In defense of 'Vice City'

Heralded upon its release in 2002, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a game that has a dubious honor I will call "the middle child syndrome."

Despite voice acting from Hollywood megastars like Ray Liotta (protagonist Tommy Vercetti), Burt Reynolds (real estate mogul Avery Carrington), NFL tough guy Lawrence Taylor (car salesman and former football pro BJ Smith), Dennis Hopper (porn movie auteur Steve Scott), Debbie Harry (taxi controller) and more, in the years since its release Vice City has been overshadowed by its predecessor GTA3, which rocketed the franchise into 3-D, and its follower San Andreas, heralded at the time for its massive, realistic world.

The high-definition era of Rockstar's signature franchise has revisited Liberty City and San Andreas, but never returned to the sandy, satiric shores of the GTA universe's Miami doppleganger. Some would argue that's because the pastels and excess that made sense in a game set in the 1980s wouldn't work with the new approach Rockstar has taken with the franchise. But many of those themes were present in Grand Theft Auto 5, set in southern California, and Michael De Santa was the closest thematically to Liotta's Vercetti that we've seen inhabiting the shoes of a GTA protagonist since 2002 (white man w/ ties to organized crime).

After achieving 100 percent completion in GTA3 recently, I fired up Vice City, a game I spent a lot of time with in the early 2000s both on my Playstation 2 and PC. The game's look and feel were immediate hooks, but many of the game's missions weren't as memorable as GTA3's were when I was replaying that game. At first, I thought this might be another reason Vice City gets lost in the shuffle of Rockstar's GTA history. But the truth is, it's because Vice City offers greater freedom, while at the same time funneling the player toward a satisfying conclusion to the main storyline, something that subsequent GTA games haven't been able to recapture.

An early mission in Vice City has you attending a yacht party thrown by Colonel Juan Cortez (voiced by 'Goonies' alumnus Robert Davi). At this party, you meet every character of consequence you'll see/work for later in the game: Carrington, Ricardo Diaz (Luis Guzman), Scott, Smith, members of the fictional rock group "Love Fist." Rockstar sets the table for the story of revenge and conquest you're about to embark on.

Then, the first portion of the game has you learning Vice City's new mechanics, like changing outfits, driving motorbikes and piloting helicopters. While these tutorials aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination (can you say 'Demolition Man'?), the early missions serve as a stepping stone to the freedom that opens up once you waste Diaz.

From there, the decision falls to the player how to proceed. Which assets do you want to acquire? Do you go after the flashy Malibu club and pull off the series first true "heist" sequence (a mission structure revisited in just about every GTA game since)? Do you work for Scott, and find out some secrets about conservative congressman Alex Shrub? Do you spend the most money, but also attain the greatest reward, completing the missions for the Print Works, essential to unlocking the final showdown with mobster Sonny Forelli (Tom Sizemore)? Maybe street racing is your deal. Smith's Sunshine Autos is for you.

In a game series that emphasizes player choice, the way your reach the end game in Vice City is perhaps the most revolutionary that was seen in the franchise until the introduction of heists into GTAV. You choose what story elements you want to unlock first, rather than being guided through a series of missions that will ultimately result in the final confrontation. Not even San Andreas, voted the best GTA game in a fan poll just before the release of GTAV, had that kind of freedom. It's also a callback to the early 2D roots of the GTA series, which required only that you attain a "high score" (cash in the GTA universe) to progress through the game.

Vice City is an imperfect game, to be sure. It's targeting system is still awful, compared to later GTA titles, and the motorbikes just don't handle as well as they could. Many of the game's missions fall prey to the constricted structure of early 3D GTA titles: go here, kill some guys, pick this up, return.

But in terms of player choice, GTA: Vice City is perhaps one of the earliest and most successful experiments in the franchise. And it's still a blast to have that freedom at your fingertips, 14 years later.

What I've learned replaying Grand Theft Auto III

It was Christmas 2001. My mom took my brother and me to the Walmart near our house and picked up the Playstation 2, wrapped in brown packaging paper, which had been put on layaway until our gift exchange on New Year’s. But my brother received an NCAA football game from my grandparents a few days prior, and in my grubby mitts was a shiny new copy of Grand Theft Auto 3. I insisted we travel to pick up the new console right away.

