User Rating: 9.6 | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City PC
GTA: VC for the PC - Is it worth the cost? I’d like to start by saying that the GTA series has been my favorite gaming series since GTA2 came out. I’ve played every version of GTA, including the London expansion and the PlayStation versions. I one-hundred-percented Vice City twice on the PS2, and so when the PC version came out, I wasn’t sure: could I get through it again? To save you the suspense, yes I could. There were very few changes to the game, although in my mind, three changes make the PC version worth the price of admission by themselves. MP3 Radio gets my vote for best change. It’s simply more fun to cruise around in the Cheetah or Infernus with the Miami Vice theme playing in the background. Going on a crime spree while blasting Tiffany, Martika, and Debbie Gibson tunes is also wildly amusing (at least to me). I think it’s a terrific feature, and I would like to see it become ‘standard equipment’ in the GTA series, like police bribes, and the Pay-‘n’-Spray. Of course, you *must* use only legal, licensed MP3s. :) The second change is really something that Rockstar wasn’t able to put into the console versions of Vice City: better graphics and more resolutions to choose from. The environment is really sweet at 1280x1024x32bit color. The third change is again something Rockstar wasn’t able to do in the console version: bugs that annoyed the heck out of me on the PS2 were absent on the PC. For example, the bug that prevented you from being able to pick up Cuban gang clothes after you beat the Haitian funeral mission has been exterminated. Likewise, the glitch that caused your saved game to become corrupted randomly when saving at Cherry Poppers ice cream place is apparently fixed, as well. At least, my very unscientific method of saving the same game to all 8 slots there every now and then produced no corrupt game saves. I also noticed that a small bug that was *extremely* annoying to me was removed. This one involved the Vercetti mission Cop Land. Every time I tried to start that mission, the garage door underneath would open, the mission would start, and whatever cars were in the garage would be gone. Not a crippling bug, by any means, but after losing a few special cars, and having to back up a few saves, and after spending 30 minutes figuring out what the heck was happening I was very unhappy with that particular bug. Now, after pointing out the good, I unfortunately must offer a few nits for the picking. First of all: it seems that Rockstar is on a strict ‘one bug fixed, one bug introduced’ plan. I have noticed several bugs/changes that are, to me, glaring. There is nothing that makes the game unplayable, and really nothing beyond annoyances, but they are worth commenting on. Most glaring, to me, is that occasionally textures will not be drawn, causing all the buildings to look like dull grey cubes. The road appears as only a uniform dull grey line, and some objects are not visible at all (such as the columns on the Malibu or the arch over the entrance to the movie studio). This effect lasts anywhere from 1 second to 1 minute before the textures suddenly appear. While it can be fun to watch cars drive above the ‘roadway’ and to be able to see through walls and such, it is very distracting, and can be *very* annoying when you’re in the middle of a mission, especially a race. Bridges in the PC version are flaky compared to their console counterparts. I had to redo ‘the chase’ about 5 times, because the thief’s dune buggy would become stuck leaving the bridge, entering Prawn Island. There he would sit, halfway in the ground, back tires spinning uselessly. I tried a variety of things to correct this glitch, but I ended up killing the thief every time. Finally, I had an idea: I’d pass him on the bridge, and park where he gets stuck, and he’d go around me. Luckily, it worked. Once I’d beaten that mission, I tried it again, just for fun, and this time he did not get stuck. I had the same problem on the funeral home mission, but since you’re *supposed* to kill the guy in that car, it actually worked out well. I’ve also seen several cars stuck in various bridges while I’m just out driving around. Also, for some reason, there is always a police enforcer stuck in the sidewalk outside the bank in little Havana. You can blow it up without getting a wanted level, but the next time you drive by, there it is again. I don’t know if any of these bugs are unique to my setup, but I doubt it. In conclusion, I would recommend the PC version of this game to anyone who doesn’t already have this game, and would also recommend it to people who really enjoyed the console version. If you already have the console version and you aren’t interested in the new features, I wouldn’t recommend spending the money for the PC version.
