Thanks to GTA III’s sunny sales figures, it now has a sunny sequel: Vice City, a city in the regions of the tropical Miami.
At the start of the game, you must trade a case full of money for the mafia, but it was a set-up, and the money is stolen from the deal, now you must get the money back, and of course, if possible with a bit of violence.

Da Box

This game is, again, a real mafia game in which you persuade people to pay their protection money, organize drive-by’s, rob a bank and other kinds of illegal jobs.

The first thing that catches your sight in the game is that the personage can talk, something that sometimes makes the cutscenes a bit humoristic and it makes the story a bit more interesting, because you see things like the personage does, you are involved in the game. The guy also got a name: Tommy Vercetti.

The second thing that catches your eye is that the game is nearly a happy game, not the dark city of GTA 3, a bit of pink everywhere, old fashion cars, light-green grass, happy city’s, all things that kill the serious looks of the game.
Even with that said, it is a very good game that has a lot more options than the last version, but I still think it’s not better, let’s see why.

Or tommy is drunk, or he has left his bazooka at home

Finally more, more, MORE
A good thing about Vice City is that there is more than in GTA III in nearly every way.
They have dumped a lot of new weapons in it, that many weapons that you can’t have them all, you only can have one weapon of every type, so no flamethrower with a bazooka or two heavy machine guns. They’ve also added some weird weapons in it, like screwdrivers and chainsaws, with which the blood splats on your monitor, and other home equipment. They’ve also put in some knives and swords.
Not only are there more weapons, but there are also a lot more vehicles. Cars that look like they’ve came out of the 80’s, scooters, motorcycles, boats, helicopters and a water-plane. These vehicles make the game a lot more interesting and of course, more fun.

There are also a lot of new options like making money by delivering pizza’s and buying properties, which is a nice addition and a main line in the game.
There is also more land to terrorize, even if 50% is water, beach and landing strips, the other 50% is still city.

Luckily they’ve added some more options in the game, flatting tires by shooting them, or driving over a nail strip, shooting through windows, jumping out of a driving car, completely useless, but fun. To give the hardcore racers some fun, they’ve added some nice street races and a crash-derby. These races are quite exciting, unlike the ones in GTA III.
It’s a pity you still can’t swim….

Ey, lad, you know how much fun it is at the goff?

OK, why is GTA Vice City worse than GTA III?
That GTA III is better than this game just is an opinion, because Vice City has better gameplay in some views. However, I like a challenge, and there isn’t a nice challenge in the game. They’ve simplified the game, probably to get a larger number of gamers to play it, but I think they’ve screwed up the game with this: the missions are too easy and you get a large amount of weapons and money in an easy way.
If you drive in a quick car, the police just can’t get you, they don’t shoot, just bump, and if they throw spikes, they are the only ones who drive over them… not very smart.
Sometimes you can call the guns a bit overpowered, with the mini-gun you can kill a whole army by yourself and the magnum is a one-hit, one-kill pistol.
The last thing that I think is bad about the game is that it stops too quick after you’ve played all missions. There is nothing more to do but free-roaming, searching hidden packages and doing unique jumps.

Still smart to buy?
There is only one good answer to this question, and that is: YES!!!!!!! All right, there are some bad things in the game, but it still is a wonderful game with lots of humor, spectacular chases and missions. It’s a pity it isn’t a very tough game, but it’s still a great game for every type of gamer, and you will enjoy the game for a long time.

Swimming and drinking… well… drinking

Conclusion:
Sound: again a nice radio with good songs, hits and funny conversations, everybody can find his music on it. Luckily you can also add your own music.
Graphics: Smooth, but not perfect, GTA III looked more realistic with a lot of blur, but without blur, Vice City looks more realistic, sometimes some blocks, sometimes the people don’t walk normal, but it looks fine. And also the screen doesn’t frame-drop in Vice City.
Gameplay: A very large game, lots of missions, The controls work perfectly and the free-roaming is still great.
Lifetime: From one month till… very long… there is enough to do, and if you want to complete the game for 100%, it can take a while….

Score: 9

After the success of GTA and GTA 2, the makers probably thought “let’s make it 3D”, a good decision, if you ask me, because this decision made a masterpiece that has made the GTA series a large success.
The nice thing about GTA is that you can walk around freely, causing destruction in a city in a legal way, using your mouse and keyboard. I’ll try to explain why the game is still worth playing and why it’s better than its sequels in some ways.