And, within hours, I was transported to the expansive (and inappropriately violent) world of Liberty City. It was a far cry from the small confines of GTA2 on my original Playstation, a game that was inexplicably rated Teen and thus deemed appropriate for my age level by my parents. GTA3 was a hard Mature, but for some crazy reason that still isn’t clear to me I was able to convince my parents I could play it. What followed was my introduction to true 3D gaming, and the narrative potential of the medium that continues to inspire me to this day.
 

What a strange thing, then, to replay the game almost 15 years later, and to realize just how far game design has come in that decade and a half.

If you follow me on Twitch, I’ve been spending many an evening becoming reacquainted with Liberty City. Here are some things I’ve learned.

3D DRIVING WAS STILL A GIMMICK

Many of the early missions in GTA3 have you drive around the block, pick someone up and a cutscene plays. This was groundbreaking gameplay in 2001, when we’d been confined to cars or on-foot action in nearly every game imaginable. Only Driver 2, which had woefully inadequate on-foot action (you couldn’t even shoot!), had attempted this level of immersion before. Only when you’ve completed errands for the mob, and 8-Ball’s explosive-related skills are required in “Bomb da Base,” do the mission structures start to open up and become something special. Everything before that is fetch quests.

RAMPAGES SUCKED

GTAV puts you in the shoes of a rage-fueled Trevor Phillips for its “rampages,” which are just mini-missions all about mayhem. GTA3 locked your choice of weapon, and spawned dozens of manic enemies on the screen at once. Couple those mobs with some truly abysmal targeting controls and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

THE OVERWHELMING NOW MUNDANE

           

Remember when it seemed like that drove to Joey Leone’s garage from your safehouse took ages? It really took about 45 seconds. The timers in GTA3 seemed way too fast at the time to get from one end of Portland to the next, and I was dreading playing El Burro’s “Turismo” and “Big n’ Veiny” missions again because they were such a chore in my youth. But whether it’s because I’ve had more 3D driving practice or the complicated routes in current-gen open-world titles have hardened my reflexes, getting around Portland is a breeze.
  

ONE-NOTE CHARACTERS

Because GTA3 launched a series of look-alike games set in the criminal underworld, and it was called a “Mafioso masterpiece” upon its release, it’s easy to remember the game as a large step forward in videogame storytelling. The game is the ancestor of a title in GTAV that gave us multiple protagonists, leading wildly different lives on different socioeconomic plains, right? But that would be the wrong thing to remember. GTA3 is full of one-note and, frankly, racist and chauvinistic characters. Perhaps the complaint is unfair, given that the source material that inspired the game (gangster and heist movies) were full of one-note, racist and chauvinist characters, but this is not a major step forward in any way. It’s a simple revenge tale that consists of escalating gang violence that quickly turns allies on all three islands against you.

CHATTERBOX IS AS GREAT AS EVER

The talk radio stations in the GTA franchise have a long and stories history that can be traced to Lazlow and the Chatterbox program in GTA3. While other features of the game have aged poorly, as you’ve seen above, Lazlow’s program retains its biting social commentary and inventive guests and callers. Though the track is woefully short by today’s standards, and would be laughable in the 70+ hour campaign that is available in GTAV, it’s still laugh-out-loud funny for its entire running length and features more memorable moments than any other game in the series.

THE THREE ISLAND DESIGN IS THE WAY TO GO

Complained about heavily when the game first released, and in its subsequent sequels, the idea of revealing the map in waves to the player in GTA3 is undoubtedly a feature that should be reinstated at some point in the franchise, in order to preserve an element of whimsical discovery and a feeling of accomplishment in progressing through the game’s narrative. I’ve spent nearly 10 hours back in just Portland, and I’ve discovered paths I didn’t know existed when the game released even now. There’s something to be said for becoming intimately acquainted with areas of the map, then having the window expanded as you accomplish certain feats in the game. Yes, it’s fun to drive anywhere you want to at the beginning of GTAV. But none of the areas of the map feel special as a result of this freedom, in the same way Francis International Airport, the docks and other areas tantalized you on the Playstation 2.

That’s it for now. I’ll continue to add to this post as I play through Grand Theft Auto 3, and eventually Vice City (it’ll be awhile before I tackle San Andreas, and I did so a couple years ago on my Xbox 360, anyway, so the urgency isn’t really there for me). If you’d like to follow along on my nostalgic adventure, follow twitch.tv/kiphillreporter.