tackling the missions, not only will you earn cash, but you gain "Balls Respect", which is basically an interpretation of Tony’s "cajones". The cash can eventually be used to buy new items to restore your house to its former glory The more missions you complete for people the more Balls Points you eventually will obtain, which will in return allow Tony to gain properties. Properties are of course needed to regain his cocaine empire which he so lovely lost. Once you finally gain control of numerous turfs and become the drug kingpin once again, Tony has the ability to actually hire henchman to do his dirty work for him, and there are three different characters to choose form throughout the game. As stated in the showing, Scarface will feature no loading times whatsoever when entering any indoor locations, and the only time the game will actually pause to load is when you travel from Miami to the island chains. The game also features roughly 100 different cars, all of which have their own unique speed, handling, and look, meaning no two cars will ever be the same. Not only does this change the monotony of other open-ended titles of the sane nature, but it makes sure that every mission is unique in its own right.

Although the game looks remarkably well in its long production time, the cutscenes still look like they need tons of work. After seeing the beautiful landscapes and the amount of destruction that the visuals allow for the locales, it makes the cutscenes look almost last gen. Also, it seems that Tony Montana’s voice actor is not profound with the Cuban language, as he sounds very out of place and sounds nothing like the Al Pacino character.

Overall, Scarface The World if Yours looks to break the mold from the mediocre movie-based games, but it is hard to fully take It seriously. Being a diehard fan of the movie, it sometimes pains me to see how the film is being treated, and although some aspects of the game are really well performed, Scarface still fails to bring something new to the table.