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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
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Spectacular
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 10/28/2002
- Updated on: 11/10/2003
- Released on: 10/27/2002
- Originally published on GameSpot: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PlayStation 2) Review
Last year, Grand Theft Auto III took the world by surprise. While the first two games in the series had a small, hard-core following, their simple 2D graphics and lack of a focused narrative structure limited their appeal. On the other hand, GTAIII featured a massive, clockwork world that was really impressive to behold, and it refined its predecessors' free-roaming, nonlinear design and added a far more compelling story in the process. Those improvements, coupled with amazing vehicle physics, a surprising amount of variety in the gameplay, and a great sense of style, made GTAIII a runaway hit and one of the rare games that is accepted by both hard-core and casual game players alike. But as good as Grand Theft Auto III is, the next game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, improves upon it. Vice City expands on the themes and concepts found in Grand Theft Auto III, fixes a few of the minor issues in the last game, and adds a lot of new abilities and items to play with. It all comes together to form one of the most stylish and most enjoyable games ever released.
Vice City contains a good variety of fine automobiles.
The new GTA game is set in a fictional take on Miami, Florida, known as Vice City. The year is 1986, and Tommy Vercetti has just been released from prison after doing a 15-year stretch for the mob. The mob--more specifically, the Forelli family--appreciates Tommy's refusal to squeal in exchange for a lesser sentence, so they send him down to Vice City to establish some new operations. Tommy's first order of business in Vice City is to score a large amount of cocaine to work with. But Tommy's first drug deal goes sour, leaving him with no money, no cocaine, and no idea who wronged him. The mob is, of course, angry over the whole situation, and now Tommy has to make up for the loss before the gangsters come down from Liberty City to clean up the mess. As Tommy, you'll start the investigation, figure out who ripped you off, take care of business, and set up shop in Vice City in a big, big way. Oh, and you'll also drive taxis, get involved in a turf war between the Cubans and the Haitians, befriend a Scottish rock group named Love Fist, become a pizza delivery boy, smash up the local mall, demolish a building to lower real estate prices, hook up with a biker gang, run an adult film studio, take down a bank, and much, much more.
Here's Tommy Vercetti, modeling his fresh Miami Vice suit and matching M60 machine gun.
While Grand Theft Auto has always been a violent, mature-themed series, it has always balanced the violent crime with an equal amount of tongue-in-cheek humor and style. Vice City is no exception, presenting an exaggerated view of the 1980s that makes use of a number of the kitschy pop-culture stereotypes found in film and television from the decade. The drug-laced tale recalls such films as Scarface and television shows like Miami Vice. The humor comes mostly from the radio, which really drives home the sort of form-over-function mentality that most people associate with the '80s. Some of the game's major characters are also a source of comic relief, from the Jim Bakker-like Pastor Richards to the Steven Spielberg-like porn director Steve Scott. The game's large cast of characters is colorful and memorable. For instance, local drug kingpin Ricardo Diaz is always hilariously breaking something and cursing wildly whenever you happen to see him. Ken Rosenberg is your fidgety coke-fiend lawyer pal, and he gets you started in town by getting you connected with the city's major players. Lance Vance, appropriately voiced by Miami Vice alum Philip Michael Thomas, becomes your sidekick of sorts, as both of you chase vengeance for your own reasons. Your Cuban gang contact, Umberto Robina, is constantly reminding you how much of a man he is, and most of the Cuban gang members you'll run into are similarly inclined.
Stylistically, the game presents an accurate depiction of your average '80s crime saga. Like in Miami Vice, many of the characters are dressed in pastel suits. The game's vehicles also fit the bill, with a lot of basic sedans mixed in with cars that look enough like Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris to pass for the real thing. None of the cars are licensed, of course, though in a nice touch, some of the cars are actually earlier models of cars that appeared in Grand Theft Auto III. Fans of the previous game will undoubtedly appreciate little things like this and the other occasional ties to the world of GTAIII, which really help this new Grand Theft Auto game feel like part of a cohesive universe.
As great as the game's presentation and use of its source material are, without a collection of gameplay improvements, it would have been little more than a mission pack with a touch-up job. But Rockstar North has definitely been hard at work in this department. The most obvious addition is the inclusion of various types of motorcycles among all the vehicles on the road. There's a decent variety of two-wheelers in the game, including mopeds, street bikes, dirt bikes, and big hogs. As you'd expect, the bikes handle a lot differently from one another. Your basic street bike is a good mix of speed and maneuverability. The big choppers are harder to steer, but have ludicrous top speeds. You'll get tossed off a motorcycle in almost any collision, which costs you a little bit of health or armor. This makes them pretty much useless in any situation that involves dodging the police. But they're incredibly handy in any mission that requires speed, and since you can pull a lot of fancy tricks on them, they're also a lot of fun to drive around.
