Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

"A guide for those who loved Vice City but are unsure of this."

Anybody who has been to Vice City before knows the town is a casual place that is bustling with parties and fun. Keeping in that spirit I'm going to keep this review pretty informal, but I will say it is directed to those who are already familiar with the general GTA experience. Anyone new to the series can read up on plot outlines and the basics of gameplay mechanics from practically every other review out there, so there's little need for me to echo those details.

Although Vice City had been my favorite GTA to date, I was skeptical about trying this prequel for fear that it not live up to the Vice City legacy and thus ruin the atmosphere of the city I had so come to love. So let me just make it clear that I am writing this review to address the issues that I was most concerned with pre-purchase that I wish had been better explained in other reviews.

Empires

Okay, this was my biggest concern so let's get it out of the way first. Vice City Stories incorporates a system that I have seen referred to as a blend of San Andreas' gang turf wars with the original Vice City's asset system. This is a fairly accurate description. Here's the rundown: there are 30 properties up for grabs in Vice City now, and at the start of the game each is run by one of three gangs: the Cholos, the Sharks, or the Bikers. To claim one of these businesses for your own you must provoke a gang into battle, defeat them by destroying their merchandise, and then purchase their business. When the land is yours you can establish one of six types of businesses and start collecting profits on a daily basis. This is easy. The problem is when the gang decides to retaliate.

Through story missions you will acquire about three of these properties hassle free, meaning that they are "given" to you and as long as you don't try to take over any other properties and provoke a gang you'll be left alone. Eventually the game will require you to expand your empire and drive another gang out of town. After your first successful take-over the defeated gang will start ransacking your properties, giving you the option of either a) defending your land in a gunfight, or b) letting it get trashed, forcing you to pay for it to be repaired. Apparently if the same building is attacked several times you will lose ownership of it and will have to re-take it by the method described in the previous paragraph (though I never had this happen personally). To make matters worse, when the gang sees you driving/walking around town they will do drive-bys, and at least if it is the Shark gang, you'll probably die instantly (think the GTAIII mafia in Portland only worse). Yes, they are THAT vicious. Four guys with AK-47s in an SUV. I hope you have health insurance.

Sounds like a real hassle, I know, but there's a trick to make it much easier. The key is to only target one gang at a time, ignoring further story missions until you have completely taken over ALL of that gang's properties. It goes much faster than you'd think since they likely hold less than 10 anyway. Your places will be attacked in the process, but I ignored them and paid to have them fixed (like $500-1500 apiece, cheap) when the war was over. Although you might still get attacked by the gang when they own 0% of the land (which is weird), if you save the game and reload the file the attacks will stop. Simple as that! Once the gang is 100% gone drive-bys should also stop, thank God. The whole system is not nearly as tedious as it sounds if you use the aforementioned trick, otherwise you might be defending your territories constantly (I'm talking like every 2 minutes here, which is absurd), and get very little done in terms of the story.

The best part of it all is that once every in-game day all the profits for your properties are pooled and deposited into your account automatically so you don't have to spend time driving around collecting cash like you had to for your assets in the original Vice City. You'll be a millionaire pretty quickly. I was raking in $91,500 per day after I got a monopoly on all 30 properties.

Gameplay

Herein lies the greatest asset to this game. Everything regarding how your character is controlled has been improved upon. I'll break this up into sub-categories:

Swimming

My most dreaded part of the original Vice City was the fear that I would have to dock a boat. Even if lined up perfectly with the dock there was a significant chance that Tommy wouldn't complete the jump from the boat to the shore and would fall into the sea, drowning instantly. Worse yet were the times I ran aground on some rigging offshore, unable to free my boat, thus being forced to suicide in order to get back to the main island. NO MORE. The new character of Victor has learned how to float. The swimming system is not exactly as it was in San Andreas, most notably because you can only swim for a limited time. While in the water Victor has a stamina bar and when it runs out he will eventually drown, but that still takes several minutes, ample time for him to get back to dry land (or hijack a passing boat, an added perk that was impossible in the first VC). Through a side-mission you can earn infinite stamina (thus infinite swimming time). The only thing you cannot do while swimming is dive, but seeing as though there is nothing of interest underwater anyway this is not a problem.

