When first looking back at this game I was surprised to notice that one of the developing companies was Sierra. The same people who made the King's Quest games back in the 90s. This seems very strange to me until I realised that your main character can interact with just about every person. Each one has at least one major conversation and there must be a couple hundred of these darn people around.
You play Tony Montana in a scenario in which he survives The Assault on his mansion at the end of the movie.
In what I can only describe as one of the best scenarios to have a video game based off.
Your world is already established with the Scarface movie. You don't have to try and recreate the wheel and come up with your own unique twist. You only have to continue an already-established story.
So Tony Montana survives his assault at his manner. Managing to escape, he now finds himself in a small wooden Hut with absolutely nothing to his name. On the one bright side, he seems to be over his cocaine addiction. (that was easy)
Rejuvenated he must re-acquire the Empire that he is just lost. And almost all of the story is just him rebuying, repurchasing and reacquiring everything that he lost of in the first 20 minutes.
Most of the story is fairly basic. Almost no new characters are introduced and it's just reacquainting with the still surviving old ones. Which becomes a little problematic when you realize that half of the interesting characters from the original Film are all dead. Still none of this affects the gameplay so it's not that big a problem. And a lot of the small dialogue is quite entertaining. Such as Tony Montana's acquiring of a satellite phone. As he puts it; ''It's most likely created by the Russians and he's pretty sure the commies are listening to every word that he says.''
The voice acting is okay as far as video games go. Most of the secondary pedestrians sound fine. The characters you interact with are decent and the guy who plays Tony Montana does a pretty good job. Some people think it's Al Pacino but it's not. He reclined do the voice acting for this game. They also probably couldn't afford them especially given how many words and phrases he'd have to say just to make this video game work. It probably be the most expensive voice acting in history.
Of course they can still plaster his name all over the game and pretend as if he's playing the boys. They had to contact him in order to get the rights to his likeness to play the character.
Which leaves us with ''André Sogliuzzo'' he's one of those voice actors who you've never heard the name of but you're most likely heard his voice in some medium somewhere.
He's portraying the voice of Tony Montana. Now apparently he was chosen by Al Pacino, not sure how much truth is in that statement but it could be accurate. Either way he does a fairly decent job. He doesn't sound exactly like Al Pacino's character but he does sound enough like him that you believe that you're playing as Tony Montana in the game. And it no point you ever stop believing that you're playing him.
They also managed to get a lot of the voice acting from the original film to come back for this too. Even got Cheech Marin who for some reason decided to show up. At first I was thinking it was just a bad impression of him but then I discovered it was actually him. I don't know how to think about that.
I guess iced tea is also in this video game along with a few other rappers I've never heard of. I'm not sure if they actually have any real roles in the game or if they're just credited for their songs either way it's kind of odd. That is one little complain to have about this game. It's one thing to have music that's two or three years out of date as in a song that came out in 88 when the game is supposed to take place in 83. I can live with little things like that, but there's music in this game that didn't exist until well... The mid-2000s when the game came out.
It kind of bugs me because the people who made this game did a pretty good job of creating that Florida 1980s atmosphere. Now Grant you they had a few other games to draw inspiration from. But then you put all that work into your endearment and still use modern music. It's like making the perfect vanilla ice cream and then drenching the whole thing in Hershey's chocolates. Why put in all the effort if you're just going to dump it in chocolate.
Now I don't mind any of the music in the game. Most of it's fairly good, some of its less desirable and there's only one or two songs that would flat-out avoid. My only real complaint with the music (besides the time inconsistency which is only really a nitpick) would have to be the overabundance of subpar rock and roll.
I get it, you have to appeal to that teenage white boy demographic who all listens to the same boring rock and roll. Which is funny given at the games rated M and it's not supposed to be played by then but everybody knows better. There's also some rap music in here that appeals to them too but I have less issue with rap music that I do rock.
The game play is both fun and frustrating. With the driving feeling a little unresponsive and kind of indifferent. Every vehicle handles roughly the same. Some have better Armour, others are faster. But you don't feel as if driving an old sedan from 1962 is all that different from driving a modern 80s sports car. But it is serviceable for what it has to do.
It's the shooting mechanic that bears the frustration the most. You have a very simple aiming system. You take out your gun and it automatically aims in front of you. Now you can focus on an enemy by locking on. To which then you can move the cursor around and hit different parts of the body. Doesn't make that much difference which one you had. For some reason you get certain points if you shoot them in the liver or the crotch or the head. But it's all the same.
