Grand Theft Auto III was truly revolutionary. In the wake of its release every single developer was looking at the game and copying its homework, and almost everyone began working on GTA clones hoping to capture the zeitgeist. DMA Design had done a superb job for such a small team, creating this 3D open world from the ground up and filling it with interesting things to do. But their work was far from over, and igniting a revolution in the gaming industry simply wasn’t enough for them as they immediately began work on a follow up title. The developers changed their name from DMA Design to Rockstar North, and they managed to squeeze out a full game in exactly twelve months. But whilst this may seem rushed and just trying to capitalise on their success, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is no mere cash grab, but yet another evolution of the open world genre.
Having been release from prison, Tommy Vercetti is tasked by his boss, Liberty City crime boss Sonny Forelli, to go to Vice City to oversee a massive cocaine deal. But when the deal is busted and Tommy is the sole survivor, he must lay the groundwork for his own criminal empire in order to pay back the Forelli’s the money they lost. But as Tommy’s empire grows, the power begins to get to his head, with those he trusts turning against him, placing an even larger target on his back for the Forelli’s.
Incredible doesn’t even cut it. What Rockstar North managed to create in just one year when building off the GTA III formula is simply astounding. Vice City is a real triumph of video game design and pushes the envelope so much further that it was already outperforming the imitators before they had even hit shelves.
Having been release from prison, Tommy Vercetti is tasked by his boss, Liberty City crime boss Sonny Forelli, to go to Vice City to oversee a massive cocaine deal. But when the deal is busted and Tommy is the sole survivor, he must lay the groundwork for his own criminal empire in order to pay back the Forelli’s the money they lost. But as Tommy’s empire grows, the power begins to get to his head, with those he trusts turning against him, placing an even larger target on his back for the Forelli’s.
Incredible doesn’t even cut it. What Rockstar North managed to create in just one year when building off the GTA III formula is simply astounding. Vice City is a real triumph of video game design and pushes the envelope so much further that it was already outperforming the imitators before they had even hit shelves.
Where do I even start. I suppose the story is as good as anywhere. GTA III”s story was largely perfunctory, it set the stage for the missions. Characters were mostly one dimensional, very few had any personality or depth. Its Godfather inspirations were clear as day, but Godfather level storytelling and characters this was not.
Vice City meanwhile puts a much greater emphasis on story and characters. Set in the mid-eighties, Vice City might as well be a Scarface videogame, if Scarface didn’t actually have a videogame adaptation (one that came out four years later and was significantly inferior to Vice City). I mean it takes almost all of the story beats from that film and translates them into missions for Tommy to partake in. It even involves a coke fuelled shootout in a luxury mansion using assault rifles, I mean it’s borderline copyright infringement. But that’s part of what makes Vice City so strong, it uses the Scarface story as a crutch rather than just set dressing like GTA III did with The Godfather; and whilst I don’t normally reward copying each other’s homework, Vice City just does it so well.
Tommy is fully voiced by Ray Liotta, which gives him considerably more depth than the mute Claude ever had. Liotta is far from the only celebrity voice actor in the game either, you’ve got appearances from Tom Sizemore, Burt Reynolds, and even a young Danny Dyer among many more. There’s so much more emphasis placed on the mission cutscenes now too, with them delivering more than just expository dialogue about what you need to do. It presents context and stakes, you get to really see how the world and characters around you are changing based on the events unfolding, something GTA III never quite managed.
The gameplay is where you’ll find the biggest improvements though. Vice City has so much more to do in it than Liberty City ever did, and as a result the world feels more alive. First up you’ve got the basics, an expanded arsenal of weapons and more driveable vehicles (including the introduction of motorcycles and aircraft). Then comes the environment. Vice City is of course a brand-new location, there are no recycled areas from Liberty City here which only makes the twelve-month development time even more impressive. Whilst Vice City may be slightly smaller in terms of actual landmass compared to GTA III, with only two main islands as opposed to three, the design of Vice City as an environment is significantly more realistic than Liberty City, and makes more sense when trying to navigate. You’re far less likely to get turned the wrong way because of awkward road placement in Vice City, and it makes navigating the city a total breeze.