Combat

The free-aim system of San Andreas also returns. Now when you use any gun a reticle appears on-screen when you push the L3 button. This lets you point your weapon in any direction and fire. Now you can blow out tires, execute head shots, and do other fun things. When not using free-aim you can still push R1 to auto-target another person and lock on to them automatically for a very quick kill. This is great since in the heat of battle you don't have to be bothered with lining up each shot perfectly; just lock-on, fire, boom they're dead, move on.

Something new is the improvement to hand-to-hand combat. See, Victor is in the army so he knows a thing or two about how to fight. While other GTA protagonists could only punch or kick, Vic can sneak up on people from behind and grab them. From here you can snap their necks, throw them to the ground, or beat on them while they're held. If a victim is already on the ground you can pounce on him and keep hitting him. These techniques admittedly aren't used a lot since most of the time you'll be shooting people, but they are fun and provide variety, so I'm very happy they were added.

Losing Weapons

A chronic problem in the GTA series has been that if you are either arrested or killed you will lose your arsenal of weapons, which can take a long time to re-accumulate, as well as being very costly. Thankfully Vice City Stories addresses this by allowing you to buy them back immediately after re-spawning for a mere $2000. While that might sound like a lot, after only a couple missions you'll be wallowing in cash so it's really only a mere drop in the bucket that is your massive bank vault. While this is mostly a convenience thing, it is loooong overdue and thus is greatly appreciated here.

Camera

It is worth mentioning the fully controllable camera from San Andreas has also returned, allowing for complete 360 degree rotation with the right joystick while on foot or driving. Understandably, this makes exploring Vice City all the more easier and was something that was sorely missed in our first visit to the city.

Soundtrack

Music

GTA:VC had perhaps the most amazing roster of '80s music you could have possibly wished for. Big name bands with their #1 hits could be found on just about every station. But perhaps the best part of that game was the nearly 2 hour scripted radio show on K-Chat hosted by the lovable and funny Amy Sheckenhausen.

If there's anything I can denounce Vice City Stories for is that its soundtrack doesn't quite live up to that of its predecessor. A lot of the same bands donate their songs to this game, but often they are the lesser known hits. Whereas Toto's masterpiece "Africa" was played in Vice City, now we get Toto's "Make Believe", a song I'd never heard of before this game. VCS also introduced (to me at least) several bands I'd never heard of, and I thought I was pretty familiar with '80s music. Such artists include Rainbow, Gino Vannelli, Yazoo, and Heaven 17. I guess this could be construed as a good thing since it got me to like several new songs, but I did somewhat miss the familiarity of songs I'd grown up with.

Although that's not to say all our old familiar favorites have disappeared. You may recognize such names as Blondie, Rick James, and Barry White. Pat Benatar's "We Belong" and "Love is a Battlefield" both make appearances, as well as Scandal's "The Warrior". Two of Phil Collins' classics "Easy Lover" and "In the Air Tonight" have also been included. It's worth mentioning that Collins himself makes several appearances in the game and toward the end you can purchase a ticket to attend his concert in which he plays a special live performance of "In the Air Tonight". This alone makes the soundtrack totally awesome.

