comparisons to scarface

[rud]

I reinstalled scarface for PC the other day to try and shake some of the GTA IV performance blues out of my hair and I noticed a lot more similarities between scarface and GTA IV than I had really noticed before.

 

I'm not referring to the way the game is setup and actually plays, when scarface came out it was easy enough at the time to call it a GTA clone. I'm skipping the big things to postpone the argument that will unnecessarily but inevitably come about which game ripped off which one or which one is better. I don't mind when some of the gameplay mechanics flow back in forth between games, it's a great way to make progress for the industry as a whole. What I do mind is when they borrow the bad with the good.

 

I'm referring to the little things:

 

Both games have annoying mouse acceleration that can't be disabled. It is more noticeable and annoying in scarface IMO.

 

Camera recentering while driving...this is the strangest similarity. In GTA IV, the camera recenters when you're driving and using the mouse to look around. If you hold down the "look back" button, then move the mouse around it locks in place and does not recenter. This works EXACTLY the same in scarface, you get autorecentering unless you're simultaneously holding down the look backwards key.

 

Suicidal pedestrians that dive INTO the path of your car. I think I like this, at least in scarface "Hey, clean the butterflies out of my grill while you're down there"

 

Both games suffer from a lack of configuration options. Scarface doesn't even let you rebind keyboard buttons, but gives you slightly better control of the video settings.

 

Of course both games use cell phones a lot, and the cop chase mechanics are eerily similar in both. The time limit for chases was only in scarface, which is too bad because it's the only thing making them remotely difficult.

 

Did I mention crippling bugs? They both have crippling bugs, lots of them. On the up side most of my problems with scarface are issues with the game running too fast, not too slow.

 

Anyone got any more little similarities? Again, try to avoid things like "THey both have gunz in they're handzz and third person camera ok pls" and try to avoid this turning into an argument about whether it's ok or not to borrow ideas from other games. There's already a thread like that here somewhere (http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=310537&st=40) and frankly I just don't care what you think about that anyway.