Grand Theft Auto Vice City Review (The Original)

More like nineteen- but I digress...

As the legacy of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Definite Edition trucks on, so does my own personal journey in reminding myself what made these games so very decent in the first place and why exactly it is that they are deserving of all this hubbub. Whilst GTA III was never really my jam back in the day, and I imagine that's decently reflected in my review grading of it, Grand Theft Auto Vice City was actually a game I played quite a lot of when I could. We have a history, Vice City and me, and though it's not my favourite of the 3D era (that's coming next) that initial layer of bias has already cemented itself down into my brain and so that's something you should likely take into account if you're looking for a totally fresh take. You're not going to get it entirely with this review. Point-in-case, I bent over backwards to download the downgrader for Vice City so that I could listen to the original audio radio stations that had been patched out over the years due to licences running out. Was it worth it? For Billie Jean? Yes.

Another boon I modded in for myself was that of actual proper console controls, because I was not going to suffer through Vice City the way I did with III. (Back then I had to bind 'reverse in car' as the start button! What the heck is that about?) So in essence, despite playing on a computer, the experience I went through was about as close to the PlayStation 2 release as I could make it, which should tell you something about the quality of these ports. In large respects they are as faithful as a game like this can feasibly be, but in the most crucial ways they are embarrassments. (i.e. the controls) Games like these are clearly not designed to be played on keyboard and mouse and there's no reason why controllers should have been totally ignored in the control programming. At the very least the controllers still work with the game, which isn't the case for Bully's PC port, (without mods that I can only very rarely get to actually work) still these versions of their games remind us of an era in Rockstar's history where the computer was some strange alien piece of hardware they couldn't manage to wrap their noggins around. (Except, I guess, for the computers they made the damn games on.)

First I think it's important to talk about combat, and how it actually feels like it function in Vice City compared to III. There are still problems, because Rockstar's war with decent third person combat only ever really succeeded with the jump to Grand Theft Auto V, but Vice City works and after III that's enough. The camera is still fiddly but the lock-on focuses you on what you're shooting at, which is nice. Shooting missions are typically set in eras designed for shootouts, unlike with III, so you can expect narrow corridors and waist high cover to take advantage of the new crouching mechanic. There's also three times the number of weapons here, because Vice City was the first time the series implemented their iconic 'three variants per weapon type', which allows a bit of customisability in firefights at the player's discretion. Free aim guns are still a pain due to the way that you can't move whilst aiming, and so you tend to get shot to pieces when using them, but there were a few heavy combat missions in Vice City that I genuinely enjoyed thanks to the combat improvements, making some set-pieces actually work this time around.

The many cars of Vice City have also been improved with their speed and handling being more consistent, and there being less of a tendency to immediately roll-over and explode upon the first sharp corner. (I even manged to save myself after rolling over a few times, which was way out of the question in the last game.) New is the ability to dive out of your car whilst it's moving so that you can escape a burning vehicle (I didn't realise that GTA III didn't have that until I played it) and the concept of cool unique cars that you can earn and keep throughout the game. All the unique cars from III were unique in properties alone (like the bulletproof truck) but Vice City gives unique patterns (like the leopard-print taxi) and totally unique models too! (Like the DeLorean-inspired 'Deluxo') Driving was always the best part of GTA, but this time around it feels like Rockstar finally landed on the elements that make it so attractive to come back to time and time again.

Here's a relatively small change in the grand scheme of things, that had a huge effect on my enjoyment of the world I was enduring: there's a map now, thank god! Now when you get an objective for a mission or a side quest, you can pause and look at exactly where it is and what roads you need to take to get there, instead of having to dig out an out-of-game map and work out some positioning conundrum. Improved too is the minimap which lists services in the near area you might need now, such as a Pay'n'spray. I can genuinely say that I almost never used the GTA III Pay'n'sprays, (it didn't help that there was only about 1 on every city island) but in Vice City they were my goto whenever I got into a police chase, which actually helped validate their existence and helpful-but-not-too-easy placements. And actually being able to find and stock up at an AmmuNation- man, that felt like an entirely different play experience with true, honest-to-goodness, quality of life features. What bliss. 

Being set in the mid 80's, the atmosphere of the world was going to be a big point of focus for the team at Rockstar and where the majority of their design decisions would lead. And with the incredible 80's soundtrack they managed to score, including tracks from Toto, Michael Jackson and Hall and Oates, playing this game sounds like throwback Thursday on the radio. Even the UI sports a hotpink-and-baby-blue hue that belongs nowhere else but the 80's, ensuring that you never quite forget what game you're playing at any point. A lot of the world references you hear during missions or in the many radio shows will place you right in the period, with excesses of drugs, clubs and sex mixed in just the right degrees to make this feel like you're very own kitschy period TV show or movie. (Kind of like Scarface, in that regard)  My only gripe was when one character of-handily mentioned Russia in a reference to the red scare, despite the fact that region would have been known as 'the Soviet Union' at the time, but I'm really pulling at straws there. I'll bet that most dumb Americans from the 80's couldn't tell the difference in all honesty, so it's probably more accurate then what I would have went for.

