Scarface: Money. Power. Respect (PlayStation Portable, 2006)

We rented and played the first Scarface game that came out which was a shooter game. So when my son with the PSP I got for him for Christmas told me he wanted the "Scarface: Money, Power, Respect" game I went ahead and bought the game from ebay. However when we watched the trailers I was shocked at the amount of profanity in the game (Not like I don't say the f-word). I told my son he couldn't have this game even though I had already bought it, but I made a deal with him that I would buy him another game. When the game arrived and I excitedly popped it in my PSP (My kids don't know I have one for myself) I was somewhat disappointed that it was not a shooter game, in the trailers the genre of the game is not certain there were more movie clips shown and less of the actual game. So when I discovered it was a Strategy game I was a bit disappointed. But being a gamer I decided not to let this moment of disappointment last too long. You can play the game Single Player or Multi player mode, then you choose Movie Scenario or Cartel Mode. In the Movie Scenario you are Tony working for Frank, and Frank gives you these missions in running his turfs: You must accomplished these goals in order to unlock the video clips and game extras. In the Cartel Mode you choose from different outcomes like: First drug dealer to become the richest to The last Drug dealer still alive. The game play was confusing at first because for each round you have to Buy, Deal, and Fight. In the Buying stage you have to build up your drug labs (Cocaine, Heroin, and Pot), hire thugs to defend your turfs, build warehouse to store your stuff, and hire pushers to sell your product. In the Dealing stage you must decide how much drugs to sell in each of the turfs you control, you can either sell all of it some of it. By not selling all of your drugs you run risk of your pushers and warehouse getting busted, but in not selling all of your drugs you can increase the street market value of the drug by keeping supply low while demand rises. Then in the Fight stage you can chose to Battle, Defend or do Nothing; this is the where only the strongest survive, the more thugs you have the better your chances of defending or conquering turfs. If the other drug dealers in the game are busy killing each other, you can remain neutral and sell your drugs, and wait until the others have few thugs defending their turf then attack them with a full force of thugs. For every stage there are Power Moves you can buy and use to give you the edge over the other Drug Lords in winning each round. There are three types of Power Moves: Combat, Drug, and Law. You can purchase a certain amount of power moves, and you have to be careful on how you use them. Another aspect of the game is forming Alliances, you can offer money to another Drug Lord to be your ally for so many rounds; you can ally yourself with the strongest drug lord then once you are powerful and wealthy you can turn on your ally and conquer all of Miami, Florida! The game can become addictive it is like chess but in a weird way. In the fight stage that is only time you will see game play and the graphics are okay. You don't actually control the thugs in the crew but you decide the actions they can take to win or survive (Flee) a fire fight: Target the rival's thug carrying the grenade launcher to using a Power Move to spring a surprise come back. I would recommend this game if you are into Strategy games.

I was excited about playing this game when I received it as a gift, but then I became very disappointed with the game-play itself. The format reminds me of the Commodore 64 gaming format; very slow, boring, and no definite ending. Most of us played tag growing up and it's similar to this game, where you're it and then they're it; which indeed gets extremely boring after a while. I was very ticked off when I found out that you only battle against 3 mobs throughout the entire game. That's the whole game folks!, 3 opponents that you conflict with from the first levels of gaming. Now lets talk about the action. What action??? The action in this game is extremely generic. When you see the "thugs" battle, they stand in front of each other like in the old civil war days. No ducking, crouching, hiding behind cars or buildings; just standing directly in front of eachother firing AK-47's and handguns. The muzzles of the weapons don't even move when multiple opponents get fired upon and the direction of fire is very inaccurate. My hired thug was firing at a building instead of the thug he was supposed to be shooting at (due to bad programming and you the gamer have no control over the direction of fire) but yet the enemy still fell to the ground. Most people would be happy since they won the battle but it felt so fake that it was disappointing to even win. Like I said, very disappointing. After a couple of hours of game-play I told myself that I had enough. There is absolutely nothing addicting about this game and I even opened myself up for it. I just can't see any gamer or even non-gamer actually get interested or involved with this game. I'm sure it's better on other platforms, but as for the PSP, I don't recommend it. The best part of the game is the movie clips they added, but most of us didn't buy the game for that purpose.

I had just finished playing "The Godfather:Mob Wars" and loved the card game aspect of it, and was looking for something similar. I got Scarface, and it is somewhat similar in that it is a strategy game. It does get boring after awhile, its easy to figure out what you need to do to win, but of course, I'd like to see if I can beat the whole game. It does have 2 different ways to play, so overall it isn't bad. I'm glad I didn't buy it new or pay full price for it, but it does make my bus ride seem to go by faster. Oh, be ready for a whole ton of profanity in English as well as Spanish.

I got this game for my husband, who enjoys playing it on the PS@. However, he felt that this game, in PSP format, was more of an RPG versus a shooting/action game. If you like the whole mission/story-line type of game and you like "Scarface" the movie, you'll probably like the game. If you want a more action-packed, shoot-em-up type of a game you'd be better off playing GTA.

The game is ok. i thought it would be the same game mode as the PS2 Scarface: The world is yours, but the psp is a completely different version. I didn't like how you can never shoot somebody or do missions as a first person, only controlling territory.