Always interesting, the box

Mafia game
Something that I especially like about the game, is that it’s a real mafia game that really has the ambience of a crime game (dark, unhappy and serious). This realism is the best in the beginning of the game, you work for the semi-Italian bunch of guys, and the missions are very mob like, blowing people in cars, hiding the evidence of a murder, kill people who didn’t pay their protection money etc. But the more missions you have played, the more Hollywood like they become (if they weren’t already).
When you play the missions, and you watch the cutscenes, you’ll notice that there is a story in the game, that pushes you to complete the game. A weak point of the game is that you sometimes get bosses who don’t fit in the main story line and that sometimes the missions don’t have a place in the story.
A strong point of the game is that most missions are very realistic, especially at the beginning of the game, and that the missions become very hard to pass near the end of the game. I think that the last mission of the game can’t be cleared without using cheats, it’s really hard. The sequels lack of this difficulty. Vice City and San Andreas actually have last missions that you can easily beat.

Another thing that is nice to notice about this game, is that this GTA 3 is the last GTA game where you can find elements of GTA and GTA 2. You get messages on a “Samurai”, money for the chaos that you’ve created and you can even watch your character in a third person perspective. Also, the character doesn’t talk, only shoots, and it’s a very serious game.

I’ve never seen an ambulance doing this…

Hollywood
The game is, next to mafia like, also very Hollywood like: giant explosions, Hollywood car chases and of course jumps and stunts with your car (there is even a jump in it that looks like the car-stunt in the James Bond film “The man with the Golden Gun”).
This Hollywood elements make the game impressive, and it even fits the game situation.

b00m

Violent interaction
Of course, one of the things that made GTA such a success is the possibility to kill people a digital way using a lot of different weapons. The blood and the popping citizens aren’t very realistic, but it gives the game a bloody effect.
It’s a pity that there are missing a couple of things in this game, but they are added to the sequels, like jumping out of the car while driving, swimming (not too hard, isn’t it?), shooting people out of cars, a realistic fighting system (with different accuracy for different guns), and maybe they must have added a crouching possibility, very helpfull if your being attacked. Maybe this could’ve helped you through the last mission. These are a few of the things I missed in GTA 3.

The chaos in GTA 3 can be very serious and can cause nice chases, like a guy in a sports car chased by the army in tanks, or something like it. The problem of the police is the AI, the chance that they get you is very little, and they don’t catch you, they kill you, not a very police-like way to work… Also the “dangerous” helicopters are easy to fool, this can make the chases very irritating and boring.

The weapons in the game are realistic most of the time, but there aren’t much though. Also the weapons aren’t overpowered like you see in some games, but it’s a pity that you can’t hide behind walls or something like it, it would have made the shooting a lot nicer.

Drive along? No I’ll drive myself

Auto?
Yes, GTA stands for Grand Theft Auto, it is “Grand”, much of “Theft”, but not so much “Auto”. There are of course a nice number of cars that you can “borrow” but I expected some more racing in the game. There is one phone with racing elements in it and some other race missions. But not many… and your fellow racers always drive exactly the same way, that’s why they smash up to other cars and do other weird tricks, making them lose in the end.
There are many different things that you can “borrow” from limo’s to ugly cars to racing cars to ice cream cars.
The collisions look realistic, well, the cars are maybe a little bit too strong, but all right.
It’s a pity they stick to “Auto” because there are only 3 other ways of transport in the form of a boat, no motors, bikes, helicopters or flying airplanes.
Luckily you can do a lot with the cars, like unique jumps, which are most of the time spectacular, but you must find a map on the net to find them all, they are well hidden.
If you’ve done all unique jumps, you can do base jumping with your car, or fly with a tank, of course with a code.

woehoe, shooting of a roof

Conclusion
A very good game that looks fine, even these days, with the right configuration. Also the music is good, nice tracks from the radio stations, you can even add your own music if you don’t like them. The free-roaming isn’t boring quick, but they could gave added some more areas, missions and sub-missions.

Sound: excellent, if the music bores you, you can switch it off. The sound effects are good, only the shots sound a bit weird…
Graphics: Still look good, nice 3D, sometimes a frame drop or large pixels, but mostly it is smooth. Only the explosions look very fake, but I don’t know of games in which they look like real…
Gameplay: It plays very well, smooth controlling, only the drowning is irritating, but the game reacts good on your commandos, and you want to play it till the end.
Lifetime: Long, very long. You can be happy with the missions for a long time, and you’ll be playing the game much longer if you want to get the 100%.; After that, you’ve got nothing more to do…. You’ll throw the game in the trash bin, because you can’t do anything else than causing mayhem and driving around because of the lack of submissions.

Score: 9