However locking on means that you're limited to one gunman. Which can be very problematic when having to fight a group of people which is almost always the case. It's group combat 20 Against One. It's supposed to simulate that great battle at the end of the movie each time. And it is relatively fun. But it can be really stressful trying to take out a crowd of guys when you can only fixate on one person at a time.
And you can be killed relatively easily. You can get one chance to redeem your health if you put yourself into this weird berserk mode. Which transports you the first person view and has automatic lock on to every enemy at once. It can be really beneficial but it can also be kind of disorientating.
Now none of this would be a real problem if when you died you went back to a certain checkpoint. But if you die during a mission you go back to the beginning of the mission and have to do the whole thing over again. Dying while in free roam is a serious pain. Especially if you're carrying dirty money or any amount of drugs with you. All that stuff is lost immediately and it doesn't matter how much of it you have. I once had three million dollars in dirty money that immediately was lost because my car accidentally blew up.
And to make things even more annoying. If you want to save your game you have to go to a bank, if you deposit your dirty money into the bank they take a certain percentage from you. Which if you have millions of dollars means they're taking tons of money regardless of how well you do at convincing them to go with lower rates.
Now despite my bad-mouthing of the banking system I do kind of like it. It gives the game its own individual feel. The idea that you have to actually deposit money into the bank to make sure it's protected is a real pain during missions or if you die, but there's a World building experience it's really quite entertaining. Especially considering that if you head out to the Caribbean islands you can go to a bank and do it for free.
It's the very little things in this game that make it kind of fun to play. Otherwise you just be having another Vice City clone the ultimate irony considering that Vice City is based off of this video games initial film.
Playing this game makes you appreciate Vice City a whole lot more. This entire game is done in such a way that you think you have a bigger environment than you do. Everything's kind of Walled off and you're stuck to very segregated sections. The whole thing has a big track feel to it, much like The Simpsons Hit and Run game. Which means they can create a tiny environment and give you the illusion of a bigger one.
It's amazing when you look at the big city in Vice City and realise that you can see just about the entire thing if you stand at the right place. It's a true sandbox compared to this one which is a little bit more cinematic. Which admittedly does work better for streamlined missions. I don't complain about this game not having an open variety to how you Complete objective.
And I like the way everything looks. It's a little bit more Dusty than your Vice City Miami but it's also based off of the actual City a lot more. In a way it's like replaying Vice City but from a different perspective.
You're a lot more involved in the actual drug trade. You have to find the Dealer's find the coke, buy those things and then sell them to other dealers to make money. Sometimes you'll have to distribute them through front businesses or even resupply a warehouse so you can do a big Supply. It's a game where you can make a ton of money and still feel like you're poor.
And I like that feeling. Most video games either have you making so much money that it becomes irrelevant and to the point that it doesn't even mean anything anymore or you make such a little money compared to the things you need to buy that you feel as if you're wasting your time ever trying to achieve purchasing those higher-tier items. In this game you have to change your play style to acquire more money. You can sit there and make small time deals with the local drug dealers or you can go out and try to sell and bring back as much money as humanly possible. It all depends on how much danger you want to deal with and how much risk you're willing to take.
I also like the small Islands you can go to later on in the game. It changes the environment and how you play the game a little bit more. There's no police there, and all the gangsters are willing to shoot at you almost instantly. It's a lot more dangerous but it's also a lot more free. So if you really like arcade shooting but you don't like having to run away from the police every 10 minutes it's the place to go to. Consequently if you don't like having to deal with gang members shooting at you every 10 minutes and you're willing to obey the law you can just stay in Miami and only ever have to deal with the police on a minimal level.
Also the police are actually a fret in this game. If the police start to come after you and they decide to Dean you was a proper fret they'll just kill you. You can't run away from them you can't bribe your way out of the situation or hide in your little safe house. At some point they'll just shoot you down and that's the end of it. It actually makes the police a threatening Force and not just a minor diversion that only ever becomes frightening and other games because you spend so much time shooting at them that you eventually run out of steam, energy or simply bullets.
Conclusion:
It's an overall fun game but a little too stressful to play legitimately. You want to cheat through a few sections because the gameplay is either to Antiquated the deal with or sometimes just flat-out cheap.
God have mercy on your soul if you try to play this game on your computer. Besides the Antiquated software not working with your modern-day computers, there's also graphical problems and a controller system that really can't be changed. Oh they tell you you can change it. But if you do the game might get stuck on a certain screen and won't let you exit out. You just have to play with their incredibly awkward controller layout. It's not even an option, you'll need to cheat if you want to play this thing on the computer.
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