This is what the Gamespot review should've been.
The game starts off with a battle tutorial. It is possible to get killed in the tutorial, at which case will then transport you back to the main game. The tutorial is only offered in the beginning and should you die during it, you will not have the option to return and see how it ends. You'll have to start a new game if you want to finish the tutorial. That aside, you'll be in your mansion, just like towards the end of the movie. You'll have control of Tony and fight your way out. After in game cinematics, you'll be on the road to reclaim your empire and seek revenge, which consists of conquering Miami and eventually going after Sosa (pronounced "So-sa", not "So-ser").
The balls meter (get your head out of the gutter!). Tony can taunt people after he's killed them, with famous lines such as "I'm Tony Montana!" and "You think you can take me? You need an army you take me!" Killing people and taunting them afterwards will fill your "balls" meter. When full, you can unleash your rage. When activated, the screen will go red and you'll go into a FPS view, becoming invincible. The more enemies you kill in your rage, the more health you'll regain. Thus this is favorable if you're surrounded with enemies. This meter can be filled by doing just about anything gutsy, such as driving on the wrong side of the road, near collisions with other cars, completing a perfect drug deal, even talking to people in the game.
Unlike GTA, Tony has a conscience and will not kill innocent people, saying "I don't need that sh*t in my life" or "No way meng". He will only kill those that try to kill him, such as rival gang members. This becomes a problem as a gang member who's shooting at you is hiding behind a pedestrian. Tony won't shoot because he can't distinguish the enemy behind the innocent, so you must manuever him around in order to get the shot.
Conversations. What's unique to this game that's usually found in RPGs is the ability to strike up a conversation with pedestrians. And no, there aren't generic lines that Tony will use. Actually, depending on what the other person says, Tony will follow that conversation. You can talk to anyone, and if you continue to talk to them long enough, you'll be rewarded with balls. This makes the game more lively than any of the GTA games I've played. I even saw a guy filling up gas at a gas station, something that you normally wouldn't see or expect.
Transaction meter. It's tricky to master. You'll have to hold down the B button just long enough for the meter to fill up to the right spot, or you'll either lose all your current posessions and increase cop heat (as with a cop), instigate a fight and increase gang heat (as with a rival gang member), fail a drug deal and result in a shootout (as with drug dealers/buyers), or receive a high interest rate (as with money laundering in banks). When you play the game long enough, you'll get the hang of it. Personally I was able to get it down right just about every time after I played the game for many hours straight. However when I stopped playing and resumed the next day, my acquired instinct was gone and I had to get used to it again. Depending on the transaction, the speed of which the meter will fill varies from slower to faster. The Gamepot reviewer who said that this was easy, either he's really good at stuff like this or he's full of sh*t. This feature is in many sports games, and as I don't play many of those, this feature is tricky for me.
Cop heat. When you hijack a car, you attract attention to yourself. The meter at the outer edge of your HUD map will start to fill, then stop, depending on how much unstability you're letting loose. The more bad things you do, the more attention you'll get and the bar will fill, such as killing rival gangs. If you run over pedestrians, smash into other cars, drive down poles, all these actions and more will attract the police's attention. To lower the amount of attention you receive while killing enemies, it's advised for you to use silenced weapons, as this slows down how fast cops respond to your misdemeaners. However, there will be times when the cops track you down (as can be seen with a blue badge on your map). If your cop meter isn't full, you have the option of fast talking your way out. This, and many other transactions you'll have, success is measured by a circular meter. If the cop meter is completely full, you'll have to lose the cops before the cop meter decreases to zero. Losing the cops won't be easy if you don't know what you're doing, as federal agents come in (the DEA) and lay down spike strips that will puncture your tires and slow you down to a crawl. There are a few ways to get out of this, and at least one method is almost guaranteed if you can get wet (hint hint). You'll figure this out as you log enough hours into the game. You cannot save your game while the cops are after you. When the cop meter runs down to zero and you still haven't lost the cops that are chasing you, you get the message "You are F*cked". That's just that, you can't escape and live no matter what. The game entertains you by letting you try to escape, only for you to see how you die. The higher the cop heat, the harder it is for you to avoid them. This can be remedied by paying off corrupt cops called vice in the game. One last thing, killing rival gangs in a public area will obviously increase the meter much faster than if you fought them in an alley. There are secluded areas inhabited by gangs that you can blast away without worrying about the cops. It's all about how much noise and disturbance you create in relation to public areas where there are pedestrians.
