Though it’s an affront to everything that is holy about Brian De Palma’s legendary film, imagine that Tony Montana survived the epic final scene in “Scarface” and has come back for revenge.
The above video was an E3 release and sent to subscribers of “The Insider”, Vivendi Universal Games’ newsletter.
Throw in the Grand Theft Auto “open” style of gaming and you pretty much have the premise of Vivendi Universal’s Scarface: The World is Yours.
Although much of the game seems to scream “GTA,” (drugs, cars, women) Universal has tried to make it be more story driven along the lines of The Godfather: The Game, which was another good looking free-form game. Scarface: The World is Yours will put you into a historically re-created geography that includes Miami, the Keys and the Bahamas, and your mission is to take back Tony’s empire.
The game will be available on Xbox, Playstation 2 and Windows CD-ROM. Rumors persisted of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 releases. Best Buy even maintains an October 4 release date for the Xbox 360 version, but Vivendi is saying the game will only be released for Playstation2, Xbox and PC CD-ROM.
This game has been talked about for over a year with teasers seen at E3 2005 and 2006, and it looks like this fall will finally see gamers re-creating Scarface in their own image.
I am hopeful that Scarface: The World is Yours will have better replay value than The Godfather: The Game. Godfather was good. It recreated the 1940’s well and expanded on the original novel and movie. I spent four sleepless nights conquering every front, warehouse, hub and compound; executing every hit; and completing every mission. But after that, the game was basically over, (you even got infinite ammo after completing all the objectives, so, while it was fun to run around for a while, the challenge wasn’t there anymore) d I was disappointed with the lack of replay value.
What will be even more impressive than the geographic and historical recreations and graphics will be the people lending their talents to the game. Al Pacino will not voice any new lines, but many movie lines will be used. Original Scarface actors Robert Loggia, Steven Bauer and Al Israel will return and famous names like Jay Mohr, James Woods, Ice T and Elliott Gould will star in the game.
One interesting and smart marketing tactic being used by Universal is Myspace.com and allow independent musicians to submit pieces for the soundtrack. Scarface currently has nearly 70,000 “friends” on Myspace.
Vivendi has had a busy year trying to establish itself as a leader in the videogame industry. Their lineup includes a World of Warcraft Expansion Pack, Eragon, F.E.A.R., an expansion pack for F.E.A.R. and Timeshift, which recently launched for Xbox 360.
The success of Scarface: The World is Yours remains to be seen, but this game is well overdue and may miss it’s target, marketing-wise. Many major outlets have been covering it since its announcement, so there’s plenty of press behind the game. Gamespot and IGN started coverage in August, 2004.
The game will not be offered on any of the three newest consoles, (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) so that will definitely play against the holiday sales of the game. The Myspace promotion was crafty, but we’ll see how the game does when it comes out.