Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

"I can honestly call this title "Glitch Theft Auto" since it has many glitches."

I know that most fans of this game will see my score and think that I am some anti-GTA (Grand Theft Auto) gamer but I am not. I have all five GTA games for the PS2 (III, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories), and enjoyed three of the five very much. San Andreas felt more like GTA: The Sims, and this game could have been great if it wasn't for the glitches and some of the missions.

I'm a huge fan of Rockstar, since they made GTA and Manhunt. I also enjoyed Red Dead Revolver and State of Emergency (to a certain point, then it wasn't fun). I can't wait for Manhunt 2, but if this is the way that current GTA games are going to be made then I could care less about GTA IV.

I'll be pointing out the good and the bad for this game. I ignored some problems with the earlier GTA's but since this is the fifth game from Rockstar they really needed to fix these problems instead of rushing the title out.

Presentation-
Since Rockstar was too busy with GTA IV (who knows, but this is my opinion), this title suffered from many problems. Having played all the PS2 games, this title is by far the worst glitched game in the series. The story was good, and some missions were super cheap! But the glitches/bugs is where this game goes down the toilet. Rockstar just wanted to make more money on this game since PSP sales are a joke for any title that they release. Plus since Liberty City Stories probably did well on the PS2, it was just a matter of time before the second PSP game would be ported.

Even as I write this review, I am disgusted by how horrible this game was! I loved Vice City and I couldn't wait for this other title set in the same city. After completing this game all I wanted to do is replay Vice City and enjoy that game all over again. At least that Vice City wasn't glitch/bug ridden. 5/10.

Graphics-
They are not bad for a PSP port. I know that some people say to keep the “Trails” on to enhance the graphics, but I didn't like how the game looked with them on. I didn't like how some parts of the game wouldn't load until you were right on it (road, building).

I must have had about six slow down times during my game. There was some serious lag going on in the game that personally shouldn't happen in my opinion. When I was doing my Robbery missions for the Empires when I had to return from one side of the island to the other, after the loading screen the game would go slow for about ten seconds then go back to normal. Two of the six instances happened on this side mission. Other than that, I don't have too much to say about this part. 7/10.

Sound-
The radio stations get all the credit here! My favorite two were VROCK and VCPR. The 80's music on VROCK was awesome and just as good as it was in Vice City. Plus the DJ's were funny to listen to. VCPR had me laughing with their radio dramas set during the 1940's. The detective and time traveler stories were out there! I am thankful that these funny stories were on the game, since I needed to laugh after almost wanting to break my controller after all the glitches and/or hard missions.

The rest of the sound is okay. Nothing to get upset over, or go crazy about. Weapons sound like weapons, and vehicles have their normal sound to them. The sound clips that Vic would say to other people, or while carjacking are funny to listen to. Listening to the sound clips from the pedestrians is also good for a laugh. Basically, all of the voice acting is great in the game. From the small stuff, to the lines read during the cut scenes. 10/10.

Gameplay-
I don't know where to begin with this section…Do I complain about the bad, or compliment the good? I'll do the bad first, and get that out of the way I guess.

The bad:

Glitches/Garage. The game is filled with them. I used to read about all of these glitches in previous GTA games, but I never ran into them. Besides the “Red Nines” glitch from GTA III, and a problem getting a Unique Jump to register in Vice City the games would work fine. EXCEPT for the fact that all GTA games have a problem with the garages. It is a fact that the garages in the GTA games eat cars. I can understand and be okay with this glitch in III and Vice City. But after that, Rockstar really needed to address this problem and fix it! But no. The problem continued in San Andreas, and both PSP ports. This is when I said, “Enough is enough!” If Rockstar is going to act like this glitch isn't worth fixing then I will mark their game down one point.

Cars. I don't know where this glitch came from, since none of the other GTA games have this problem. There will be times in the game when all cars will disappear and only cars that spawn in the same spot (parked) will be seen. Some people would say, “It's because you are out at night and there isn't any traffic. It is realistic.” Well, how about when this problem happens during the morning, afternoon, and evening? In order to fix this problem, the gamer has to reset their game. In fact, a lot of these problems that are in the game require a reset or a reload. Or when you are about to do a mission, and after the cut scene is over your car is gone and you are forced to find a vehicle or use the terrible car by the starting point. Finally, when you leave your vehicle don't go too far! I've had the vehicle disappear just from walking a few feet to get a weapon/health/armor icon. I would get the icon, turn around and see that my vehicle had disappeared.

I wasn't about to mark the game down for this, until I decided to go on a rampage and kill some people. As I was killing a few people that I had seen walking around, some cops showed up. I killed them, and my wanted level went up. As I was running around, I noticed that there were no cars around. All the cops were on foot chasing me, and they were in large numbers. As I continued to kill, the stars went up until I was at six. No cars still, but there was a helicopter and cops on foot. That's it. Then the game started to go REAL slow. So slow that I had to reload my game save since it wasn't possible to play anymore without wanting to break something. For this problem, the game loses another point. Since the cars were never loading in the game while I was killing people/cops, it must have been the glitch with the cars.