Gang heat. Like cop heat, this increases when you kill gang members or when you screw up a drug deal. On distribution missions, even if you have zero gang heat before, at the end of your distribution run it's not uncommon for your gang heat meter to be 3/4 full. The higher the gang meter, the more violent rival gangs will be. If full, gangs will retaliate against you by attacking one of your fronts. When you've acquired 3/4 of the territory in Miami, racing to defend a front can be very difficult unless you've got the limo to call for, in which case it can take you to whichever front you own almost instantly. In general, the more fronts you own, the harder it is to defend them should one be attacked when you're caught off guard. Pay off vice to reduce this. Also, a high gang heat results in the inability to conduct petty drug deals (100 grams) and when you meet with a large supplier, Kg, you'll get a lot less for your money. When you go to the bank to launder your dirty cash, a high heat will significantly increase the interest rate (I recall that gang heat causes this, but I'm not 100% sure, it may be due to cop heat only).
Cheats. I have no idea why the cheat "Kill Tony" is there by default. In fact, it's always there whenever you access the cheat menu. I've used it once out of curiosity, but never again. Besides that, here you can enter cheats obviously, but can also replay missions. When you buy investments under exotics, certain things will get unlocked such as different outfits and unlimited ammo.
Driver/Boat. I really liked this feature in the game. Remember how frustrating is was in GTA games where you had to run around just to get a car, or when you parked a certain car in a certain garage somewhere far away, the only way to get to it is by driving (or whichever other method you prefer) to that location just to get the car? Well Scarface solves all that and saves us a lot of headache. This is just one of several improvements that this game has in this genre. You can call for any of your cars that you bought under the exotics menu, and a henchman will deliver it to you, as long as you're near a road. If not, then he'll park it on the closest road to your location. The cars you have can't be found in the game, most of them that is. They're exclusive to Tony. The henchman will also ride shotgun and help you. Of course, before you can access this feature, you'll need to have a driver and a car, but the game practically forces you to do this in the first hour of the game. If you don't feel like driving, you can call for your limo. Again, you've got to have bought this in order to access it. The same goodness goes for boats, when you're in the water. You can call for a seaplane and it'll take to wherever you'd like to go. You can't pilot it, and it's the only aeriel vehicle in the game. Beware of the water, there are sharks. I thought that if I swam close to shore or if I swam in a river (there are sharks in freshwater in real life, but none that have attacked humans) I'd be safe. The shark that ate me proved otherwise.
Weapons. You can access your weapons from your weapons locker back in your mansion or from the trunk of any of your cars or boats (has to be the ones in your exotic menu AKA ones you've bought, not highjacked cars/boats). You can carry only up to three different classes of weapons until you unlock Montana Defense, which enables you to carry one more. Note that I said only one of each class. For example, you can't carry an AK-47 and a M-16. Taking out your weapons in public will cause unrest and increase your cop meter. You can access the weapons menu anywhere, anytime after you've purchased the weapons henchman. You can upgrade weapons when available, and this feature lets you instantly purchase the proper weapons and ammo should you need it in a firefight without running to a stash. If you don't use the lock on feature (which will "lock on" to a target - but this doesn't always work properly), you'll gain more balls for enemies killed. You can also pick up weapons, money, and llello from dead gang members.
Money is stored in two separate accounts, in your bank and in your dirty accounts. The money stored in your bank account can't be lost if you fail a mission, but your dirty money that hasn't been laundered at a bank will be lost should you screw up. The llello that you have on you can't be stored, you must sell them to a dealer or to one of your fronts in order to get rid of them and convert them into dirty cash. Fronts have demand, and if you constantly sell llello to a particular front, demand there will decrease and your profits will be less. When you launder your money at a bank for safe keeping, you'll have to deal with that circular meter again. This will dictate your interest rate. If your heat is high, the best rate you can get is substantially higher. The more reputation you have, the higher the rate. After you launder, you can save your game. Banks are the only buildings that can offer this option, the other save option is when you finish a task for a front manager.
