Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Review - 29th of December 2002 System: Sony PlayStation2 Television System: PAL Publisher: Rockstar Games Developer: Rockstar North Origin: U.K. Players: 1 Genre: Action Memory Card: 500 KB Released Japan: N/A USA: 29th of Octuber 2002 Europe: 8th of November 2002 GTA Vice City is the sequel to GTA III and is played in mostly the same way. 1986 in the Miami inspired city Vice City you shall as Tommy Vercetti work your way to the top as the boss of your city. You shall commit crime for your bosses using all kind of vehicles and weapons. Story After doing 15 years in jail the bad-ass Tommy Vercetti comes out to start work again for his old boss Sonny Forelli of the Mafia. Sonny is settled in the New York inspired city Liberty City (Yes, the same city as the one in GTA III)but Sonny is really afraid of Tommy and decieds to send him to Vice City to soften up the city for some real action later. He's suppoesed to make a drug deal first but everything doesn't go well... Graphics 9/10 Vice City is a huge city and everywhere you look you find extremely detailed environments. Everything looks better than in GTA III. We have the cars, beautifully made, we have the humans, not very detailed but still better than the characters in GTA III. Tommy's movement is very realistic but we have other things in the game which also are realistic but only annoying. The sun in mornings and evenings allways shine in your eyes. Sure one might find it pretty but the real effect is only I getting annoyed when driving off the road just because the sun disturbed me. Realism is ok, but it should not make you frustrated. I played the PAL version and it has no 60 hz mode. It's really bad, because most games have that today so why not GTA Vice City. We must settle with a slow 50 hz mode and that's really noticable. It's slower. Also this game contains motion blur. Some loves it, I hate it. It's not as present as in GTA III but somehow I think it feels like the developers try to cover up the lack of speed while going really fast instead of making the game flow better. Sound 9/10 It's music from the 80's all the way! While in car the player can choose between nine different radio stations. Pop, rock, soul, rap, ballads, what ever you fancy from the 80's. The soundtrack is really hard to dislike. But I miss something here; the ability to set a default station or at least exclude some channels you don't like so you want have to listen to them when you jump into a car. It may sound silly but I think it wouldn't have been too hard for the developers to manage. I can't complain on the sound effects. The guns sound like guns should, I suppose, I'm not a weapon fetishist, and some of the cars' noices are great. But am I the only on think the Infernus's (Laborghini Diablo) engine sounds a little... wimpy? The actors are great, they are very trustworthy, and the dialogues are really sharp and sometimes really comical. Listening to Tommy's and his boss Sonny's telephone calls are really funny. One can complain a little about voices fading away in some sequences, but then we have the whole game subtitles which really is valuble to us who don't have English as our first language. Control/Gameplay 8/10 You shall as one main character; Tommy Vercetti take more or less criminal jobs from a great gallery of character which act as employers. To achieve these jobs, which can be about assination of a traitor in the employer's gang, theft of cars or why not tanks, threatning jury candidates and such likes. You complete the mission by either going by foot or in some kind of vehicle, often a car. In the game there are several cars, don't know how many but at least thirty. Besides cars and boats which also were available in GTA III, motor cykles and helicopters. The additions are really amusing. While riding a bike you can drive on both front and back wheels for example and jump off the bike while riding and that is something you can do in cars as well. Traveling by vehicles is what really makes this game fun. But then we have the on foot scenario which doesn't quite live up to the same perfection as when you're in a vehicle. Sure it's fun but it's full of glitches. You can get stuck in places sometimes and in some occations the game just freezes. This is really annoying. When firing guns, which you'll do a lot, the gun have either an auto lock-on ability or a cross-hair. The cross-hair feels realistic, but the auto lock-on works only fairly well. Often it's extremely accrate but sometimes it just stops working and the selected gun just pops up and down and the enemy has the chance to shoot you real good. While writing about guns it's worth to mention how many there are available. At least thirty or maybe fourty, everything from chain saws and screw driver, to shotguns and machine guns. Vice City contains a lot of vilence, foul language and some scenes on the edge of pornography. But all of this is made in a comical kind of way. You don't take anything dead serious. Everywhere, especially on the radio you see and hear parodic comments about things that were present in the 80's. For example the American war against communism just before Sovjet's fall, and they also joke about the old people coming to Florida. You should be old enough to play the game. Children may take the violence too serious so I recomend all parents out there to look at the age limit of the game and follow what is adviced. You should be old and intelligent enough to enjoy this game in the right kind of way. Terrific in cars, glitchy and unfair when on foot, that's my judgement. Lasting appeal 9/10 Vice City is HUGE! There are lots of mission to complete, surely one hundred or at least ninety. Not nearly all of them must be completed to finish the game so you decide yourself how long you want to stay in Vice City. Then there are everything else to collect and acomplish as well. We have Hidden Pakages to find, Rampages to be achieved, Unique Jumps to be... jumped and stores to be mugged to name some of the action Tommy can kill time taking part of. You can take part-time jobs as a police officer, fire fighter, taxi driver and more. But I don't want to give away all of the surprises to be found in Vice City. No need to fear though what I've said above are also included in the prequel of the game, there're lots of new stuff to discover as well. Moving on to the challenge part. I don't think the missions are very difficult in Vice City. They are easier than in GTA III. But sometimes you find yourself losing on the same mission over and over again just because you're unlucky. It can be something like the gun glitch mentioned above or why not a mad car driver coming out from an intersection and gives you no time to avoid the crash. It can also be opponents spawning up right behind you. I think GTA Vice City could have been a little more difficult but then it should depend on skill and not luck. Total 9/10 Great game, but there are lots of glitches which are really annoying. You shold also remember that this is a game for adults. Spoilers The text below contain spoilers. After half of the storyline of the game Tommy gets the chance to take over companies like car stores with a strange way to "buy" cars, an ice-cream company that prefers selling drugs more than ice- cream, a printwork who also likes to print money and off course a film studio which makes movies with pornographic content. You get to see in another way how the main character slowly takes over the city which we didn't see in GTA III. © 2002 Christian "Twink" Wall