Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (
GTA:VC) is the fourth
computer and video game in the
Grand Theft Auto franchise. Designed by
Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by
Rockstar Games, it debuted in North America on October 27,
2002 for the
PlayStation 2 and quickly became the best-selling video game for that year. As of July 2006,
Vice City is, in the
American market, the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time.
Vice City also appeared on Japanese magazine
Famitsu's readers' list of all-time favorite 100 videogames in 2006 [
1]. Following this success,
Vice City saw releases in
Europe,
Australia and
Japan, and became available on the
PC.
Rockstar Vienna also packaged the game with its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, and sold it as
Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack for the
Xbox.
It uses a tweaked version of the game engine used by its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, and similarly presents a huge cityscape, fully populated with buildings (from hotels to skyscrapers), vehicles (cars, motocycles, boats, helicopters, and planes) and people.
The game was succeeded by
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
|
Riding a motorcycle towards Downtown at dawn, PC version. In contrast to GTA III, Vice Citys setting is a cleaner and sunnier resort city. |
The game is set in fictional
Vice City, which is based on
Miami, Florida. The game's look, particularly the clothing and vehicles, reflect (and sometimes gently parody) its 1986 setting (with the packaging and artwork in particular owing a great debt to 1980s artist
Patrick Nagel). In contrast to the gritty urbanism of Grand Theft Auto IIIs
Liberty City, Vice City appears (mostly) clean and upscale, with golden beaches, waving
palm trees, and vivid purple sunsets.
Vice City is a loose prequel to the preceding game in the series,
GTA III, which took place in the present day at the time of its 2001 release.
Plot
The player takes the role of
Tommy Vercetti, who has recently been released from prison in Liberty City. While attempting to re-establish himself within the
Forelli Mafia family, boss
Sonny Forelli sends Tommy to Vice City to supervise an important drug deal. At the exchange, masked gunmen kill three of the people involved in the trade (two Forelli henchmen and Victor Vance,
Lance Vance's brother), stealing both the drugs and the money Tommy was charged with protecting. Vercetti narrowly escapes and informs Sonny, who demands that Tommy get back both the "product" and the money. Both Sonny
and Tommy wish to kill those responsible for the theft.
Much of the action in
Vice City concerns Vercetti's burgeoning criminal empire, spanning
drug trafficking, contract killings,
counterfeiting, and
protection. The player progresses through the game narrative by performing a series of missions, most of which involve criminal activities. This takes Vercetti from being a small-time hood staying in a beachfront hotel to being the city's crime
kingpin, but Sonny is looming over Tommy until he finally comes down to get his stuff personally. And in a shootout similar to that of the ending of the
Brian De Palma film
Scarface, Tommy Vercetti kills Sonny Forelli and his traitorous partner
Lance Vance.
Theme
|
Ocean Beach at night, PC version. |
Many themes are borrowed from the film
Scarface, from the hit
1980s television series
Miami Vice and numerous other cultural events and artifacts predominantly from the 1980s.
Vercetti's opulent mansion, Club Malibu, and the climactic battle which takes place in it at the game's end, are very similar to their counterparts in
Scarface. Another most obvious reference is the game's overall storyline, as it is highly similar to the films, as is the design of the final mission. There are also more subtle references, such as a hidden apartment room with blood on the bathroom walls and a chainsaw (in a nod to the film's "chainsaw torture" scene). The mansion
Ricardo Diaz, the game's drug baron lives in bears a very striking similarity to the mansion Tony Montana lives in. Not to forget, the "Mr. Vercetti" suit players receive when purchasing a local strip club, strongly resembles
Tony Montana's suit which he wears toward the end of the movie. The only difference being that Tommy's undershirt is pink instead of white.
Most of the characters wear the then-fashionable white or pastel baggy cotton suits and, like
Miami Vice, much of the action takes place in mansions, on
speedboats, or in other glamorous settings. In fact, if the player's "wanted level" reaches three stars, an undercover sports car joins the police in chasing the player; the occupants of the sports car are two undercover police officers who dress in a manner reminiscent of
Miami Vice's lead characters.
Additional
popular culture references include:
Top Gun. Across town there are several
Top Fun vans to be found, through which a minigame is played, often involving racing miniature planes.
