Vice City is a perfect game...

Vice City Stories is the opposite of perfect!


It's been a long week. A few months ago, I decided to 100 percent the 3D GTA games. I'm in no rush, of course. I have already perfected III, Vice City, and San Andreas, so now it's time to get to the lesser known side games. I have made mistakes.

VCS takes place two years before Vice City. It plays similarly to it, but you're in the role of Victor Vance, the brother of Lance Vance, a friend turned foe in the first game. He's also the guy who dies in the opening cutscene. We experience Vic's attempts to provide asthma medication for his youngest brother, Pete. Victor ends up working for his CO, gets betrayed by his CO, and develops a massive criminal empire as a response. As one does! During the next few months, we kill a redneck, make friends, fall in love, get betrayed, suffer heartache, and see the backstory of the great Lance Vance. It turns out he deserved it. In the end, we accidentally make Vice City a better place...for Ricardo Dias.

Doing so is among the worst things I've done in a game. There are so many gameplay issues that make perfecting VCS a torture device. So many cars feel like they're on ice, and it's not just because the tires are always flat. Even worse, the target shooting is a pain in the ass. Sometimes, it won't lock on, and Vic always needs to take off the safety before firing! Why do I need to press circle twice!? And manual aim isn't fun with one joystick. It's also one of the first games I've ever thought, "there are too many useless side missions here." The vehicle missions are back, but you need to reach level fifteen to finish them. There are checkpoints in five level intervals, but they don't make up for the additional tedium. And there's even more of them! Did we need to airdrop water on burning buildings? As much as I enjoy the racing games, we don't need nine with another thirty two checkpoint ones!

The radio was perfectly fine. It wasn't up to VC standards, but I enjoyed it more than San Andreas. The commercials were the highlights, along with Maurice Chaves again. So many others have been expanded on, and it's neat "seeing" NPCs and DJs "grow" as people. I didn't enjoy the songs as much, but I kinda want to listen to more Phil Collins.

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Plot: Good enough. Vic is an interesting character. He's relatable, but I feel like his instance of staying away from drug dealing doesn't mean anything. He seems to go into it quick enough. The story has enough twists and heartbreaks, but it does feel rushed. 7/10

Gameplay: Not fun. It's actually a perfectly fine game, but don't master this mess. The controls and gameplay work in small doses, but twenty hours should be your max time. 8/10

Art: Fine. It's a Rockstar game that's just Vice City. It worked then, and it works now. Good luck dealing with the pop ins and twilights. 7/10

Sound: Fine. It's a Rockstar game that's just Vice City. It worked then, and it works now. Good luck dealing with music from 1984. 10/10

Charm: Rockstar. It's a Rockstar game that's just Vice City. It worked then, and it works now. Good luck dealing with excessive tedium. 9/10

All of this amounts to an amazing 41/50. But don't forget the negatives.
The controls are a mess.
The shooting sucks.
Driving isn't fun.
Why are my tires always flat?
Why did they use GTA3 car durability?
They really should have removed the boring missions.
Don't take away my guns for a mission!

And then the bugs: garages don't save cars, and people get stuck under cars a lot.

Between the tedium, the controls, the bugs, and the questionable mechanics, we get -23. A new record! Deduce that from the previous total, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is a terrible 18 out of 50.

I wanted to master the side games, but the excessive amount of busy work made me realize it's not worth it. I 100 percented the main trilogy, so I'm just gonna chillax on the additional content. A BMX checkpoint mission broke me, by the way.

I wasted a week on this nonsense that I could have spent in Carthage!