The game has 2 main components, a reputation level and the game's main story. First, the reputation. The more things you complete, the more reputation you'll get. For example, you can buy exotics such as henchmen, cars, boats, mansion upgrades, unique collectibles, furniture, decor, and investments. After you purchase an exotic, it will remain with you for the duration of the game, unlike ammo that can be depleted. Certain henchman will help you earn money, lower cop/gang heat, and do things you don't want Tony to do, such as clearing out gangs. The henchman has almost the same gameplay as Tony, such as calling for cars, taking weapons (be sure to return the weapons to the car trunk or Tony will not get them back!), accessing the menu, etc. He/she doesn't have a balls meter, this is exclusive to Tony. You should buy the best car you can at the start of the game, fast cars come in handy. I should note here that only certain items will be available for purchase in the exotic menu, where the rest are locked until you increase your reputation. The things that are completely useless in the exotics menu are unique collectibles, furniture, and decor. They don't do anything for you except to decorate your mansion, and you'll have to personally go to your mansion and manually place the decorations around your home. Should you change the appearance of your mansion, all the time and effort in your interior design will be gone, forcing you to start over if you'd like to re-decorate. Remember, whenever you purchase an exotic, your reputation increases.
The bar at the bottom of the word SCARFACE will fill as your rep increases (hit the START button to see your stats). However, at the beginning of the game, the word SCARFACE will lack color. As your rep increases, and when the bar at the bottom fills up entirely, you will advance. For example, you'll go from S_______ to SC______ to SCA____ to SCAR____ to SCARF___ to SCARFA__ to SCARFAC_ and finally the entire SCARFACE. This is the reputation component. You can achieve the entire SCARFACE word without following the storyline.
The storyline is the main component of the game, like a campaign for you to take over fronts and when you have acquired 90% ownership of a turf, you can take over the storehouse which contains the llello of whoever owned it before. Then the turf is yours, but you may still have to weed out gang resistance in some pockets of the turf map, just look for areas where a gang can fit in. Personally I combed every part of each turf to weed them out. Before you can take over a front, you have to do a favor, or a mission, for its owner. Complete the mission and then you'll have the option of buying the front, after purchasing it, it'll be yours and your turf ownership will increase. Note that killing gangs can only increase your ownership to a certain degree. The only way to reach 90% (which allows you to attack the storehouse and subsequently own the turf) is to complete all the front missions. Eradicating gangs will increase ownership but only up to 30% as I've found out in North Beach. Sometimes it's necessary to kill off gangs to gain those few percentages of ownership, but the point is that you can't own a turf just by killing gangs alone, you have to do all the front missions. I found that there wasn't really that much incentive to take over a turf. Sure, you get missions that yield money, but sometimes it can get frustrating and killing off gangs are more fun and yield lots of dough. After a front's mission, you still have to pay for it. The only incentive comes at the end, when you get the llello from the store house and get to distribute it. However, Felix's missions can yield up to 30K, whereas the storehouses take you take over contain much less. Throughout most of the game, I went after the exotics (cars, weapon upgrades, etc), reputation, and money. Advancing the story was second.
Gangs are indicated on your map by a white or gray skull. White means that the gang is there and you can take them, gray means that they're not there yet and if you go there, there's no one to kill, you'll just have to wait until the skull turns white. Gang sizes range from small to large, and the same goes for their weapons, from pistols to RPGs. Beware the chainsaw, it kills in one motion and this is devastating when you're surrounded by enemies. When you've killed enough, you'll get a message telling you not to let any gang members escape and for you to kill their leader. The leader has a red skull on the map and above his head. He's tougher than the rest and carries a better weapon. Hunt down the gang members who're trying to escape because if you let as much as one guy escape, the gang will be back and your efforts are in a sense wasted, unless you want to continually fight gangs. The last gang member that you kill will drop a package and upon collecting it, you'll gain dirty cash ranging from a small sum to over a million, depending on where the gang is (North Beach yields the most of course). Killing off gangs will add to your total game completion. On a side note, make sure you walk into the gang area to trigger a message such as "Nacho's Gang" or something similar. I tried to snipe them from a distance but they kept respawning. When I walking into the area and triggered the message, I killed about a dozen of them and got the message to kill the leader. Thus make sure your efforts are not in vain. As can be expected in the gaming world, Tony takes on most missions alone. Even after you've amassed an empire, VERY few henchmen will fight by your side during a mission (storehouse takeover for example).
