WiiLi.org

[WiiLinovice]

For those of you who may not know, this is a licensed movie game already available on other platforms. The difference is that Scarface comes with Wii-mote functionality.

The game begins with Tony attempting to flee his mansion and begin to track the whereabouts of Sosa to get his revenge. These first few levels allow you to become acquainted with the controls. On the nunchuck, you move Tony with the analog stick. The Z button allows you to lock onto enemies, and the C button works as both intimidation and secondary fire. On the Wii-mote, you fire your weapons with the B button, and you can taunt your enemies with the A button (or shaking the nunchuck). There's also a handy 180 degree turn by pressing down on the d-pad.

For access to the menu, press 1 and from here, you can view a map of the city and keep track of your fronts, pay off the cops, and so forth. It's also useful for getting around the city if you're lost and need to reorient yourself with your mission destination. Before moving on, I'll touch on camera control for the game. The way it works is that you move the camera by moving the wii-mote in any direction. There are four options in total, which simply means that the lower/higher the setting, the slower/faster the camera moves. It took a little getting used to, and it's sometimes hard to keep track of when it gets hectic, but I felt that controlling the camera by this method felt very precise and instinctive afterwards, even more so when you free aim versus using lock-on.

After the first few missions, you'll be free to go as you please, whether you choose to go after Sosa or just tear up the town and see the sights. Scarface does a nice job of slowly introducing more gameplay elements as you go along to prevent you from being overwhelemed. Soon, you'll be able to purchase and sell drugs, buy fronts which refill your health and allow you to buy weapons. Banks will become accessible to let you launder any dirty money you've earned and save your progress.

So far, I've enjoyed playing Scarface, but there are a few problems I've encountered.

1) Lack of a center button for the camera. The 180 turn is nice, but there were some times in the game where I would've liked to have the camera to face in the direction that Tony is moving, and the camera tends to hang up now and then. Since there are three empty slots on the d-pad, they could have moved the intimidation button and switched it up a little.

2)Taunting. I understand that you use this to fill up your balls meter while being reckless, but in gun battles taunting puts Tony into this animation that unfortunately slows him down and leaves him vulnerable to attack and it feels clunky as a result.

3) Poor interface. The map could move a little faster and zoom in a little closer, as it's hard to make out some of the legend symbols, among others.

4) Rage Mode. How it works is that when your balls meter is completely full, you shake the nunchuck a couple of times and you switch from a third-person to a first-person perspective. Ammo is unlimited, and any attacks from Tony are one-hit kills that replenishes a little health for each person you kill during this time. What I find problematic is that Rage Mode doesn't control all that well as you can't effectively strafe or look to the left or right.

5) Poor draw-in. When using vehicles, the draw-in distance is very short and results in cars appearing out of nowhere at the last moment, which can get in the way of your mission objectives or while trying to evade the police.

It's a solid game, but this serves best as a rental.