Taxi - The interior of Kaufman Cabs is almost identical to that of the taxi depot in the television series that aired in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The name is an homage to one of Taxi's stars, the late
Andy Kaufman.
Heat - during the bank robbery during the 'Heist' mission is very similar to the one in the movie.
The Godfather Part II - A condominium available for purchase and a stadium bear the "Hyman" name, a reference to
a character from the movie.
Carlito's Way -
Ken Rosenberg, Tommy Vercetti's lawyer and advisor looks and acts like David Kleinfeld from the film.
The game also features many references to 1980s trends and events:
*
Second generation video games and home
video game consoles: in radio commercials for the "Degenetron" games console, graphics are referred to "green dots" and a "red square".
*
Pablo Escobar, and by association the cocaine subculture of the game's setting, are alluded to by the Vice City airport's name: Escobar International.
*
Hair metal is parodied through the game's fictitious band
Love Fist in the fashion of
Spinal Tap.
*
Cold War - Referenced many times on several radio stations, including VCPR, in which
Congressman Alex Shrub accuses another speaker of "sounding
red"
*Typical
80s music -
New Wave, 1980s
hip hop and
synthesizer pop.
*
Self-help programs, including those on
Thor, as well as Jeremy Robard's "Think Your Way To Success" program.
*
Politicians from the 80's:
Ronald Reagan,
Margaret Thatcher and
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Characters
The game features dozens of characters, many appearing only in the
cut scenes which describe each mission.
Although the main character is not the same as the one in
Grand Theft Auto III,
Vice City contains a few characters from
GTA III at an earlier point in their lives.
Donald Love, a business tycoon in
GTA III, makes an appearance as an apprentice to
real estate mogul
Avery Carrington.
Lazlow, who played the host of
Chatterbox, the talk radio station in
GTA III, is the DJ for
the hard-rock station in Vice City (he mentioned in passing in
GTA III that he used to be a DJ on a rock station). Toni, the burned-out, female
disc jockey of
Flashback 95.6, the 1980s music radio station in
GTA III, also appears as a young, club-hopping DJ in
Vice City's pop music station, Flash FM, an obvious reference to
GTA III. Finally, Fernando, a self-glorifying procurer of women (
"not a pimp... a savior" he claims) who appeared on Lazlow's show in
GTA III runs
the Emotion radio station. The one armed
Phil Cassidy from
GTA III appears in
Vice City as well, and one mission actually explains when and how he lost his arm.
The voice-talent includes
Ray Liotta as Vercetti,
Tom Sizemore,
Dennis Hopper,
Burt Reynolds,
Luis Guzmán,
Miami Vice star
Philip Michael Thomas,
Danny Trejo,
Gary Busey,
Lee Majors,
Fairuza Balk, and porn actress
Jenna Jameson. The voice of the taxi dispatcher is provided by Blondie singer
Debbie Harry.
|
Flying a helicopter over Vice Point, PC version |
Because
Vice City was built upon
Grand Theft Auto III, the game follows a largely similar gameplay design and interface with
GTA III with several tweaks and improvements over its predecessor. The gameplay is very open-ended, a characteristic of the
Grand Theft Auto franchise; although missions must be completed to complete the storyline and unlock new areas of the city, the player is able to drive around and visit different parts of the city (once "unlocked") and otherwise do whatever they wish if not currently working on a mission. Various items such as hidden weapons and packages are also scattered throughout the landscape, as it has been with previous
GTA titles.
Players can steal vehicles, (
cars,
boats,
motorcycles,
helicopters, and even a
plane) partake in drive-by shootings, robberies, and generally create chaos. However, doing so generally attracts unwanted and potentially fatal attention from the police (or, in extreme cases, the
FBI and even the
National Guard). Police behavior is mostly similar to
Grand Theft Auto III, but there is the addition of
spike strips to puncture the tires of a car the player is fleeing in, as well as
SWAT teams deployed from flying police helicopters and the aforementioned undercover police units, ala-
Miami Vice. A fifth form of law enforcement has also been added:
security guards, who patrol certain parts of the city. Armed with only pistols, they will attack if the player commits a crime, but cannot arrest the player or increase the wanted level.