Vice City is packed with things to do as well. You of course have the return of the Vigilante, Paramedic, and Taxi missions. But Vice City also includes a wealth of indoor spaces; whilst these spaces offer up little in terms of new content, they do represent a leap in technology compared to Liberty City’s outdoor only design. But the single biggest introduction for Vice City is the ability to own property. This does come as a blessing and a curse, because whilst giving players the ability to build an empire through property development is a great activity that produces lots of engaging side missions, the main story actually hinges on this mechanic which to me brings about Vice City’s biggest problem.
Vice City meanwhile puts a much greater emphasis on story and characters. Set in the mid-eighties, Vice City might as well be a Scarface videogame, if Scarface didn’t actually have a videogame adaptation (one that came out four years later and was significantly inferior to Vice City). I mean it takes almost all of the story beats from that film and translates them into missions for Tommy to partake in. It even involves a coke fuelled shootout in a luxury mansion using assault rifles, I mean it’s borderline copyright infringement. But that’s part of what makes Vice City so strong, it uses the Scarface story as a crutch rather than just set dressing like GTA III did with The Godfather; and whilst I don’t normally reward copying each other’s homework, Vice City just does it so well.
Tommy is fully voiced by Ray Liotta, which gives him considerably more depth than the mute Claude ever had. Liotta is far from the only celebrity voice actor in the game either, you’ve got appearances from Tom Sizemore, Burt Reynolds, and even a young Danny Dyer among many more. There’s so much more emphasis placed on the mission cutscenes now too, with them delivering more than just expository dialogue about what you need to do. It presents context and stakes, you get to really see how the world and characters around you are changing based on the events unfolding, something GTA III never quite managed.
The gameplay is where you’ll find the biggest improvements though. Vice City has so much more to do in it than Liberty City ever did, and as a result the world feels more alive. First up you’ve got the basics, an expanded arsenal of weapons and more driveable vehicles (including the introduction of motorcycles and aircraft). Then comes the environment. Vice City is of course a brand-new location, there are no recycled areas from Liberty City here which only makes the twelve-month development time even more impressive. Whilst Vice City may be slightly smaller in terms of actual landmass compared to GTA III, with only two main islands as opposed to three, the design of Vice City as an environment is significantly more realistic than Liberty City, and makes more sense when trying to navigate. You’re far less likely to get turned the wrong way because of awkward road placement in Vice City, and it makes navigating the city a total breeze.
Vice City is packed with things to do as well. You of course have the return of the Vigilante, Paramedic, and Taxi missions. But Vice City also includes a wealth of indoor spaces; whilst these spaces offer up little in terms of new content, they do represent a leap in technology compared to Liberty City’s outdoor only design. But the single biggest introduction for Vice City is the ability to own property. This does come as a blessing and a curse, because whilst giving players the ability to build an empire through property development is a great activity that produces lots of engaging side missions, the main story actually hinges on this mechanic which to me brings about Vice City’s biggest problem.
The story is actually painfully short. There are only thirty-eight story missions, a decrease when compared to GTA III’s fifty. Now this wouldn’t be a big problem if the missions were longer or more satisfying to play than GTA III’s, but once again they usually aren’t. They often are made up of exactly the same goals, drive to point A, pick something up, drive to point B, shoot some people, mission complete. For context, whilst I had dabbled with Vice City when I was younger, I never managed to play it much because my copy didn’t work properly and would always crash after about thirty minutes of playtime. So, I had never gotten particularly far into Vice City’s story until this most recent playthrough. It only took me about six hours to get from the very start of the game to the second to last mission. Compare this to my most recent playthrough of GTA III, it took me about twelve hours to finish the story in its entirety.
Now if you were to look up Vice City on HowLongToBeat, you’ll see that the average completion time for just the story missions is around eighteen hours. So where is the extra twelve hours coming from? It’s tied into the property mechanic. Because you can’t actually play the final missions until you’ve purchased most of the property in the game, and you can’t start buying property until quite late into the game anyway. Combine this with the sheer amount of money you need to buy a property in the game and you’ll need to be grinding away for hours at side content to build up enough cash to buy these properties.
Personally, this is actually kind of a dealbreaker for me, because the side content is not compelling enough to keep me going for longer than the main story in order to see the ending. Locking the ending behind the property management is a bad move in my eyes, and whilst it is an excellent mechanic in of itself, it just takes far too long to be able to buy anything. After spending six hours doing main missions, I only had enough money to buy one property, and once I did that, I was basically broke. It was also one of the cheapest properties you could buy. There isn’t much else to spend your money on, weapons and armour from Ammu-Nation, but that’s about it. If you could earn money faster then I don’t think it would be as much of an issue, but it seems like a way to artificially inflate the length of the game to me.
