After several months of hating the games I'd been playing, I needed something comforting to make me happy again. It's a breath of fresh air that isn't actually fresh. But it still is rewarding and something I'm used to. I played hundreds of hours of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my Playstation 2 when it first came out. I'm probably over 100 hours on Steam since I bought it again six or so years ago. It holds up, and I loved it. I see no point in writing a 2000 word essay about a twenty-year-old game that doesn't fit my usual assortment, so let's get to the review. It feels RPG enough, so I can stick to my boilerplate!
Story: Perfect. There are a few twists and turns that make the characters feel alive and interesting. Could they have done more? Of course, but it's an open world game from 2001. Hardware was still limited, and VC was a bit of a precursor. Besides, it's a gangster movie rip off before anything else. Backstory, interesting villains, motivations: it's all here. 10/10
Gameplay: Perfect. The core mechanics of the game are shooting and blowing stuff up. It's here in abundance and in several ways. If you love driving through a world, listening to songs from the 80, you can. You also have the option to take a tank or attack helicopter and slaughter the civilians, cops, and army until they take you down. I love doing both. And thanks to the new property stuff and the missions therein, it's worthwhile to enjoy the story. It's a massive expansion from previous GTA games. 10/10
Art: Perfect. There are a lot of duplicate sprites for civilians and men in uniform, but there are plenty of unique people throughout. And it's not like there are only three of four randoms anyway. There's still a wide assortment of nameless randos. Things rarely get washed out, animations work, and the visual appeal holds up. Not to poo-poo on the "Definitive Edition," but the Steam port of the game looks better than the version released in 2021. It looks better than the PS2 too. 10/10
Sound: Perfect. It's a bit cheaty because most of the music is licensed, but I'm adding a new category just for Vice City: voice acting. It's not something I've touched on much, but everyone in fake Miami sounds amazing! I can recall their voice and a few lines to get a good grasp on their personality just by thinking about how they'd say something. Ray Liotta, the voice of Tommy Vercetti, gets a lot of credit, but whoever spoke for Cortez, Vance, and Love Fist need more recognition (which I'm not giving them because I'm not Googleing their names). Also, the radio station DJs and ads fit perfectly! 10/10
Charm: Perfect. There's something about looking up and seeing airplanes flying in the sky that fills me with a strange sense of joy. I have no idea why. I also enjoy seeing the occasional bird, but I wish they'd be more. Compared to GTAIII and San Andreas, VC feels so tiny, though. The other two games feel emptier, though, so the compactness of the Miami evens out. 10/10
Negatives: Nothing worth mentioning. It's annoying how easily Tommy falls off of motorcycles, sometimes, but Rockstar was still sorting that out, I guess.
So there you have it. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the first official 50/50, 100 percent game I've ever played. I've also ranked Assassin's Creed Brotherhood as a 50/50, but I haven't written about it, so it's not official. But I believe VC deserves this honor. It was a blast to play on release, and it holds up twenty years later. There's so much stuff to do, even have you've beaten and completed it. I'm planning to keep playing it even though I'm done. There are still titles to earn, news coverage to gain, and money to make. And if I fight off the army again, well, that's just innocent fun. I won this place, after all!
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