(AfroGamers.com) The PlayStation 2 is a console known for a number of games that are difficulty for no particular reason. These are games that hard to the point that no one would blame you for throwing your hands up, turning off the game, and finding something better to play.
While Scarface: The World Is Yours isn’t one of those games, it does become difficult for no reason once you reach the second act.
Scarface: The World Is Yours (2006)
This is a game I love from the PS2-era and that’s for two reasons. The first is that Scarface is in my top ten favorite films of all time. As for the second reason, it was as if someone put the aesthetic of Grand Theft Auto Vice City in a blender with GTA: San Andreas.
I guess a better way to explain it would be Vice City Plus and San Andreas Lite. It sits right in the middle of being the best of both games. All it needed was radio stations and dedicated voice acting from everyone besides Andre Sogiluzzo—who did a fantastic job as Tony Montana.
The other reason is that I love open-world games with a turf war aspect. See San Andreas and GTA Vice City Stories. In these three games, it’s important to wipe out other gangs to have dominance over parts of the city.
In Vice City Stories and Scarface: The World is Yours, it’s more about claiming turf for profit whereas in San Andreas, you claimed turf to have a strong presence but there was pretty much no profit in wiping out the Ballas and Vagos.
Although, GTA: SA and GTA: VCS both had the benefit of rival gangs returning to attempt to reclaim turf. In Scarface, there’s none of that. Once you wipe out a gang, that gang is gone—until you attempt to do cocaine runs to your store fronts. Only then do they magically reappear.
I guess you could say that the other parts of Miami send in associated gang members to damage your fronts and stop your profit but even that doesn’t make too much sense. However, you need some resistance or else that mission would be a breeze.
Where’s the Difficulty Here?
The 2000s was an odd time for video games that involved driving and gunplay. For some reason, developers felt that an abundance of racing missions was something people wanted. You know, even though there’s a whole genre dedicated to racing so racing missions shouldn’t have been mandatory or more than one mandatory one.
You’d get to the first racing mission, become sweaty as hell, win the race, and breathe a sigh of relief that the ordeal was over. Again, this was a time when racing games had the mechanics of racing down as tightly as they could be on the PlayStation 2 while a game featuring racing missions were often frustrating because the driving wasn’t even down tight.
Just look at the GTA games on PlayStation 2. They were utterly unnecessary and not even fun to play. If you looked up “mess” in the dictionary, a screenshot from the CJ vs. Claude race in San Andreas would be right there.
While they’re not much better in Scarface: The World is Yours, racing missions aren’t even the worst part of the game. It’s the multi-directional difficulty. It’s wild, folks. First off, you get the dreaded annoying cousin of the racing mission: the chase mission.
Chase Missions Just Suck
Gamers tend to fall in one of two categories with chase missions. Either they’re indifferent and tolerate them because they’re unavoidable or they hate them because the requirements make them harder to the point that they’re just not worth entertaining.
However, you have to do the chase mission. Developers were smart in making it something you had to beat because it’s either in the story or counts towards advancement of the story. It’s not lazy game development until you get more than one chase mission in a game.
Scarface: The World Is Yours features a few chase missions. On their own, they’re that difficult, they’re just annoying. The difficulty for chase missions in this game cranks up because of our next ridiculous reason.
Traffic Is Overpowered in Miami
I’m not even talking about just street traffic; foot traffic is aggressive as well! I don’t know what it is about the traffic in this game but cars just drive slowly as hell. There will be three or four cars in a row driving the speed limit.
This isn’t like early 3D GTA traffic where the cars just disregard whatever the speed is supposed to be as well as traffic lights. Oh no, these cars move at the speed of Sunday afternoon Southern traffic after church. These cars cruise when you have somewhere to go.
You’d think that the best way to remedy this is to drive into the wrong lane to get around them but there is always another car oncoming traffic that is either driving too fast for you illegally get around the slow cars or they kind of materialize when you don’t notice them up ahead.
In addition to this, pedestrians are realistic as they walk on the sidewalk because a car shouldn’t be riding on it anyway. However, once you see that timer at the bottom of the screen for a mission, you’re going to ride up on the sidewalk—and these pedestrians will not move.
Not only will they not move, they’ll even jump in front of your car when pulling into a driveway at the bank or something. Again, this game is wild for all of the small things and it’s those small things that make Scarface: The World is Yours difficult for no reason.
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.