Talk Radio & Script

Up until this point I'd still give the soundtrack a perfect score, it is still just that good, but what really crushed me was the complete absence of K-Chat. Since this game is a prequel the station apparently hadn't been formed yet, and thus there is no Amy in this game. :(
I know, but at least VCPR is still on the air, and Maurice Chavez returns. However instead of having the network solely to himself he must share the airwaves with other talk programs. Here is where things can get a little raunchy. For instance, one show is a replay of a 1940s era broadcast in which a man travels through time by manually stimulating his genitals. Yeah, I didn't make that up. There are sound effects too. If that's your thing then you're in luck. Personally, I turn the dial when that clip comes on. The bottom line is that the script is more lewd than that of its predecessor. Flash FM is again hosted by Toni, but now she has a co-host, Teri. They trade pot-shots at one another constantly, slinging insults and innuendo. It's amusing at first, but after awhile you may grow tired of hearing about the girls' herpes infections and their enthusiasm to perform oral sex to obtain cocaine. It was kind of disheartening to see Rockstar change Toni from being an energetic party girl to a promiscuous slut, but I guess we have to just chalk it up to her lack of maturity, this being a prequel and all.

Regarding profanity, Vice City Stories borrows from San Andreas in that it utilizes the F word, although thankfully not on a sentence-by-sentence basis that SA did. It is used more in moderation, but while still not tasteful, it's at least tolerable.

Cool Features

Transportation

Okay, let's get back to the good stuff. VCS offers a wide array of vehicles for you to toy around with that were not found in the original Vice City. These include: ATV quad bikes, police motorbikes, hovercrafts, bulldozers, forklifts, pedal bicycles, and a jet ski, which makes its series debut. Also new is a purchasable one seat gyrocopter equipped with machine guns, perfect for terrorizing helpless tourists! In total VCS boasts about 10 air vehicles, such as a biplane, sea skimmer, and two types of emergency rescue helicopters. Most of your old favorite cars and trucks seem to have returned as well, so don't fear that a lot of things were cut out to make room.

Side missions

There are now more than ever. The usual ambulance, vigilante, fire truck, and taxi missions are still there, but with a twist. Instead of having to complete a dozen levels for each you'll now have to finish 15. While this sounds more daunting, be advised that there will be checkpoints every five levels, meaning you no longer have to do the entirety of the missions all in one sitting. Other GTA staples, such as races, also return, which utilize more of the vehicles at your disposal, such as the jet ski, motorcycles, various aircrafts, and even a golf caddy.

Vice City Stories offers several other completely new missions to the series as well. One lets you rampage in the cab of an semi truck where you make it your goal to cause as much financial damage to property as possible within a time limit. Another has you play the role of a coast guard rescuer in which you commandeer a patrol boat to save drowning swimmers by throwing life vests to them. Both of the new helicopters also come complete with their own missions. The fire department's chopper allows you to douse fires from the air, whereas the hospital's lets you rescue injured people strewn throughout the city and fly them to the nearest medical center. You do get rewarded for this, such as gaining a boost to maximum health, so it pays to take part in these scenarios.

Though I have never played the PSP version of this game, I am to understand that the PS2 release includes several additional missions, including more rampages and stunt jumps. For anyone who strives for 100% completion, let me just say you have your work cut out for you.

Glitches

I thought I'd better address this since I see it brought up in other reviews. A common complaint is that the "draw distance" isn't very good, i.e., you'll be driving along and crash into some invisible object that only appears a few moments later because of a lag in loading. During the whole game I only experienced this once, and ironically it was while I was in a helicopter and going slowly (I hit a crane, which was hard enough to see already at night, lol). Bottom line, I hopped on the PCJ and tore through the straightaways at full speed and everything loaded perfectly. I had no crashes so I don't understand this complaint. Maybe it was more prevalent on the PSP. Aside from that I had no other glitches occur, so at least in my experience this is also the best performing GTA to date.

Summary

So there you have it. Vice City Stories incorporates a lot of new features found in San Andreas and adds them to the Vice City world to make it more interactive than before. Because of the abundance of money, the ability to retain weapons post-death/capture, and the improved versatility in combat, I would say this is the easiest GTA I've played, but that does not in any way make it dull. Vice City Stories makes some much needed improvements to its predecessor and pulls through as being a much better and more polished game overall, and possibly the most well-rounded GTA on the Playstation 2.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/08/08, Updated 12/26/08

Game Release: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (US, 03/05/07)