Boffie's Full Review: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for PlayStation 2
I swing onto the tarmac of the Airport in my Infernus, just ahead of a battalion of cop cars, sirens wailing. I wouldn't have gotten into this mess had it not been for those f*ckin' Haitians. 'Course, after I helped the Cubans wreck their deal, they stopped being nice. So, when one of 'em pulls out the 9mm as I'm crusing past, I just had to jump out and let loose with my chainsaw. Natch, cops were driving past, so I had to make a plan.
I handbrake turn just before the runway becomes the ocean, and eye the squad of choppers, cop cars and unmarked FBI vans heading in my direction, silhouetted against a tropical sunset. I gun the throttle, and with a brief wheelspin speed off towards them. I have only one chance, so it's now or never. I dodge between the vehicles, avoiding bursts of machine gun fire from the choppers, and hit the ramp at the other end of the runway. For a split second, I can see the police desparately trying to catch up while the chopper races to intercept my airborne car, but within moments I'm over the highway. I smack the crossroad, grapple for control, find it and speed away. It's a brief respite, but this place is large. I can lose them easy.
This is my world. This is my life. It's 1986. Welcome to Vice City.
GAMEPLAY
Ready for a long review? Great, 'cos you're going to get one. No game this big deserves a short review.
Quick recap: Vice City is the sequel (prequel?) to Rockstar's GTA3, a game everyone but me has played. In it, you are Tommy Vercetti, a small-timer who just got out. Sent down from Liberty City by your Boss, Sonny Forelli, to do a drug deal, you find things getting rapidly pear-shaped, as the deal goes bad. Sonny wants his drugs, you want your money. Your job is to get both plus a little respect and power, by working your way up through the criminal underbelly of Vice City.
The basic structure of the game is simple at first, yet it becomes surprisingly deep. The story develops through a series of missions, some connected with the story, some not, for the many gangs and personalities that litter Vice City. Although it takes a while, soon the whole city is open to you and you can explore. And let's say this: the city is huge. There are literally thousands of things to do and places to explore, and it's all so wonderfully designed that you cannot help but think you're playing a 1980s mob film. Sheer genius.
But, you see, it's not just the game that's huge. Deviate from the mission structure, and you will find a ridiculously immersive experience. First off, as with all the GTAs, you can jack any vehicle, and there are hundreds available. Cruise the city on a dirt-bike, sports car, 80s sallon car and more. Feel like jumping buildings on a stunt bike? Go for it. Hijacking a chopper and buzzing the army base? No problem. Take to the water in a machine-gun-equipped cop boat? 'Nuff said. Hell, you can even take to the streets on foot and go places vehicles can't reach, and, if you like, steel an ambulance and go save people for extra cash. In short, if you want to do something in this game, chances are you can.
Of course, you can also pick up a lot of stuff to help you cause havoc. Pistols, shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers, baseball bats, screwdrivers, swords, the aforementioned chainsaw, sniper rifles...the list goes on and on. Naturally, blow up one too many cars or decapitate one too many people with a well-placed headshot and your Wanted Level, represented by six stars which gradually fill up, increases. Soon, you'll move from being half-heartedly chased by your basic squad car to getting choppers and the suicidal FBI involved, and finally the army is brought in to help take you down. Get busted, and you lose your weapons plus some cash in the form of a bribe. How you deal with this threat is up to you - like much else in the game. Go on a mad chase through the suddenly empty streets, or hide out on a high ledge with a sniper rifle and an RPG. iIt's your call.
But the fact is, weapons, levels and stunts are not the only extent of GTAVC's depth. You can eventually buy property, including a printing works, new apartments and even a porn studio, and use them to generate revenue. You can race everything from dirt-bikes to speedboats. How about spending your time scrolling through a HUGE series of sometimes very funny stats ("Seagulls sniped:")? Or gunning down gangsters from a chopper? Or interacting with the thousands of people and personalities who will help or hinder you in your quest? For example, do to many jobs for the Cubans and Auntie Poulet and her Haitian henchmen will try take you out if you ever have the misfortune to go for a ride in their part of town. Deliver pizzas, drive cabs, become a vigilante, go mental on a busy street with a Katana, pick up (and screw) prostitutes for extra health. Are you beginning to see what I'm talking about here?
That said, despite it's depth, it does have some faults. For one, Tommy cannot swim - any contact with water above head level will result in a dramatic and irreversibly quick death. This doesn't sound so frustrating until you accidentally drive a helicopter into the ocean or flip a boat, when it becomes, quite frankly, a royal pain in the @ss that would have been so easy for Rockstar to rectify. Also, sometimes the missions can be ball-breakingly hard, simply because Tommy is a pretty feeble character - well, sort of - who takes damage far too easily.
GRAPHICS
Remember the styles of the 80s? The big pastel colours, the lights, the images of the drug culture? It's all here, sometimes very explicitly so. Vice City is gorgeous, not just in the animations and textures, but also in the finish. The city gradually goes from night to day with some spectacular sunsets and lighting effects. Rainstorms are wonderuflly detailed, and the slick tarmac gives off a fantastic reflection, while the ocean and waterways are crisp and clear. The camera angles are creative, and give you that feeling of playing through a movie remarkably well. The best bit is when you attack someone with a chainsaw and watch their blood spatter your screen. Bwahahahaha! I love this game!
SOUND
The GTA series has always been renouned for it's brilliant inclusion of in-game radio, and VC is no exception. There are around ten stations, including hilarious talk radio, a rcok and soul station and, brilliantly, an underground old school hip-hop station run by, of all people, Mr. Magic. You can cruise to silence, but you'll be missing out on some truely inspired soundtracks. Of course, when you're outside the car, you can hear the buzz of the city, so subtly done that it's almost unnoticeable. Every item of speech in the game is digitised, and it is this more than anything else that makes you feel as if you're in a mob movie - Ray Liotta voices Tommy! This is as close as we've come yet to an interactive movie, and the aural experience of the game is not to be missed.
SUMMARY
Vice City has a knack for taking you over. You can play for months and still be finding areas you didn't know existed, or powerups you never knew were there. You can buy every property, do every mission and still have completed only around 60% of the game. The truth is that Vice City is a living, breathing world that quickly sucks you in, sticks you in a pastel suit and gives you an automatic weapon. It's more than a landmark. It's a lifestyle. You need this game.
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