Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Rockstar North |
| Publisher | Rockstar Games |
| Engine | RenderWare |
| Release dates | PS2
|
| Platforms | Playstation 2, Xbox, PC |
| Ratings | |
| Protagonist | Tommy Vercetti |
| Location | Vice City |
| Year | 1986 |
This article is about the game. For the city please see Vice City, and for the PSP game please see Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, also referred to as just Vice City and GTAVC, is a game in the Grand Theft Auto III series.
Although it was released after GTAIII, it was set 15 years earlier.
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.
Characters
Radio Stations
Gameplay
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).