Missions. Without going into detail about what missions were a problem, I'll just explain the reasons why I had trouble in the game. One mission where your computer controlled partner is heading towards someone's house and you need to protect them during the drive there. You first need to find a car/motorcycle and chase him down before he takes damage. After you manage to get a vehicle, you need to shoot the gang cars that are shooting at your partner, except that your partner keeps getting in your way! You can shoot the gang car from behind, and your partner will drive back and forth in front of you, so you can't shoot without hitting him. If you shoot the gang car from the side, your partner will then drive on the side of the gang car! It's almost like he wants to die, but if he does the mission is over!

Any mission where you need to drive a vehicle from one spot to another, and you are chased by several gang cars. These cars will spray bullets at you and within seconds you are smoking or on fire. Yet it takes forever for you to shoot them and make them explode. Not to mention that they can pop your tires with ease, but you can't take their tires out as easily. Plus the vehicles that you drive are either slow, or handle like garbage. Those missions were not fun, and were more of a chore to get through instead of an enjoyment. Oh, and the hovercraft is worthless! How can someone program the steering/control of a simple hovercraft so poorly?! I wanted to have fun with this vehicle but couldn't. The side missions for this vehicle were a pain, but I was able to do them. I just seem to hate any mission that deals with water vehicles.

Empire building. After reading about gamers being attacked all the time, I decided to skip this part until the end. Well, I tried to anyways. You need to have seven Empires by the end of the game. While I was getting the certain limit while playing the story missions I wasn't attacked, and that made me happy. By the time I had the story missions over and the other side missions completed I started to take over other Empires. Even after saving after each takeover, I would have an Empire attacked in under ten seconds from leaving my save house. Doing a restart on the PS2 fixes this, but it gets annoying.

Then something happened that really upset me. I had all of the Empires taken over on the West side of the island and started in on the East side. I was about to take over my twenty forth Empire when a major glitch occurred. One of the Empires on the West side went from being mine, to having no owner! I reloaded my save and retook the twenty forth Empire. After buying the Empire and checking my stats, the Empire on the West side still went from mine to nobody's! So I had to restart the PS2 (to avoid being attacked) and then traveled all the way over to the un-owned Empire. By the time that I traveled to it, the Sharks had now owned the Empire. I took it over and then saved and went back to the East side.

I had twenty-nine Empires and only needed one more. Inside of my save house I could look at my map and see that the Sharks owned the building and it was for Drugs. But by the time I left my save house, the Empire turned into a repair in progress building owned by the Sharks with no vehicle outside to attack. I had to drive around for about three hours game time until the Empire was normal again with a vehicle outside. I had read about one Empire without a vehicle outside of it, but that was because a story mission had to be done first. I had all of my story missions completed, and was worried that the Empire was glitched, but thankfully the glitch was minor since I was able to get all thirty.

The good:

The story is interesting, but some parts are only there to move the story along. Plus since I've played the other GTA games, most of the plot seemed familiar. The characters were either ones that you wanted dead, or were happy to have as allies.

Searching for balloons was fun, and a nice change of pace for the hidden packages side mission. Also, having extra Unique Jumps and Rampages on the PS2 version was cool since it added eleven more things to do. Plus the extra six side missions were both challenging and entertaining.

When you have all Empires owned, you have bulletproof vehicles outside of the buildings. These vehicles can come in handy since bullets can't harm them. You probably won't have too many people attacking you when you have 100%, but if you did the Empires early, those cars can help you out in later missions.

The extra skins are okay. Not bad or good. If they had some fun skins like they did in Liberty City Stories then it would have been great! I was really hoping for a Zombie skin to use since I love Zombies and that mission in the mall was awesome!

Being able to swim is nice, but when you are early in the game and fall into the water and can't climb out it sucks since you will eventually drown. Later on, when you can get infinite swimming the water isn't the enemy anymore and you can have fun with it.

Breaking necks. I never get bored with this. A fun way to get some kills without using up any ammo.

In all, the score for this section is a 5/10.

Lasting Appeal-
Depending on how you played the game (doing the Empires all at once, or only doing the amount needed during story mode), you could have more to do after story mode. This also goes for any side missions that you might of skipped and wanted to do later (for 100%). All GTA games can be played for many hours if you enjoy just driving around, or killing people, or doing the driving missions for cash.

After having to fight with this game because of glitches, I will be taking a break from playing this title. The lasting appeal for me will be cut short, but after completing the game for 100% I was able to put in about fifty hours, which isn't bad. Maybe after I cool off from the game, I can play around with it like I do other GTA games. Until then, I still have III, Liberty City Stories, and Vice City to enjoy. 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/07