In all aspects possible, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a great game, and it’s truly one of the best in the series.
The Bad: The extra missions could have been less boring; framerate sometimes falls a bit; weapon noises sounds artificial.
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When Grand Theft Auto III was released, the GTA world was made once again, due the 3rd game’s bunch of useful improvements, like the new camera perspective and the full 360º rotating view, more intuitive storyline, great graphical design, bigger towns and the best of them all, crazy-minded characters, with strong personality (like Donald Love from GTA). In Grand Theft Auto Vice City, the improvements continue to grow, but in a brand-new fashion and functionality.
Starting from the graphics, that are a lot more fluid, beautiful and detailed than the 3rd game, with an amazing new lightning effect called “trails”. The trails effect basically is that due Vice City’s tropical wheater, the sun is extremely intense, so everything that moves will leave a short trail of heat, in the name of the sun’s intense warm. Also, all the colors are richer and every light is even brighter, creating a realistic tropical city atmosphere. Apart that it brings more realism to the game, it was well done, and is one of the best videogame screen effects ever!
The main character’s design (who’s name is Tommy Vercetti) is highly detailed and colorful, but the pedestrian designs aren’t far worse than his. Rockstar did a fine job when dealing with the pedestrians, making them as shiny and polished as your character is, and they have their own mood and temper, meaning that if you shoot one of them, they all will start fleeing in horror, but, if you punch someone on the sidewalk, they might fight back or just run away. There are various types of pedestrians, such as black, white, fat, thin, tall, short, rich, poor, drunk, 2+ of these characteristics combined, etc, which means that there are A LOT of pedestrian models, and each of them got their own strength, that means, stamina, which represent the amount of shots or punches that they can take before dying. They were really well done, and deserve a special space in any review, so, congratulations Rockstar, the peds are as shiny and detailed as Tommy. Also, the random spawning of pedestrians was improved, so the game’s engine will load the same ped model less frequently, giving the impression that the peds are unique, and it’s really interesting the way that the game does that.
The control scheme for Vice City is the same from GTA III, with the very same functions, and thankfully, with the same responsiveness and functionality from the previous game. One of the things that ruins the gameplay is that the right analog stick, instead of changing the camera heading, leads you to a first-person view, quite useless if I might say so, and it wasn’t changed from the last game. The aiming system was improved, making the camera instantly lock on the target’s heading, unlike GTA III, where when you lock-on a target, the camera still had loop to where the target is, making the shootouts very difficult and annoying.
It’s 1986, the decade of disco dancers, wild haircuts and intense drug dealing. You’re Tommy Vercetti, and you work for the Mafia – the Forelli family, precisely – and they decide to take you to a tropical city to start new business there. The story begins after a failed drug transaction, which was ambushed in the exact moment of the exchange of the money, making Tommy, the only survivor, run the hell out of that place. Now, after his boss (Sonny Forelli) calls him, he must get that money back or he’ll have to face Forelli himself. A cliche beginning if I might say, but the storyline evolves so much interesting and captivating that will be hard for you to let go of your DualShock 2. As you proceed through the missions, you’ll meet more and more of Vice City’s “rulers”, knowing more about the gangs, the criminals, and finally, your true enemy. Of course, i’m not telling who is, because it will ruin your journey through the exciting single player campaign.
The so-called extra missions are not quite missions, but instead some gigs you’ll find throughout the city, such as pizza delivery or hunting down criminals, which will give you an bonus if you reach a certain level on each of them. They might not be that interesting, since after a while they begin to become boring, but it adds lots of replay value. The boredom may start to grow on you, but the bonuses are really worth the sacrifice. There are various secondary missions, which are given to you by the ex-owner of the places you buy (such as the ice cream factory, The Malibu club, the strip club, etc), and they’re really interesting and challenging, especially The Malibu ones (they’re planning to rob a bank). Although they’re not so connected with the main missions, you need to complete at least 90% of them to unlock the 2 final main missions, so, unlike the extra ones, these babies are required for you to finish the game.
About the weaponry, you can now pick your favorite from a great variety of boomsticks, such as sniper rifles, assault rifles, SMGs, heavy machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, etc, but the most noticeable change was in the melee department – or hardware department, that now offers you the best, starting from a simple screwdriver (which I think is the best melee of the game) to a chainsaw (whoa, that baby does some real mess!), but none of them seem very different from one to another (excluding the chainsaw), so you can just pick up the first you find in your way and start killing people with it. Although there is a great variety of melee weapons, they’ll become completely useless after you reach a certain part of the game (the bad guys won’t wait for you to get close to them and slash them – until that, you’re dead), so it’s best to use them on the peds only to have some fun. The pistols and sub-machine guns are not that different between them, and it’s more likely you’ll spend your cash on a SMG, since it has about the same power of a pistol plus you can perform a drive-by with it. The assault rifles are the main players of the firefights, since its first-person aim will let you freely aim at the opponent’s weak points, such as the heart, head and legs (although it almost doesn’t make a difference where you shoot, it’s just nice to think that you’re a skilled hitman). The Gatling Gun is the worst weapon of all the game. The idea was good, giving your character a portable tank, but the way it came out was disappointing. To begin with, it has no aim, so you’ll just have to cross your finger and hope the place your looking at is really where your shots will land. And second, it doesn’t have the ability to shoot higher or lower, rendering it completely useless for killing people from the top of a building or shooting down a police helicopter. To replace it, you can pick up the M60, that is the Gatling Gun “the way it was meant to be”. It is really powerful (only 6 shots can blow up a car), has a first person aim (for maximum accuracy) and it’s not that expensive. The Rocket Launcher will be your best partner when you’re running away from the police, since it will quickly take down a chopper with a single shot. Although, it’s not recommended to use it with close-range targets... you never know what happens, hehehe...