Unlike previous games in the franchise, the player can also purchase a number of properties distributed around the city. Some of these are additional hideouts (essentially locations where weapons can be collected and the game saved). There are also a variety of businesses called "assets" which the player can buy. These include a
pornographic film studio, a dance club, a
taxi company, an "ice-cream" delivery business, a boatyard, and a printing works. Each commercial property has a number of missions attached to it, such as eliminating the competition or stealing equipment. Once all the missions for a given property are complete the property provides an ongoing income, which the increasingly-prosperous Vercetti must periodically uplift. This makes the storyline and missions less linear than the preceding
GTA III, although there are a set of "core missions", some required before the player can purchase properties, and others being triggered as the player complete asset-related missions.
|
Police trouble, PC version. |
Various
gangs make frequent appearances in the game, some of whom are integral to story events. These gangs typically have a positive or negative opinion of the player and act accordingly by shooting at the player or following him. Shootouts between members of rival gangs can occur spontaneously and several missions involve organized fights between opposing gangs.
One is also able to carry out productive and (mostly) non-violent activities in the game such as
pizza deliveries, driving injured people to a
hospital with an
ambulance, extinguishing fires with a fire truck, and much more, usually with monetary rewards and occasional gameplay advantages (i.e. increased health and armor capacity and infinite sprinting).
Weapons
A wide array of
mêlée weapons and
firearms become available to the player as he or she completes more and more missions. Guns may be purchased at firearm store Ammu-Nation and other types of weapons (such as
baseball bats,
hammers and
chainsaws) can be bought at various
hardware stores.
*
Fist (Slot 2); can be augmented with
brass knuckles.
*
Melee weapons (Slot 3); includes
screwdrivers,
hammers,
night sticks,
golf clubs,
baseball bats, meat
cleavers,
katanas,
knifes,
machetes,
chainsaws.
*
Projectiles (Slot 4); includes
hand grenades, remotely detonated grenades,
molotov cocktails, and
tear gas. Tear gas was removed in the PC version, possibly because of the severe slowdown it caused in the PlayStation 2 version.
*
Pistols (Slot 5); includes a basic Colt .45
semi-automatic pistol (aka a "pistol"*) and a
Colt Python revolver (aka a ".357"*).
*
Shotguns (Slot 6); includes
pump action shotguns, stubby shotguns, and automatic
Spaz shotguns (aka "S.P.A.S. 12"*).
*
Submachine guns (Slot 7); includes
TEC-9s,
Ingram Mac 10s (aka "Mac"*),
Uzi 9mms (aka "Uz-I"*), and
MP5s (aka "MP"*).
*
Assault rifles (Slot 8); includes
Mini-14s (Ruger variation, aka "Kruger"*) and
M4s.
*Heavy weapons (Slot 9); includes
flamethrowers,
rocket launchers,
miniguns, and
M60s.
*
Sniper rifles (Slot 10); includes basic sniper rifles, and
PSG-1 (aka ".308 Sniper"*) sniper rifles.
*
Camera (Slot 11); used in only one mission to capture photographs.
 |
Promotional artwork for the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack albums. |
Various
radio stations can be received on
radios in most vehicles in the game; one is an interview and chat station (KCHAT), another (VCPR) consists of the
public radio debate show
Pressing Issues, and the remainder are music stations which cover particular musical
genres such as
rap music (Wildstyle),
rock (V-Rock) and (most predominantly)
pop music (WAVE 103, Flash FM). The tracks are for the most part licensed works from various real-life artists such as
Aneka,
Blondie,
Ozzy Osbourne,
Michael Jackson,
Mr. Mister, and other artists that fit the retro 80s theme. The radio stations and the game story also feature a fictional band called
Love Fist. The multi-
CD soundtrack to the game was an instant best-seller.
In addition to music and interviews, the stations also include fake commercials such as the
Degenatron, a fictional
video game console (
Save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!), likely a parody of the
Atari 2600. The commercials and the game setting are consistent: Degenatron advertisements appear on billboards, and ads air for stores in which the player can actually shop, such as Ammu-Nation.
The complete list of
Vice City radio stations is as followed:
PlayStation 2
To date,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the best-selling of the entire
series for the
PlayStation 2. While
Vice City was expected to outsell its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, due to incremental improvements and greater hype stemming from the success of the latter,
Vice City managed to outsell the succeeding
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. One reason for this was
Sony's exclusivity deal with
Take-Two Interactive at the time which had recently been signed before
Vice City's release, which not only ruled out an Xbox version but also put the PC version in doubt. However, the deal was modified to
allow Vice City to be published for the Xbox and when
San Andreas was released in 2004, it was widely expected that the Xbox and PC ports would be released in 2005.
