Rockstar should be applauded for getting Vice City finished this
quickly. Although you could (and, ahem, we did) spend more time
playing GTA3 than most of the rest of the PS2's back catalogue put
together, DMA Design's, sorry, Rockstar North's inspirational
genre-blender was ripped to shreds by fans within a matter of
months. They wanted more. We wanted more. Now we have more. And
we'll make no pretence otherwise: Vice City lives up to the hype.
Publisher
Rockstar Games
Developer
Rockstar North
Genre
action
60Hz mode
no
Widescreen mode
yes
Surround sound
yes, but DTS only
Everyone needs one Vice
Before we get into the whys and wherefores though, we'll take
you on a short (and probably rather unnecessary) refresher course
in what to expect. After guiding a nameless, muted escaped con
through the streets of Liberty City, this time we've been given
control of a character with something to say for himself. Tommy
Vercetti is fresh out of the clink, and mob bosses in Liberty have
sent him packing to Vice City to try and get a handle on the drugs
business (and keep him out of the way). When that goes awry, Tommy
is forced to press his connections with a crooked lawyer and
various local kingpins to try and eke out those responsible for his
misfortune. On the way, he'll handle work for a number of bosses
all over town, whilst causing untold mayhem on the city streets and
playing all sides against one another. No surprises there.
The plot that runs through the game is a lot stronger than GTA3's,
mostly thanks to Tommy's inclusion. The narrative is nicely
scripted, the missions forming a cohesive part as always, and like
GTA3, allegiances change with the wind. Characters from GTA3 are
woven into play here and there - you'll hear Toni manning Flash FM
(the cleverly named precursor to Flashback FM), Fernando
plying his trade on Emotion and there's an amusing entrance for a
young Donald Love. And it's not just the characters - you'll still
be searching for unique jumps, standout weapons (like the sniper
rifle) and even hidden packages, of which there are the requisite
100. We had thought these were absent from Vice City, until we
found one the other day - the realisation of just how much more
there was to find and do was quite startling.
New toys
On the whole, Rockstar has done plenty to catch the attention
of GTA3 fans, whilst filling the game with extras. Gary Penn,
formerly of DMA Design, often used to bang on about a Digital
Toyset, and to extend the metaphor, Vice City offers a Christmas
morning's worth of additions. The most talked about are motorbikes,
which range from the amusingly named scooter-alike, the Faggio, to
some monstrous Harley Davidson types and speedy superbikes, and
helicopters, which also play a larger part, with Tommy taking up
the role of passenger in an early mission, sniping cartel members
from their rooftop perches, before grabbing the controls later on
for himself. Choppers are a fantastic addition, and you'll enjoy
the build-up prior to getting hold of them. In one mission, you get
to practice the controls you'll later rely on by guiding a remote
control version with bombs attached to it - very clever.
Other, lesser additions which have perhaps slipped us by include
the ability to take over small businesses to supplement your income
and act as safehouses, to acquire your former bosses' tenements
having offed them, the ability to leap from moving vehicles
(incredibly useful, and roaringly cinematic as you charge, engine
blazing, into certain death only to scramble aside at the last
minute), and the chance to swap rags. Like dumping, switching or
respraying cars, changing clothes at one of the various boutiques
around town will give you a better chance of evading John Law.
You'll also have to dress in various get-ups for certain missions,
perfect for convincing the Haitians that the Cubans just whacked
their leader, or conning your way onto a golf course to perform a
golf buggy-riding hit.
And as you would expect, there's a greater arsenal of weapons, from
melee additions like the hammer, meat cleaver and golf club to
heavier duty tools like the Ruger assault rifle. The police
continue their six-star assaults, although they seem a lot smarter
in this incarnation, causing untold trouble even at a 2/6 wanted
level. We're also a bit concerned about Ferrari-driving cops, who
drive like lunatics and pack machine guns. Ouch.
Money-making, money-money-making
Like GTA3, you start off with a small environment and have to
branch out by completing a number of missions. Come away from the
first chopper-based mission and you'll have the city's second
island to play with, and various new bosses to talk to. Some will
call you on your cellular phone (which is suitably chunky for the
day), which you pinched earlier on, whilst others will request a
private audience. However the cut-scenes that once served so
uniformly as mission briefings now edge closer to cinematics, with
actual (and, brace yourself, amusing) dialogue between Tommy and
his employers, who all seem rather taken with his masochistic
tendencies. This is largely thanks to the work of a team of
sterling voice actors, which includes such luminaries as Ray
Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, er, Jenna Jameson, hrm, that
Tubbs bloke out of Miami Vice, and plenty more.
And for once, the main character isn't alone in his pursuit of,
well, money. Various non-player characters (including the
charismatic, sports car-driving Lance 'Quentin' Vance) will work
alongside Tommy, showing up at odd moments.