Distribution runs. This is when you deliver the llello from a storehouse and distribute it to every front you own, and in the meantime you'll collect the money. The catch is while you're doing this, rival gangs will attack you and your fronts. Make sure that your cop/gang heat meters are as low as possible, or you'll receive more gang attacks and the cops will have a higher chance of stopping you while you're defending a front (note: at the end of your run your gang heat will be around 3/4 full no matter what). The money that you collect is stored in your car, not in your dirty money account until after you've finished the run or decided not to collect anymore because your car is almost dead. Yes, the trick here is to select a car that can withstand a lot of punishment because if your car is destroyed, you won't receive a single cent. Also a reliable car can make it all around Miami to all the stops. If you think a fast car will do the job, it will, until your empire spans all 4 turfs. At that point, speed is not of the essence, since even the fastest car can't take you from say, Downtown to rescue a front being attacked in South Beach in time and still be in good shape. Even if you decide to do it, your car will be attacked by rival gangs along the way and its condition will severely affect your ability to keep distributing. Thus it's highly recommended that you pick a car with the most armor (obviously slower cars) and these cars will be the ones to carry you to every front in the long haul. If you find that your car is almost gone, your personal health is low, and if you can't escape the cops(meaning you got the message lose the cops), pull into the nearest bank to stop the run. Don't bother walking into the bank if your health is low and gangs are around shooting at you, and you can't launder/save when the cops are hunting you down. Instead use that dirty money to buy exotics because you're most likely a goner anyway. After you've spent your dirty cash, meaning you have no dirty cash left, even if you die all you'll lose at the most is whatever llello you had on you. Sure beats losing millions of dirty cash, and the exotics purchased before you died will still be there. If you completed the distribution mission without any major headaches, remember to bring your gang heat down so that your interest rate won't be astronomical, and to spend as much as it as you can so that you don't lose hard earned cash to the bank's interest.
Side missions. These can be accessed from the menu, and here you can selected the driver, enforcer, or assassin to carry out dirty deeds, but they aren't necessary. I found myself clearing gangs with Tony instead, as he's the only guy will the balls meter. Henchmen missions will generate dirty cash, lower cop/gang heat. The money they get is transferred to Tony afterwards when you want to revert back to Tony. If a henchman dies, it doesn't really hit you as hard since Tony is still alive and you don't lose anything that's on Tony, just what the henchman had. A little "cheat" here is to have the henchmen drop off their weapons in a car trunk, so that Tony can have them (this is only plausible in the earlier stages of the game, as the game progresses you'll actually have the henchmen get better weapons from Tony's inventory). You can do Felix missions, which occurs in two stages. One, you help a guy named Schuler do whatever he requires (after a while you can guess what kind of mission it can be: protection, deliveries, assassinations, etc). In return, he'll either give you cash or point you to a drug supplier. Then you'll go to the supplier and transport the llello to a storehouse, where you'll distribute it. When you've played the game for a while, you'll have access to remote islands off of Miami. You can do missions for a man called The Sandman there, however the islands are full of people that try to kill you, including pirates (yes they do spawn back after time). Felix's side missions will help you get the money you'll need to buy fronts, exotics, weapon upgrades, etc. They aren't mandatory and there is an infinite amount of side missions. Just in case you're wondering, the business menu holds more than 3 missions. The screen only allows you to see 3, the top being the mission that advances the story, and the bottom 2 are side quests such as meeting a supplier or distribute. Suppose you already met with the suppliers three times and all you have to do is distribute. Well don't be scared if the menu only has 2 distribute missions, because after you finish one, the 3rd mission won't say "Felix's Leads", but be replaced with the distribution mission that you haven't done yet.