The grenades still pretty much the same, useless. It is a true challenge for you to throw the grenade correctly, within the range you intended to and it takes about a year and half for it to detonate, leaving your opponents plenty of time to get out of the blast radius. Thankfully, Rockstar added a new type of grenade, the remote-controlled ones, that are basically satchel charges in a grenade shape. You simply throw one wherever you want, go to a safe distance, wait for some people (or the enemy you want to take out) close in to it, press Circle on your DualShock 2 and baooom, you’ll just see people flying all around with a bloody effect. Another good use for the grenade-shaped satchel charges that is incredibly fun to use is down in The Malibu club. Just try to lay one in the middle of the dancers, going upstairs and detonating it. Not only you’ll see lots of blood on the floor, but you’ll get 4 wanted level stars and the club’s security guards will help the police to hunt you down. I just advice you to input a cheat to loose the heat, since exiting the club and getting into the Pay N’ Spray shop will be very difficult.
One of the coolest things I found in GTA III and that it’s missing in Vice City is that when something explodes, people completely loose their members, with them splattering all over the floor. It was really nice to see a person’s torso there and its legs down the street, and things like that.
The enemy AI is well-balanced, with some quick responses to your actions (a special note for the cops, that are more aggressive than the previous game) and their tactics were well-done as well. Now, the police will drop spike strips in the street, that will pop out your precious tires, making the getaway a lot harder. It may be frustrating sometimes, but it is a great achievement for the real cop-action simulation the game wanted to bring. The enemies will now seek cover if they see that you’re heavily armed, and they’ll spend more time finding cover and trying to surround you than firing at you, so it’s best for you to put your back against the wall and start popping everyone, or you’ll surely reach 0 life before you notice it. The AI was really well designed, but it’s not perfect. For example, you can run straight into a cop’s right side and he’ll not even look at you, he’ll maneuver all around, find himself a “suitable” position to fire at you and then he’ll start blasting. Although it doesn’t blow up the game’s score, it’s really bizarre to see such a stupid action into a real-life simulator.
Starting from GTA III, Rockstar intend to give players a new gameplay challenge: to reach 100% of game completion. It is really hard, since the game has LOTS of stuff for you to do, from all the main, secondary and extra missions, to finding all 100 hidden packages, doing all the insane stunts jumps hidden throughout Vice City, buying all the properties, etc. What I mean is: it is almost impossible to reach 100% game completion without a minimum of 200 hours of gameplay, at least. For example, I have 320 hours of gameplay and I only got 91% of the game completed. Although is lengthy to reach it, it never gets boring (apart from the extra missions), and it will surely cost you an entire month or so to get 100%. Meaning: it’s like The Sims – it offers an almost endless solo campaign, that will grow on you and will make you replay the game 4, 5, 6+ times.
One thing that I really missed in this one was an online mode or multiplayer game. The “Rampage” missions were basically to kill a certain amount of people with the weapon given to you – with infinite ammo – in the time limit. They would have been a lot more fun to play online, with the help of your friends. Also, getting yourself and human partner would expand the cop chases to a new level, called “ARMAGEDDON!” It really misses that spot, but it’s nothing that should ruin the game’s grandiosity.
A man cannot travel with his own boots, right? So he’ll need a car... and dude, your rides are as hot as ever! Even being at year 1986, the cars are already a step ahead, being very futuristic and extremely fast. The designs are really well-worked and they did make the cut, but, none of them are licensed, although they are easily compared with some real rides, such as Lamborghinis, Ferraris, etc. The speed feeling (that is truly outstanding) combined with one of the most realistic physics by date makes the driving around Vice City an unforgettable and enjoyable experience.
And to make the driving more enthusiastic, the game’s soundtrack is extremely varied, so there’ll be music for every taste. From blues to classic rock, the songs were picked by hand by some fine-tasted people, that surely extracted the best from the 80’s. Some of the nicest songs ever, like Billie Jean, I Wanna Rock, and another ones make their debut on Vice City and will render people crazy. You can simply switch the stations with a quick tap to the L1 button while on your vehicle, so it won’t be difficult to run away from the cops and tune in a radio station that suits your taste. Simple and functional, just what we needed.
The blood and gore in the game was well done, so there’s not that much to talk about. Everytime you punch or shoot someone, some small blood pints will fall sown to the ground, being there for a long time. And as you kill someone, a huge pool of blood will appear around the body, and, after you move away from the body and get back to see it again, you’ll see one of the funniest things: there’ll be no body, only the white drawing of the body on the floor (as the police officers do in real life). It may be very realistic, but I think it’s specially funny :D
In all aspects possible, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a great game, and it’s truly one of the best in the series, being very important in the constant gow of the series. With only some minor blemishes, such as the weapon sounds that are completely artificial (if they’re not, they sound like they are) or the framerate falls (that happens quite often when you’re heavily surrounded by the police), it still one of the best action/adventure games ever, so don’t hesitate in buying it if you already didn’t did. It is really a must-have game in your collection, and I say it was worth the wait and the price payed for it. Just turn your PS2 and get ready for the havoc!