And missions are a lot better in Vice City. Some of the missions in
GTA could be quite boring, if it's now safe to say it, but you
never get that feeling in Vice City. You can of course continue
with vigilante, fire-fighting, ambulance and taxi missions in your
spare time, and there's even a sniff of pizza boy about some of it,
but that's only if you're bored. And you won't be. Some of your
objectives are absolutely ludicrous, but there's always huge
diversity in what you can do - to take an arbitrary point as an
example, you could find yourself faced with a turf war mission.
This has you killing lots of Haitians (including a mean sniper) and
hauling their drugs van back to base camp. However, you could
instead opt to work for the Haitians by retrieving their
drug stashes from around town before the police get there. Or you
could just work for one of the mansion-bound drug bosses with a
golf course for a front garden, who wants you to whack somebody. Of
course, you'll only find yourself in this position if you can get
round a number of checkpoints in two minutes to impress the locals.
In a speedboat - did I mention that?
Wasted
Missions are spread all over both islands, and your hotel (the
game's only save point early on) is located on just the one, so
you'll often find yourself with a hefty drive to pick up some work.
Indeed, if you find yourself wasted and left outside a hospital,
you could have to travel for five minutes to pick up some hardware
from Ammu-Nation, five more minutes to go get the job and a further
five to get to the battle. However, buying up one of the many
properties that are available for sale and the save points begin to
open up, while taxis park outside hospitals to take you straight to
the mission you've just failed. It's nice touches like these that
make Vice City even more compelling.
There are definitely criticisms to be made, and plenty less
incidental than the above, but then that's hardly surprising. The
islands are perhaps a bit flat compared to Liberty City - you'll
never fly 200 feet straight down off the top of a dam, for example,
and you won't hurtle down bendy avenues with the cops in tow, but
there are some tremendous hidden (and not so hidden) jumps to
enjoy, not to mention a plethora of multi-storey car parks and
countless humpback bridges to fly off.
But you can't make something this big this quickly without a few
rough edges showing through. Significantly, there are some beastly
load times in there, but then we can put up with a dodgy waiter
when the main dish is so delicious. We could also point an
accusatory finger at the cameraman from time to time, and it's a
little maddening to see that character animation and models haven't
been smartened up at all. Still, it takes more than a few flies to
spoil a broth this good. One such fly, or bug,
though, is the ability to get stuck in terrain whilst on the cell
phone, and you'll also spot a few glitches, like odd character
behaviour in the opening split-second of cut sequences, and
occasional clipping issues - such as when a whole road vanished
beneath us when we drove. Ugly, but of little consequence.
High gear
But the good outweighs the bad by miles. It may look almost
identical to GTA3, but it builds on the game in almost every way.
(And in strict fairness, the visuals are very nice in places, and
everything looks suitably '80s, particularly the clothing, and the
way the sun flits in and out of your eyes is genius, with rain
spots on the camera too). But dialogue is indeed richer, the
soundtrack is much, much better (and well worth buying for
£29.99, we'd say), the radio banter is just as funny and
there's more of it, the cars are often juicier, the bikes are speed
demons, there are seamless new additions like the way your body
hurtles over bonnets as you crash, and the way you leap out of cars
in mid-air, the missions objectives are much more diverse and there
are in the region of 80 of them, the weapons are meatier and the
targeting's slightly better (albeit still fiddly). All that and it
took us about 30 hours to top off all the main missions. That put
us at about 40 per cent complete on the 'stats' page, with loads
more to worry about.
However, the pièce de résistance is, in our opinion, the
developer's clearly rebellious nature. As you edge past cars on the
highway by night, glancing up at the phallic skyscraper in the near
distance, you'll realise it's even more phallic for the giant meat
and two veg implied by the illuminated windows. And it's Rockstar
North's obsession with detail that will see Vice City emerge as
another big winner. Most of the fun you'll have in Vice City is
down to what you can find off the beaten track - beach balls,
destruction derbies, and much more. Hopefully temptation won't get
the better of them, and we will get a proper sequel next time, but
as far as one-year-mission-packs go, Vice City is the finest of
all. And since you've already bought it, we'll simply wish you bon
appétit.
Tom's Rating - 10/10
The Editor's Take
When Vice City was first announced to the world, it sounded like it
would be a nice stopgap release to keep the millions of GTA3 fans
happy. Little did we know just how far Rockstar would go to make
this 'filler' become the most anticipated new release of the year.
But there is a massive difference between how you'll feel playing
GTA3 and Vice City for the first time. For one thing, when GTA3
came along it was a bolt out of the blue, and a heady voyage of
discovery as you realised just how deep the game really was. There
was no hype, no build up, no hysterical previews, no review code,
just a finished game, in a box, you and your PS2.
Great expectations
This time around there's a reputation to live up to, and not
only that, Rockstar has oiled the PR machine so that magazines
everywhere have been devoting huge sections to preview coverage,
and subsequently have thrown around 97 per cent review scores like
confetti. There have been spoilers literally everywhere, so
essentially a lot of the element of surprise that you had playing
GTA3 will be replaced by an excited sense of expectation.
