Whinging about : Scarface : The world is yours

Ok, so this is the last one (unless something amazing happens if/when I get 100% completion in this game - but I'm talking actual fireworks shooting out of the cd tray of the XBOX kind of thing, which at this point I feel like I deserve)

So as you may have guessed, I'm still hanging on with my Scarface game on the xbox - well past the point where any sensible and less ridiculously stubborn person would have said "to hell with it", I find myself still driving around, dealing drugs, buying stupid things I don't need and killing gangs.

Actually, technically speaking, I shouldn't need to kill gangs anymore and this is the subject of my (hopefully brief) whinge today.

I mentioned in a previous post that there is a stats screen that shows you in absurd detail everything that you have done in the game and the things that you have not yet done as well. A big part of this is removing all the enemy gangs from your four territories. All up I think there are something like 70 of the bastards and when you are out and about doing your big drug distribution missions, they make life hard, chase you, try to kill you and attack the front businesses that you are attempting to take the drugs to in the first place.

Ok, so that's the cost of doing business. Anyway, yesterday I finally cleared out the final gang - beauty, I thought. I should be able to jump in my slowest, most rickety 1920's car and cruise from front business to front business at my own pace, mindful not to run over too many pedestrians and attract the police and off I go.

Yet mysteriously, the city was again full of rival gangs. Trashing my jewellry shop, my clubs, the cigar shop and the pawn shop and raising merry hell on my antique car into the process.

For a game that is all about "the American dream" - working hard (or being ruthless) and earning the rewards - where is my reward?

I can see from a game developer's point of view that they might worry that people would get bored if things got too easy but why not simply ramp up the police vigilance? I mean, here's me, good Miami entrepreneur and employer to hundreds of people, making the streets safe from gang warfare and what do I get? Nothing. (Ok, aside from big slabs of cash).

(I'm a little worried at this point that I'm getting into this character's headspace just a tad much here :)