In this first “now playing” entry we’re taking a quite look at Grand Theft Auto – Vice City Stories. Remember, this is just a look at whatever I’m playing at this moment, and presumes you know at least something about the game or the series it’s a part of — if not, this may all be alien to you.
This was the final game release in the “3D” Grand Theft Auto era, and one hell of a game to go out on honestly. Originally a PSP title it, like it’s predecessor, Liberty City Stories, was ported to the PlayStation 2. In my case, since my disc is slightly damaged and won’t load on my PS2, I’m playing it on my modded PS3 (dubbed the “PALstation” because of its European origins) ripped to an ISO — it works, so I’m not complaining.
If you know the 3D era Grand Theft Auto games, especially Vice City, then you know what to expect in overall gameplay here. It’s got the same rough around the edges, somewhat staccato nature that every Grand Theft Auto title from this time period has, but this one feels more unforgiving than most any other. While, yes, it has features others didn’t have, like an ability to “bribe back” your weapons after getting wasted / busted, it equally throws missions at you that, in some cases you just have to force to go in your favor.
One example is a mission early on where you’re driving a decoy van; police are chasing you and you have to survive for a set amount of time, keeping them focused on you until the other van completes its delivery, where you then have to now evade the same police who are already chasing you.
The thing is, the AI is far more aggressive than it used to be — it feels like the scripts for San Andreas were put into Vice City, honestly, but it doesn’t work thanks to the quite different layouts of the two cities — additionally, for this particular mission, the van is a hell of a target and probably won’t survive long enough. I had to drive the van around the military base grasses, where police cars won’t spawn, just to survive and still couldn’t get the van to a Pay N’ Spray, meaning I had to try to find another vehicle just to get the wanted level off and thus complete the mission.
Other missions suffer from this aggressive AI as well, and the random nature of things has caused me more than once to fail a mission at the last possible second thanks to some stupid fluke. Such is gaming life…
The empire system, where you battle other gangs for real estate locations to set up your criminal empire, is pretty great, until you begin to mess with it more deeply and realize that you’ve now triggered enemy gangs to attack you nonstop, often killing you in literally seconds with one drive-by! Yeah, some groups can be incredibly lethal, but this can be bypassed if you go through the trouble of actually taking over every single location before continuing with the game, which is what I’ve done. It does prove beneficial, I’m not low on money anymore, so there’s that!
I’m about halfway through the game right now — a little ways into missions on the second island. Beyond the difficulty spikes and the rough time getting started, the game’s not bad — it’s still the classic 3D era GTA feel, in a game world that I love, with good music. I’ve owed it to myself to play this one for years, and I’m glad I’m finally getting a chance, even if it is 14 years late. It is what it is, though.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to take another trip back to 1984.
