Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

The highly anticipated prequel to last year’s best seller, Grand Theft Auto 3 delivers more gangster fun, music and free exploration than ever. GTA: VC is distinctly 80’s, parodying the era and celebrating it at the same time. It packs more of everything we loved about GTA3, fixes its faults, adds new features and wraps it all up in a nice package. This is Grand Theft Auto 3 on steroids.

You play Tommy Vercetti, a gangster who participated in a drug deal gone bad. Your boss still wants the stolen money, however, and it is up to you to get it back from the thieves. By establishing alliances with various gang leaders and criminals in the Miami-inspired Vice City, Tommy will get closer to his money and earn some cash on the side for himself.

The list of improvements from GTA3 is considerable. GTA: VC features 40 weapons compared to GTA3’s 15. There are 120 vehicles in Vice City, 70 more than GTA3’s selection of 50. New vehicles include pizza delivery, ice cream trucks, golf carts and motorcycles. Buildings now feature indoor areas as well; Vice City is over twice as large as Liberty City from GTA3, and it can be fully explored from the beginning of the game. The targeting system has been tweaked to a “threat” caliber judgment instead of proximity, which lessens the chance of unwanted civilian deaths. The game’s control response has been noticeably improved as well. Police now chase after gang members and arrest other criminals rather than focusing entirely on you. Your character has a voice and a bad-assed personality instead of the mute character in GTA3. The 80’s gangster theme of GTA: VC is even more gung-ho and convincing than GTA3’s modern theme. Best of all, the feeling of total immersion is stronger than ever in GTA: Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s graphics have been upgraded from GTA3, although not greatly so. Character models and cars are still on the blocky side, but the game’s graphics are still impressive because the developers have sculpted the perfect look and feel of an entire living, breathing, active city. The game uses a motion-blur filter to give it a surreal 80’s impression (which can be turned off in the options menu). The flowing lights and vistas of cities and landscapes is pleasant to look at as you zoom through the city in a car. The visuals are overall much more colorful and vibrant than GTA3’s grim, dirty city appearance. With GTA: Vice City, you get the feeling of innocence whereas GTA3 conveyed a feeling of an innocence lost and dirtied.

The voice acting in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the finest I have ever heard in a video game, bar none. Rockstar hired many Hollywood talents to supply voices for the characters, and it shows. Even the stellar performances in Metal Gear Solid 2 pale in comparison to GTA: VC’s actors. Ray Liotta from Goodfellas voices the main character in perfect gangster fashion, and Sopranos’ Joe Palotino is back from GTA3. It was shocking to hear such high quality dialogue; at times it seems like cutscenes were taken from a movie. The game supports DTS surround sound audio for owners of home theater systems as well. GTA Vice City’s soundtrack is all 80’s: nine hours of it (compared to GTA3’s 3 hours of music). The radio talk shows and commercials are still hilarious; sometimes I stopped my car to just listen to the comedy gold playing on the car radio.

If you are a Grand Theft Auto fan, you probably already own GTA: Vice City. If you unsuccessfully tried to get into GTA3, Vice City may be the answer. It is a slicker, more polished, more complete Grand Theft Auto than its predecessor.

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