It's hard to believe Scarface would make a bad video game but low and behold...it does
Scarface is a terrible game with a stupid concept. Fans of the movie will be heartbroken to find that to play this game you have to suspend all disbelief of the ending of this movie. The developers of this game tried to make it plausable that Tony Montana survived the final attack on his mansion. This 'what if' scenarios is one of the stupidest in gaming. What's worse is the fact that after he survives you basically have to rise to the top again. Sound familiar, it should because that's the premise of the movie. At least if the game followed the actual movie fans would be happy but no, they had to pull a what if scenario out of their bag of failures. In other words, the story in this game is god awful.
There is this nothing good here technically wise. The graphics look great in some parts but most of the time they are nothing special. For the time though I guess they were alright but a game from 2006 should be able to hold up in 2008. The character models all look nice and detailed but everything else is run of the mill.
Scarface has some of the worst sound I've ever heard in a game. You thought Kane and Lynch suffered from too many 'f words' well behold Scarface. Anyone who's seen the movie knows Tony's foul mouth but this game takes it to another. Lazy script writing is to blame here as the script is bad. The poor voice acting doesn't help either. Perhaps the greatest disappointment I felt in this game was the fact that some no name actor does Tony Montana's voice. He doesn't even do a good impression, he sounds totally different. Al Pacino wasn't available for the game because he didn't want to be involved, I don't blame him this game is trash. I can't believe they couldn't even muster a decent voice actor for Tony Montana. Do you know how many people impersonate this guy?
The game also wastes all of it's celebrity talent not that it has much. We got the likes of Richard Roundtree, Bam Margera, Anthony Anderson, Cheech and Chong and Eliott Gould. Guess what, they're all wasted and given to menial characters in the game such as 'Gang member', 'Drug dealer' and the oh so memorable 'Liquor Store Owner'. I kid you not, this is what they did with the celebrity talent. The last thing I'll say about the sound is the soundtrack. It's alright and has all the songs from the old Scarface but the thing is there is too much filler. There is way too much stuff here and a lot of it is unnecessary.
Let's talk Gameplay. In terms of gameplay this is one of the first games to make me almost cry. Not because it was so good but because it was so bad. This game was stupid and either a cakewalk or impossible. This game punishes you for trying it with it's godawful gameplay. I guess I deserved it, I thought this would be a good game when I first played it. What makes the gameplay so poor is the fact that none of the decisions the developers made make sense. The shooting is bland, it's like Grand Theft Auto shooting but they tuned it to be worse. It feels clunky and there is no auto aim so it's useless. Despite this it's still alright and in the end the combat is just passable.
Now what boggles my mind is the other choices the developers made. For instance when you get a lot of skills Tony gets 'balls'. That's right, balls. The two things that dangle between your legs. Yeah those balls. With more balls Tony can enter a fury mode which makes him unstoppable. Kind of like in Scarface near the end of the movie but it wasn't a lot of balls that made Tony crazy it was cocaine. It's not even true to the movie in this sense and this feature is crap.
Another thing I hated was the clunky driving controls. During missions it's impossible to follow someone because the driving is as poor as it gets. It's like driving a box and none of the cars handle well. It's stupid and poor design. It does the job I guess but it gets annoying on some tedious missions.
Speaking of missions, these are some of the most boring and repetitive missions. You find yourself doing the same crap over and over again which is usually fetch. Why fetch? I'm Tony Montana, ex drug kingpin. I shouldn't have to fetch. I should be making this guy fetch. You have to do crap missions like this so many times you end up never finishing this game because it's just so bad.
I'll do one more gripe about gameplay even though I have many more. My last gripe is the drug dealing. Drug dealing isn't fun and it's considered a cornerstone of the game because it's how you make money and buy drugs. It's even how you launder money. You play this stupid mini game where you have to click at the perfectly right time to get the arrow in a shaded area like in Mario Golf. I wouldn't mind if this was once in a while but you have to do this so many times you get tired of it. Why do I have to do this to sell drugs? Even engaging in different dialogue choices would be more fun. This is just lame and it's super tedious. Why do I have to do this stupid quicktime event to launder money, this is beyond me.
What were they thinking, stay away from this game. I got nothing more to say. I just hope the people who made this burn because this is the ultimate insult to Scarface fans.
The Good: The soundtrack has the old Scarface tunes
The Bad: Clunky combat, lame design choices, no Tony Montana, lazy script, waste of celebrity talent, bad gameplay, repetitive, totally destroys the ending of the original movie to justify it's existence
Overall: So bad you'll slap yo' momma