Femme Fatales. When you have accumulated enough balls (har har), you unlock a girl that wants to speak to you. You'll find her and "convince" her to move into your mansion. There isn't much convincing at all, just talk to her long enough and she'll move in. They offer bonuses to your health and, well, balls. They don't do much but stand around and talk in your mansion, and Tony's dialogue is set for them, meaning he cycles through the same responses for each of them, doesn't change (ie. he'll never respond to "can I invite my girlfriends over for a party" with "yeah sure" but "why don't you go work with blind kids or something" - one of his lines in his dialogue cycle for them). They can't accompany you around town, and you can't do anything with them but look at them. The girls in the game are some of the best designed I've seen in this genre. A lot of them are crazy about wearing ultra short skirts (the assassin for example).
Music. You can create custom tracks from songs that are in the game. Pick which songs you'd like to listen to from the menu, and add them to your personal mix. You can also listen to music whenever, wherever. As opposed to GTA where you can only hear music while in a vehicle, in Scarface you can listen to it as if you've headphones. Who can not like the Scarface soundtrack including songs such as "I'm Hot Tonight" and "Push it to the Limit"?
Shortcomings. I wish that there were stats on how much money I've accumulated, how many times I've died, how many people I've killed, etc. It would have been fun to fly an aircraft. With so much eye candy in the game, a "hot coffee" would've been nice, heh. It would be nice to have the femme fatales play a larger role. Also you can't shoot innocent people, and the hand to hand combat is overly simplistic - you can't lose even if you're a retard I didn't like it when I took the time to decorate my mansion with exotics, only to have them disappear when I changed the theme of my mansion. I wish there could've been more than just one henchman who follows you or rides with you in your car, that would give more emphasis on how powerful Tony is with his empire and minions, but he spends most of the game fighting alone. The henchmen are also fodder, their AI could've been better. The graphics aren't sharp, but then again, that shortcoming can be forgiven for the fact that there are NO loading times when you drive around Miami on all 4 turfs, very nice. At the bank, Tony's dialogue makes no sense to the teller and vice versa. Teller says "I'm sure that we can do even better next time", Tony responds, "Yeah keep walking, it just gives me a better view of your ass"....???
Replay value. There is almost none, unless you want to start all over again. You can continue playing the game after you've beaten it, such as GTA Vice CIty. Then again, for games in this genre, that's about as much replay value as you can get. It's like Half-Life, you play it for the cinematic experience, not for replay value. If you wanted replay value, try a game like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Caesar III (ie. empire building games).
Voice acting. This part was done terrifically well, the guy almost sounds identical to Al Pacino. Superb job by Andre. I loved the comments he'd say and his impersonations, they're hilarious. If you're wondering why Pacino didn't do it himself, he is a smoker and in the mid '80s his throat was damaged and his voice changed, so sadly he can never vocalize Tony Montana again.
This game has educational values too. I've increased my Spanish vocabulary while playing the game, learning from what Tony and people say in the game such as "Die you f*cking maricon!" and "Chingada tu madre!" The Spanish radio also helps to a lesser degree, but you can't deny the cultural value.
In conclusion, this game is the best in its genre. It is much better than any of the GTA games, and outshines Vice City by miles. This is what an '80s game should be about, as I'm also an '80s fan. I rarely give out high scores such as this, but his game is proved itself to be one of the best for me. Vivendi should be commended on fixing and improving the problems that players dealt with in GTA and producing Scarface as a result. I totally disagree with Gamespot's review. I found it to lack depth and thus this lengthy review (my longest by far) because this game deserves some justice. Some may say that this game is easy, but I find that hard to believe. True, compared to GTA, this game has less frustrating missions (until you get to the latter half) but it has near impossible missions as well. I found myself retrying missions many times before I passed it, whether because I learned from my mistakes or luck, which has a lot to do with these games. In my mind, a game should be fun. When you have frustrating missions that require you to replay over and over again, as can be found in GTA, that's not fun anymore but becomes tedious and spawns violent reactions from the gamer. I would recommend this game to everyone, and hoped that you found this review helpful.
One last thing, music from the game such as "Rush Rush", "Push it to the Limit", etc were not included in GTA Vice CIty (as it should have been for an '80 themed game), but in the original GTA III.