Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

The Good
When I played through Grand Theft Auto III, I became an instant fan of Rockstar's work. The game was fun, complex, and open-ended. No game I had ever played before this had given me so much enjoyment from just futzing about between missions. And then the mission structure itself was well-paced and the storyline was great.

Enter Vice City. GTA: Vice City took what I loved about GTAIII and made it better while adding a great 80's theme to everything.

This time around you are no longer a nameless character as you were in the first one. You're Tommy Vercetti, bad-ass mobster. The addition of a real character with a real personality who actually talked in the cutscenes was a big improvement over the previous game. It added to the storyline and made you care about who you were a little more.

Graphics also saw an improvement. Granted, there was not that much of a change in the engine itself. But in my opinion, graphics are at least 50% about what you do with them. It is on that count that Vice City shines. The design and outlay of the city is superb. The atmosphere that is set in each neighborhood is spot on. And, to top it all, the lighting effects in the game are great. I should also mention that where GTAIII seemed overly drab and used too many dark tones, Vice City's presentation is much brighter and just driving about these scenic places in your hot ride can be a pleasure.

80's, 80's, 80's. From great 80's music to the distinctively 80's atmosphere and gimmicks like an early model portable phone, Rockstar really came through with their chosen setting.

And speaking of the music. Besides the music in the game being an excellent mix of authentic 80's tunes, as before you can add your own MP3's to the game. So load up some Huey Lewis and Skid Row before you go on your rampage. Maybe some Motley Crue also?

The game is packed with GTA's own special brand of humor too. The radio features two talk stations this time around and, as usual, no one is safe from being skewered. As well, little gags abound, such as the "Cherry Popper" Ice Cream company.

So all of this and I have yet to talk about the best part of the game: gameplay. After all, gameplay is king. Vice City brings it and keeps it coming.

As you work your way through the storyline, you become a mafia boss and eventually make a play to essentially run the town. The amount of sheer coolness inherent in this scenario is hard to describe. It feeds that little guy inside of you who watched Scarface and said "Cooooool".

Along the way, you get to go through a wide array of interesting and challenging missions. Some are as "mundane" as a street race while others are as elaborate as a multi-faceted bank heist. One mission has you jumping from roof-top to roof-top on a motorcycle. Yet another has you photographing a politician's perverted activities from a high-rise only to have to fight through the FBI on your way out.

Along the road to success, you also get to buy and collect money from various properties. Yes, you can own property.Once you buy a property, you need to take on some missions in order to make it profitable. You can own anything from a counterfeiting factory to a adult movie studio. Nearly all offer you an interesting set of jobs to take on.

The Bad
There isn't much I can find wrong with the game. If anything, then it can be annoying that cars and people spawn and despawn in a weird way. If you see a car you want to steal, but you turn your back to it for a moment, it is indeed quite possible that it may have vanished completely. This can be really annoying when looking for a good ride in a junky part of town.

The Bottom Line
For the mafia boss in all of us! Highly recommended.

The Good
The rollicking, outrageous, un-PC fun, the voices... everything

The Bad
The "save game" bug, but it probably affects only one in a million (read on)

The Bottom Line
I have a bitch about saving your game. You can save your game only in certain locations. But that is OK. What is not OK is that, whenever I saved my game, I was told "game saved". Well, it wasn't. When I tried to load it, all the saved game slots were empty.