Vice City itself, Rockstar's own Miami, is the star of the show here, and whilst I liked Liberty City well enough, Vice City just breathes with this beach-party palm tree laziness that I can only imagine is characteristic of the real place. Seemingly smaller than Liberty City, nothing in Vice City feels an oppressive distance away, so that objectives are easy to get to and you don't have to spend mental gymnastic points trying to locate an offramp onto the bridge so that you can switch island. (God that stuff drove my insane with III) compacting the place down allowed for several distinctive landmark locations to really make areas pop, such as the Universal Studios mock-up in the north or the mansion-studded central island. Something else I appreciated were the way that the gangs of the city were scaled back into only two groups, instead of the six from III, meaning that you could actually come to grips with the balance of the street warfare. (Also, pissing off the sides through the course of the narrative doesn't mean that everyone shoots you wherever you go this time around, which is an absolute life-changer design choice from Rockstar.)

I read on the synopsis for Grand Theft Auto III how the voice acting performances was supposed to be 'stellar', and whilst that may have been true at the time and against it's contemporaries, time was less than kind on them. (Kenji's voice actor sounded like someone doing a bad Japanese accent, and considering the Asian American actor was born in Honolulu, maybe he was.) But for Grand Theft Auto Vice City the tag of 'stellar' doesn't just fit, it might undersell some of the performances here; this entire star studded cast did a brilliant job bringing humour and personality to their roles, such to the point that it's no wonder how many of these characters became iconic. Ray Liotta's Tommy Vercetti as the main character is pitch-perfect casting and I totally believed every word which came out of his mouth. William Fichtner as Ken Rosenberg, with his neurotic Jewish lawyer routine, is a total scene stealer. And Phillip Michael Tomas playing Lance Vance (Who is totally not a redo of his Miami Vice character. *Wink* *Wink*) was so good I just which there was more of him. (Which I guess is why they did Vice City Stories, which I've never had the chance to play.)

In narrative, Vice City is incredibly straight forward which serves the presentation and style the team were trying to emulate like a glove. You're an aggrieved mob jailbird from Liberty City caught up in a drug deal gone wrong and on a mission to get back what you owe to you family. That's a set-up which could go any number of directions, and I'll bet the boys over at RGG Studios could have turned that into an emotional power-house with enough time. But Rockstar pretty much just use that as an excuse to get you down by the beaches, because from there the story just gives way to exploring the vacation state and meeting it's various colourful residents, (many of whom have famous voices behind them) all plastered onto a vague 'control the city' meta narrative that no one really cares all that much about. It's all just about fun-in-the-sun, baby; and that relaxed sight-seer attitude is what makes this a game perfect for it's 80's setting. This game could have been a piece of media from that time, if gaming wasn't still so prehistoric back then, Rockstar nailed that presentation to the back of their limo.

And as the story does give way, in comes the simply great missions which you remember for the right reasons. The bank job mission, the one where you ride a PCJ bike across rooftops at night, the extended gunfight atop a yacht against the entire French criminal mafia, the helicopter assault on a burnt-out gang-run estate house, the chain-assassination mission, the roof-top chainsaw chase, the scarface-style finale. My only narrative gripe comes from that finale, incidentally, in that the story in no way builds up to it's payoff. For all the scorn I lay on GTA III, that game let you feel the weight of coming upon your vengeance in the missions leading up to it, they made the finale feel like a finale. Vice City just stops giving you mission without telling you why, then as you start to do various business missions the story rears it's head briefly before ending abruptly. That finale mission is fun, but it lacks narrative punch as the endpoint. Heck, in my playthrough I hadn't even completed all the businesses yet, which mean that in the post game I received a congratulatory phone call from a side character I hadn't even met at that point.

Speaking of businesses, that was one of the new things that Vice City bought into the formula and honestly, I forgot how well this game handled them. Each business is a constant revenue generator, but that only becomes true once you complete a small contained mission thread for each business after purchasing them. These chain missions have their own characters, which are all funny and memorable, their own little arcs, which are satisfying, and sometimes even their own mini/meta games. (My favourite is Sunshine Autos, I just love playing Pokémon with street cars) Collectibles are back, with the same 'items at your hideout' reward, and there are a few new minigames too. I particularly like the pizza delivery minigame for the way it makes you face a logistical problem as you gain more customers but can only hold so many pizzas. All in all, I came away from Vice City with that comforting sense that I enjoyed being there and could spend many more hours completing every inch of that game, which is leagues better than my sense of  'I want to move on as soon as possible' from GTA III.

Needless to reiterate, I liked Vice City a lot more than GTA III. Playing through it all again actually made me pick up on the reason why so many fans have been pestering Rockstar for a Vice City revisit for ages now, and though I think the original does a great job of holding up even today, I kind of want to see what a new version of this city looks like too. Honestly, if you've never had the time or inclination to play Vice City, but this whole 'Definitive Trilogy' has peaked your interest, let me give you my recommendation for the original version at least, because it's a classic deserving of it's title. It may look rough but I feel like the heart of the game holds up, and if you can get around the antiquated combat system, which isn't even that bad this time around, you'll have hours of fun. The wears of time and the evolution of the industry does weigh on this game's shoulders a little, as well as it's own narrative faltering near the end of the story, but that enduring GTA spirit keeps you smiling and entertained through it all as you gleefully run down pedestrians in a sleek sports car whilst crooning a second-hand yearning to return to 'Africa'. An easy grade of B+ even as old as this game is, as it reminds us all that the classics stick around for a reason. Now prepare for ultra bias as I move onto my favourite Rockstar game of all time, San Andreas.