It is also one of the top-selling PlayStation 2 games, often interchanging spots with
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec.
PC
The
PC version of
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City featured significantly improved performance over the preceding
Grand Theft Auto III. Part of the reason was because
GTA III rendered everything around the player even when not seen by them, while
Vice City restricted it to what could be displayed, which reduced the amount of processing required.
Vice City supposedly had higher performance requirements because of the increased polygon count , however some gamers reported that a
Pentium III 500 MHz system with 128 MB
RAM and an
ATI Rage 128
graphics card could run it at playable speed. The PC port's advantages were higher quality textures, higher resolutions, and a custom radio tracks, although the police AI seems to be lacking at times in comparison.
Xbox
Although the
Xbox version was released a year after the PlayStation 2 version, it nonetheless sold well as part of the
Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack. The Xbox version featured numerous improvements over the PC and PlayStation 2 versions. The Xbox version included better graphics which included more detailed polygon models, real time reflections, real time shadowing, greater draw distances and weather effects. The Xbox version also featured custom radio tracks which included the ability to play a user's own songs from their Xbox hard drive. However, the lower
resolution of the Xbox port reduced somewhat the effect of the improved textures overall.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been labeled as violent by many
special interest groups, and is considered highly
controversial. Some suggest that parental supervision is necessary when young people play this game, in spite of the fact that children were never the game's intended audience and are very unlikely to understand its humour. The
ESRB rated this game "M" for
Mature. In
Australia, it was slightly modified to comply with current Australian censorship laws; the ability to pickup
prostitutes was disabled, allowing the game to be given an MA15+ rating by the
OFLC. In the UK,
Vice City received an "
18" certificate from the
BBFC.
|
Attacking a Haitian gang in Little Haiti, PC version. The game was accused of inviting people to harm immigrant Cubans and Haitians, and featuring anti-Haitian and Cuban phrases. |
In November 2003,
Cuban and
Haitian groups in
Florida targeted the title. They accused the game of inviting people to harm immigrants from those two nations [
2]. Players of the game pointed out that lines such as "These Haitians! We take 'em out!" refer specifically to members of a Haitian drug cartel, not every Haitian person, and a similar line appears in a mission to kill the Cubans. Nevertheless, the groups' claims of racism and incitement to genocide attracted a good deal of public attention towards
Vice City. Rockstar Games issued a press release stating that they understood the concern of Cubans and Haitians, but also believed those groups were blowing the issue out of proportion. Under further pressure, including threats from
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to "do everything we possibly can" if Rockstar didn't comply, Take-Two (the game's publisher) did agree to remove several lines of dialogue [
3]. This seems to have largely satisfied the groups who raised the complaints, although the case was then referred to a
state court, downgraded from the initial decision to refer the case to a
federal court [
4]. In 2004, a new version of the game was released, removing and changing those lines of dialogue .
In February 2005, a
lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the
Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the
Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when
Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a
Fayette police station regarding a
stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and
dispatcher before fleeing in a police car [
5]. One of Moore's attorneys,
Jack Thompson, claimed it was
GTA's graphic nature - with his constant playing time - that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages are being sought from the
Jasper branches of
GameStop and
Wal-Mart, the stores from which
Grand Theft Auto III and
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher
Take-Two Interactive, and the
PlayStation 2 manufacturer
Sony Computer Entertainment. The case is currently being heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to death for his actions.
Official sites
*
Official Site*
Kent Paul's 80s Nostalgia Zone*
Degenatron; "fan site" of the
DegenatronThird party resources
*
*
GTA: Vice City guide at StrategyWiki (previously hosted by
Wikibooks)
*
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City website directory at the
Open Directory Project*
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City website directory at
Alexa InternetModding sites
*
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City at
Mod DB*
GTA:VC at GTA Modding, a Wiki and a part of the GTA Network
*
File editors for GTA:VC and other RenderWare-based GTA games at GTATools.com
*
GTA Projects; includes a full conversion mod that ports the
city of Liberty into
Vice City's game engine.