I searched the Web high and low, and saw that a chap in Sweden had had the same problem with Grand Theft Auto III, but no solution. Now Vice City is copy-protected of course, and I got to thinking... does it see Alcohol on my hard disk? Does it decide, then, to play silly buggers, like Windows XP when it sees stuff that would make Baby Billy cry? More Web surfing took me to forums where they were discussing how to make copies of GTA, but no-one mentioned this failure of "save" to save games. Those people must have had Alcohol, or CloneCD, or BlindWrite, or whatever, so that could not be it. Eventually I stumbled on a No-CD crack, downloaded it, installed it... and... I could save my games! No, I am not making this up, I am not drunk, and I have an explanation. My CD drive shows up as drive R: and is sandwiched between Q: and S: which are both virtual drives put there, I suspect, when I installed Alcohol. Strange, but I think this is because I have two primary partitions on my hard disk and Windows just got its knickers in a fine twist there. Now I suppose that when GTA Vice City checks for the legit CD, it wrongly sees my drive R: as a virtual drive, and decides to teach me a lesson. It stinks all right, but the worst thing is that you cannot even blame the programmers. Put yourselves in their place, and see. Be warned, though, if you ever need it, that the CD crack disables the cheats. But I can live without cheats easier than without being able to save a game.

Now what a game! Totally un-PC, shockingly objectionable, in a word: wonderful. The baddies (I haven't met any goodies) look like the baddies out of B-grade gangster movies, they talk like the baddies out of B-grade gangster movies, they give you... er... quests??? that would make the Avatar blush and Iolo keel over with a heart attack. Great stuff. And you don't have to do it either. You can just mooch about town, bashing the odd passer-by for gun money, "borrowing" a car or a motorbike for a joy ride. I haven't found any little old lady whom I could help across the street, though, so it's a bit one-sided. But I am sure that if the designers are reading this... how about it, folks?

I don't have a joystick, and I found maneuvering a car quite a bit of a challenge (read: a pain in the bum). But still, it's fun. You crash into a pole, your bonnet flies off, steam billows out of the engine, but you can keep on going full blast. They don't build cars like that anymore ;-)

Final score.

Graphics. What graphics? You don't notice the graphics, they are so well matched to the gameplay. It's like wearing soft hand-made Italian shoes, you don't feel them. Oh, all right, there are some annoying features, like when you switch to the bird's-eye view. Great for finding your way around, but when you go under a bridge for instance, the bridge hides you from view, you and that power pole, and... kaboom!

Gameplay. To be handled with care, extreme care. When I sat at the wheel of my car (the real one), I had to tell myself, "Hey, slow down, watch out, don't swerve, this is not Vice City anymore". If I were the type to carry a baseball bat everywhere, I would have had to keep telling myself: "Careful! you are not supposed to go about bashing people in this town".

Replay value. Difficult to say, short of playing it several times over. But once is rollicking good fun, and bis repetita placent for sure.

The Good
Rockstar is at it again with Vice City, the sequel to the landmark hit GTA3, a title that broke new ground by crafting an exceptional cocktail of diverse gameplay mechanics in a free-roaming gameworld mixed with a distinct touch of politically incorrect humor and controversial content. Given the absolutely fantastic fun that it was to play GTA3 Rockstar could literally just shove the same thing down our throats with just new maps, and we wouldn't complain about it. However as it so happens Vice City is more than just a "mod" of GTA3 and manages to fix what was lacking in the original as well as add even more entertaining features.

The gameplay revolves around the same concept of being able to run around freely in a virtual city, stealing vehicles for fun and completing gangster-themed missions. As in the previous title you also have a pletora of optional challenges sprinkled all over the gameworld, that include "rampage" missions, races, obstacle courses and vehicle-specific missions that include chasing down perps in a police cruiser or making rounds as a taxi driver or (new to Vice City) being a pizza delivery boy in a moped. Oh yeah, didn't I mention it? Vice City now adds motorcycles to the vehicle pool! And to my pleasant surprise, riding a bike is exceptionally well done, with proper animations and distinct physics that make it a unique experience and probably the most fun you'll have in this new GTA. You also have choppers thrown into the mix, which allow you to easily take to the skies without the hassle that was trying to control GTA3's airplane. These vehicles open new possibilities for the many minigames that now include pilotwings-like air races, and enduro bike courses at the beaches with the list growing larger with each new secret location you uncover in the city. Car driving has also been added a couple of new tricks that include forward shooting and the ability to jump out of a moving vehicle and send it crashing into a group of unsuspecting enemies :D.