Your initial experiences of Vice City will reveal only a few subtle
changes from its predecessor, but this is most definitely not just
GTA3 with new missions. For a start, the frame rate and speed of
the faster vehicles is noticeably quicker, making car chases even
more insane than before. You can explore indoor locales (albeit
with a small load delay), the weapon and vehicle count is mind
boggling, the visuals have a smarter sheen to them, (with cars
shimmering with a heat haze that looks gorgeous), the scripting is
even better (and at times hilarious), while the seven Radio
Stations are simply stupendous.
A masterstroke
The
licensing of over 80 tracks from the 1980-86 era is a masterstroke.
It sounded good in theory, but to experience it in practise
elevates the game even further. If Rockstar had merely licensed a
few old duffers, it might have been good, but somehow it has
managed to pull classic after classic out of the bag, most of which
have dated sufficiently to really make you feel like you're driving
around in the Summer of '86. There are, of course, some absolute
howlers in there too - plenty of execrable soft rock that were only
hits in the States (The Outfield, Night Ranger) but even these make
you chuckle, because they came from the era that not only fashion
forgot, but irony forgot.
It's all very easy for us to laugh at the clothes and the music
from that pastel shaded time, especially if you're old enough to
remember buying said items. But the thing that was so
utterly hilarious about the '80s was that all these fashion,
musical and cultural faux pas were conducted with a seriousness and
an attitude that has long gone. Now it's all knowing winks, kitsch
and irony, but you only have to check out A Flock Of Seagulls to
realise just how completely ridiculous the era really was - because
they really were being serious, although they'd doubtlessly
deny that now…
With this in mind, the attention to detail on the cut scenes,
combined with the most well realised dialogue and scripting ever
witnessed in a videogame make the game all the more enjoyable for
it. And with such a heavyweight voice cast, is this the shape of
things to come? Games with real voice actors in it, rather than
some geezer who makes the tea at the developer? Thank the lord.
Reap the rewards
But this is all, ultimately, window dressing. What about the
game? Vice City delivers here too - in obese portions that it would
take the best part of 40, 50, maybe 80 hours of your life to gorge
upon. 10 hours through and you think you're making headway, but
check out the stats and you're, like, 15 per cent through! But as
with GTA3, much of the game's completion lies in off the beaten
track sub missions that you may or may not wish to hunt down.
Whatever. It's all there if you want it, which is the important
point. Vice City doesn't force you into doing anything, but you'll
reap the rewards if you do.
And believe us, you'll want to reap the rewards, because Vice City
has the same compelling, addictive qualities of GTA3, albeit with
some of the more glaring flaws dealt with, if not ironed out
completely. Targeting is finally somewhere near fixed, with the
ability to use a first person mode on some of the weapons, which is
a welcome addition. Combat will still get on your nerves from time
to time, let's not kid ourselves here, but it's a big step in the
right direction.
Another slightly irksome issue that has followed GTA3 is the camera
system, which when close up against buildings can go completely
berserk and leave you not knowing where the hell you are, which
when you're in the midst of a mission can mean the difference
between success and failure. Fortunately it doesn't happen all that
often, but when it does you'll be cursing, especially if it's the
third part of a mission and will cost you another ten minutes to
get back to the same point.
Tired engine
As we mentioned in our first impressions piece, certain aspects
of the engine are looking tired next to recent advances in
technology, especially the rather rudimentary approach to texturing
- in particular plants and bushes. Stand up close to any of the
many bushes populating the city and you'll know what we mean, as
they obscure the screen in a vile blurred green mess.
Meanwhile, we're sorry to see the wonderfully realised
train/underground system be stripped from the game, while the lack
of any sense of persistent state has been inherited, so that often
wrecked cars will disappear if you go away and come back, likewise
pedestrians, etc, but really, in terms of affecting your enjoyment,
it won't make a jot of difference. That said, we're certainly
looking forward to playing a Grand Theft Auto in an environment
that is as advanced as the gameplay. Maybe GTA4, eh?
Consistently entertaining
Nit picking technical grievances aside, Vice City is every bit as
good as we thought it would be - if not better. When a game can
keep you as consistently entertained as this one, you'll be glad of
the depth, and you really won't want to stop playing it. But don't
expect to be constantly surprised, for much of Vice City is a
retread of old ground, and if you didn't like the last one, then
Vice City probably won't change your mind. But bear in mind that's
rather akin to being a footballer and deciding that you'd rather
not play with a ball today. Do yourselves a large favour and buy
this game, or as Rockstar once advocated, steal it.
Kristan's Rating - 9/10
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City screenshots (PS2)
Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City first impressions (PS2)
Grand
Theft Auto III review (PS2)
Grand
Theft Auto III review (PC)
Grand
Theft Auto III screenshots (PS2)
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