While there are a lot more weapons in Vice City, the available arsenal hasn't really changed that much overall.
You'll also do a bit of flying in Vice City. After moving through a few major plot points, you'll open up the west half of Vice City, which is locked away at the start due to hurricane warnings. After that, you'll encounter missions that let you fly a seaplane around the city. You'll also find a few different helicopters here and there. Flying around the city is pretty impressive, and it showcases the game's engine quite well--you can see for miles when you're up in the sky. While some of the city's skyscrapers are too high to get on top of, you can land the choppers on most of the game's buildings. Expect to find a few of the game's hidden items stashed away in these sorts of difficult-to-reach areas.
A few new player actions have been added to the game as well. Pressing L3 will lock Tommy in a crouched position. This lets you take cover behind objects and improves your shooting accuracy. You can also dive out of moving vehicles, which handy for ditching cars or bikes into the ocean, escaping a burning vehicle, or just ramming empty cars into other cars for kicks. Like wrecking a motorcycle, bailing out of a car causes a little bit of bodily harm. You can also enter certain buildings now. While the interior settings are few in number and mostly extraneous, they look great and are used to effectively create a city that's even more realistic than GTAIII's Liberty City. You'll be able to go into your hotel and run all the way upstairs to your room. You can also enter a nightclub, a strip club, the Vice City mall, and a handful of other buildings. There are load times associated with entering certain buildings, but they're pretty brief.
Many of the game's story missions are more involved than those of GTAIII. GTAIII had a lot of missions in which you needed to get something or take someone somewhere and then return for your reward. You will find those sorts of missions in Vice City, but most of the new game's missions are multiple-part affairs that involve more than just moving from point A to point B and then back to point A. Some of these parts are simple extensions, such as maybe having to visit a respray shop after pulling a job. However, other missions are more involved and require the use of more-advanced tactics. For instance, one mission requires you to plant a bomb inside a mall that is swarming with cops. To do so, you'll first have to get a little heat chasing after you. You'll then lead the cops into a garage, where you'll ambush them and take one of their uniforms so you can pose as a cop, which makes getting into the heavily guarded mall possible. Once you've taken care of business at the mall, you'll then have to escape and get all the way back to your hideout.
Tommy Vercetti's voice is provided by Ray Liotta, who does a great job of bringing the character to life.
The missions are well designed for the most part. The noticeably longer average mission length is great, though it can become a source of occasional frustration, since failure in a mission means having to replay every part until you get it right. Getting back to a mission area is easier than ever, though. In GTAIII, you'd restart at a hospital or police station and be forced to steal a car and hightail it back to a mission area, which could take a while. In Vice City, a taxi appears near your respawn point, and, for a small fee, it will drive you back to the last mission briefing area you visited. Unfortunately, since you're generally going to want to pick up some arms and some armor before going back into most missions, you'll still have to drive over to the local Ammu-Nation first. It would have been nice if you could have used the taxis to handle this step of the process as well. At any rate, while the game definitely has its share of difficult missions, the average mission difficulty seems a notch or two easier in Vice City than in GTAIII, so you shouldn't have to repeat too many missions too often. Though, overall, Vice City's degree of difficulty is similar to that of the previous game, thanks to increased tenacity on the part of the police in their efforts to thwart you.
Besides the changes to the missions themselves, the game's mission structure is pretty different from that of the previous GTA games. In previous installments, you were given a pretty clear-cut path to follow--you may have had multiple mission options at any given time, but you consistently knew what to do next and for whom. In Vice City, you'll spend the first portion of the game undertaking missions for other people, much like in GTAIII. But once the town is yours, you'll be working for yourself, going out and keeping your protection racket in line and establishing yourself as the town's new boss.
Armed with an MP5, Tommy prepares to take on Vice City SWAT.
Eventually, you'll even be able to go out and purchase various properties, which opens up new missions. For instance, when you buy the taxi company, you'll open up a series of taxi-related missions that are separate from the side missions that you can take on by entering any taxi. Once you've completed a property's missions, that property will start earning money for you. This fact means that money eventually becomes a nonissue--as it should be for any self-respecting crime lord--since your various properties will always have some cash for you. All you need to do is drive around to all of them and collect from time to time. There are several other properties to purchase, including the film studio, the Malibu Club, and a car dealership. All the secondary-mission types from GTAIII have returned, such as vigilante missions, taxi missions, fire truck missions, and ambulance missions. New to Vice City is the ability to hop on a specific kind of scooter and deliver pizza. Pizza is delivered while in motion using the same mechanics you'd normally use for drive-by shootings, only in this case you hurl pizza pies at customers.
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