Most simply described, Scarface is a crime orientated experience. Stepping into that particular sub-genre after Rockstars' enfant terrible is of course a bold move, requiring a successful game to have very fine attention to detail, balance and variety in order to stand up to its towering progenitor. Whilst Scarface certainly doesn't take the genre in any new directions, with most of its features having been explored in one title or another beforehand, nearly everything it does is well implemented, well designed, and done with enough of the franchise's trademark gangster style to gloss over shortcomings.

Anyone who saw the will probably point out that Tony Montana ends up face down in his own fountain turning the water pink, but at the moment the words 'likkle friend' are uttered the player will get their chance to re-write the ending. Digital Tony puts the old one to shame with his destructive capabilities, with the sheer volume of lead he can fling and soak up well into the super-human, fortunately falling short of the lack of balance that afflicted Just Cause. As the game propels the player into the shoes of Tony just at the height of the mansion assault, it is just as well the combat system is easy to grasp, especially to anyone with experience of sandbox titles. In addition to the standard free-look, lock-on and fire system, the player must pay close attention to Tony's Balls. The state of Tony's Balls will be displayed in a meter to the screens right, and will be swollen by killing folks without lock-on, and more so by pressing the 'O' button upon killing them, thus taunting them for their new holes and generally being dead. When Tony's balls are filled to bursting, may be activated, which switches the player to first person viewpoint, activates slow motion, grants infinite ammo and bottomless clips, instant multiple lock-on, and kills will result in large health boosts. Activating Rage with only the smallest pistol in hand will generally ensure slaughter of all enemies in range and a recharged and pristine Tony by the time the gunsmoke clears. This is of course a lot of fun to perform, but can mean that fire fights up until the Rage comes out can feel like stalling for time, and at worst a macabre rhythm game of kill/tap-O, kill/tap-O, etc. The generally walks a very fine line between the stylised and the plain psychotic - readouts will announce hit locations down to whether you shot the target in the right or left testicle, but blood is at a minimum and corpses vanish almost immediately. The brutality in Scarface is as overblown as the titular character - full of explosive attitude and swagger, just cartoonish enough for it to be fun without being offensive.

After Tony's escape, it is down to the Class A core of the game to start rebuilding the Montana narcotics empire. The missions this entails are organised and accessed from Tony's slightly anachronistic PDA, displaying maps, important NPCs like suppliers of cocaine and its potential buyers, rival gangs to rub out, and properties to purchase. There is excellent variety in the missions available, giving the player the choice to pursue different aspects of empire building, such as securing product, properties, henchmen, kudos and weapons. This is a return to the non-linear aspects of the sandbox genre that first appealed to the gaming public, but has been steadily more and more overlooked in titles such as or Dead to Right. The empire building aspect is surprisingly well executed, implemented in a more involving way than in other sandbox games which have just allowed save-points to be purchased for arbitrary points. In Scarface you will start hustling for a few dollars at a time, purchasing cocaine and selling it yourself on the street. From there you can progress to using fronts to hide your nefarious business, employ runners and goons to protect those fronts, right up to warehouses and record companies as fronts to shift millions of dollars of Columbian Marching Powder at a time. The way the player has to carve out this business from nothing gives the sense of megalomaniac self-satisfaction perfectly in keeping with Tony's own ranting.

The world of Scarface has an excellent illusion of continued life and depth. The construction of the city is simple, essentially only about twenty city blocks linked by single road bridges, which is small by modern next-gen standards. This can make the game feel quite constricted when having to travel long distances or escape from the police, as routes then have to be effectively on rails. The detail packed into this comparatively small area is the saving grace - where even a large proportion of passing NPCs have context specific conversations that Tony can hold with them. Contested territories must be taken and retaken, and there are enough opportunities and rewards not highlighted on the map to encourage exploration.

The voices, and the words they say, deserve their own mention. Scarface probably has the most amount of swearing in any game, ever. From the liberal cursing during the intro featuring clips from the finale, to the screen that will greet your failure and death announcing that 'You F**cked Up', Mr. Montana will spend the entire game possessed by a particularly severe fit of turrets syndrome. With the help of the circle button, you can swear at enemy corpses, NPCs, passers by, cars, the sky, water, and God with a very impressive range of context sensitive obscenities. The only aspect that surpasses even the variety of the uses of the vernacular term meaning 'to copulate', is the cast using these inventive colloquialisms. Just picking some of the most recognisable names include James Woods, Michael Rapaport, Ice T, Daniel Dae Kim, Willa Holland, Roma Maffia, Cheech & Chong, Richard Roundtree, N.O.R.E., Tommy Lee, and Elliott Gould. I also took particular pleasure at listening to Ricky Gervais' terrible, camp impression of a Miami gangster. Then blowing out both his kidneys. The voice talent is generally well cast, with little in the way of surreal plot twists simply in order to use a star they managed to contract. A few Cuban and Latin models also appear as voices for the various bikini clad molls Tony accumulates to furnish his mansion, which, whilst 10/10 for authenticity, could have been done by anyone rather than actually hiring Vida Guerra.

The graphical finish of Scarface is far from the top end of the market, such as displayed in or Just Cause, but given the serious flaws of most next-gen sandbox offerings so far, it is more than forgiven for simply remembering to maintain a good standard of gameplay. The animation and characterization is excellent, the developers obviously having spent a good long time analyzing how Al Pacino made Tony Montana move. The jerky movements, the swagger, the gesticulation using the whole upper body, and at all times leading with the crotch are all spot on for the Tony Montana that became a cult figure for movie fans and wannabe gangsters. Andre Sogliuzzo, a computer game voice actor veteran of everything from to 3 to does a flawless job of bringing the character to life.

There are only a few flaws and odd choices in the games design, such as the aforementioned linear routes between areas, but there is a couple more worth mentioning. The attention Tony is getting from the police at the time is indicated by a white line that will grow around the mini-map in the bottom right of the screen. Should it fill up, the cops will have had enough and will mobilize the whole force to kill you, upon which the game will announce that you are indeed f**ked and a hail of bullets from off-screen will cut you to pieces. The drawback to this is that it can occur during missions, such as when defending a point or escorting a VIP - which means that you can stay put and automatically be dead, or leave and automatically fail the mission. This inescapable instant death is not in keeping with the cartoon violence of Scarface or the simple criminal fun of a good sandbox game, and can often ruin the flow of the gameplay.

To sum up, Scarface is very good indeed. Computer gaming has recently been described as a 'psychotic holiday' - where the gamer takes a break from morality, restraint, remorse or humanity, and this title delivers the opportunity by the tightly packed kilo. Given the high profile of the game's publication and release, it is surprising that more flack has not been cast by the red-top newspapers and concerned parenting groups - although perhaps even they have realized that a game built on Oliver Stone's crime epic is not going to be suitable for younger gamers. Scarface delivers on nearly every front, from its varied and excellent soundtrack overseen by Jay-Z, to its strong characterization, stylized violence, outrageous swearing, and engaging progress.

Make way for the bad guy.

81%

81%

By Duncan Lawson