So far we have practically every forum-posted objection to GTA3 covered, which shows Rockstar listened to it's fans. However the real upgrade in Vice City is seen on the content side of things, a feature that became the target of some criticism for GTA3 by the always present boring old fools that like to dismiss titles that manage to reach stardom mostly by being good games instead of just an interactive book. Worry no more old geezers! Vice City adds that which you craved so much! A story!!

That's right, you no longer are a nameless thug raising havoc in the name of gangster rivalries. Now you take on the role of Tommy Vercetti, a former member of a big time mafia family that got shafted and had to do hard time due to some backstabbing. As the game starts you are fresh out of jail and the family sends you to "Vice City" a fictional 80's Miami (ripped right out of Miami Vice) to keep you out of trouble, but you have a different plan, and through the course of the game you set it upon yourself to take the city by the balls and become the new mafia boss. This eventually gets you back in the center of attention of your former employers, and a war begins for control of the city, war that deals richly in betrayals, backstabbings and assorted gangster stuff. The cast of characters is much richer and varied, now voiced by some real star power with the likes of Ray Liotta (who does an incredible job as Tommy), Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Fairuza Balk and even Phillips Michael Thomas reprising his role as a Tubbs-like parter of Tommy (and look out for a cameo by porn star Jenna Jameson also! :D).

The storyline and characters work like a charm in the brand new Vice City, an 80's themed beach town that serves as a gigantic source of sight gags and in-jokes towards one of the most blatantly funny decades in U.S. history. Taking most of it's cues from the seminal Miami Vice, the game has that distinct "pink neon" art-deco feel and a lot of detail was poured into every little nuance such as the flashy clothes, giant mobile phones, cars and assorted gags (including Don Johnson/Phillip Michael Thomas wanna-bes gunning for you in a Ferrari Testarossa should your mayhem bar grow too high :D). As in the previous game music also plays a major role in selling the gameworld, and since few things say 80's like it's music, the developers made the fantastic choice of licensing a full soundtrack that not only manages to be the largest videogame licensed soundtrack ever, but also manages to act like an 80's who's-who of music. Michael Jackson, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, David Lee Roth, Iron Maiden, even Crockett's Theme from Miami Vice and such pop hits as "Video killed the radio star" serve to complement the fantastic vibe of the game and make it a terrific experience. Plus for the PC release Rockstar took a cue from the technical issues in GTA3 and the installation now allows you to install all the audio files to disk, killing that nasty stutter effect whenever the game loaded a voiceover or radio station. The graphic engine is pretty much the same, but water has been improved with transparencies and visible sealife and loading times between areas have been almost completely obliterated by using some sort of streaming loading that makes it more or less a seamless environment (and bear in mind that Vice City is way larger than GTA3's city).

Finally, you have the ability to expand your empire by buying buildings in the city. From comfy condos to luxurious mansions, to more esoteric locations such as strip clubs, ice-cream companies and dance clubs. The later rewarding the player with extra specially-themed missions. And speaking of the missions they are a much more polished and carefully planned bunch than in the previous games, leaving the slightly meaningless races and time limits of the original in favor of more story-driven affairs (including a fantastic bank heist in which you have to assemble the team for the job and then hit it "Point Break"-style which is one of the coolest moments in the game).

Oh! And lest I forget, if you loved the quirky radio stations and those satirical ads. from GTA3 be advised that in Vice City they are back with a vengeance, including even more pop-culture references, and material that plays with the material from GTA3 (as you get to hear some of the same radio personalities in their earlier years). Excellently written stuff and priceless un-pc comedy.

The Bad
Well they fixed everything you could complain about... so what's left to bitch about?? Nothing I can think of.

The Bottom Line
Remember that fantastic game about carjacking and whore-shooting that you loved so much? Well they fixed everything you could bitch about, added it the coolest soundtrack ever, a kickass gangster story and the same fantastic un-pc humor the series is loved for. Plus... 80's Baby!!! What kind of a moron would pass this one up??