Technologically Vice City doesn’t really have much of an upgrade from GTA III. It’s running off the same engine, and when you look closely at the art assets you can definitely see a lot of similarities. However, it does look much better than GTA III did because it’s got far more personality. Neon light is used liberally around Vice City at night, and the golden sun bathes everything in so much light during the day. The grass is more vibrant, there’s more trees around, buildings aren’t all the same shade of grey but instead can be a variety of colours. Where GTA III was a rather depressing looking game, Vice City looks like a genuinely nice place to spend your time.
One of the biggest wins the game has is the radio stations though. Sure, GTA III had radio stations and some good songs, but Vice City has one of the greatest soundtracks to ever grace videogames. A massive variety of eighties hits from the likes of Michael Jackson, Twisted Sister, Blondie, Kim Wilde, Nena, Spandau Ballet and so many more! If you’re a fan of eighties music then Vice City will have you covered and then some, in fact it kind of set the standard for the franchise going forward where the music played such a massive role in defining the world you would play in.
I think I’ll always have a soft spot for GTA III in my heart because I played that game so much more when I was younger, but it’s hard to deny that Vice City is an almost all-round improvement. Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever return to the game because of the way that property management effectively blocks you from finishing the game, I do think that every single area of the GTA experience has been expanded in meaningful ways by Rockstar North.
I can certainly see why this is many people’s favourite entry in the franchise because it is a delight to play. But Rockstar North still didn’t think this was a good place to take a break and enjoy being number one, because their next entry in the franchise was on the horizon and would in many ways be just as revolutionary as GTA III.
Now if you were to look up Vice City on HowLongToBeat, you’ll see that the average completion time for just the story missions is around eighteen hours. So where is the extra twelve hours coming from? It’s tied into the property mechanic. Because you can’t actually play the final missions until you’ve purchased most of the property in the game, and you can’t start buying property until quite late into the game anyway. Combine this with the sheer amount of money you need to buy a property in the game and you’ll need to be grinding away for hours at side content to build up enough cash to buy these properties.
Personally, this is actually kind of a dealbreaker for me, because the side content is not compelling enough to keep me going for longer than the main story in order to see the ending. Locking the ending behind the property management is a bad move in my eyes, and whilst it is an excellent mechanic in of itself, it just takes far too long to be able to buy anything. After spending six hours doing main missions, I only had enough money to buy one property, and once I did that, I was basically broke. It was also one of the cheapest properties you could buy. There isn’t much else to spend your money on, weapons and armour from Ammu-Nation, but that’s about it. If you could earn money faster then I don’t think it would be as much of an issue, but it seems like a way to artificially inflate the length of the game to me.
Technologically Vice City doesn’t really have much of an upgrade from GTA III. It’s running off the same engine, and when you look closely at the art assets you can definitely see a lot of similarities. However, it does look much better than GTA III did because it’s got far more personality. Neon light is used liberally around Vice City at night, and the golden sun bathes everything in so much light during the day. The grass is more vibrant, there’s more trees around, buildings aren’t all the same shade of grey but instead can be a variety of colours. Where GTA III was a rather depressing looking game, Vice City looks like a genuinely nice place to spend your time.
One of the biggest wins the game has is the radio stations though. Sure, GTA III had radio stations and some good songs, but Vice City has one of the greatest soundtracks to ever grace videogames. A massive variety of eighties hits from the likes of Michael Jackson, Twisted Sister, Blondie, Kim Wilde, Nena, Spandau Ballet and so many more! If you’re a fan of eighties music then Vice City will have you covered and then some, in fact it kind of set the standard for the franchise going forward where the music played such a massive role in defining the world you would play in.
I think I’ll always have a soft spot for GTA III in my heart because I played that game so much more when I was younger, but it’s hard to deny that Vice City is an almost all-round improvement. Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever return to the game because of the way that property management effectively blocks you from finishing the game, I do think that every single area of the GTA experience has been expanded in meaningful ways by Rockstar North.
I can certainly see why this is many people’s favourite entry in the franchise because it is a delight to play. But Rockstar North still didn’t think this was a good place to take a break and enjoy being number one, because their next entry in the franchise was on the horizon and would in many ways be just as revolutionary as GTA III.