My next adventures in the GTA remastered trilogy were something I was hoping would be good as I had a rough time playing GTA3. The good news is that Grand Theft Auto Vice City (Vice City), is a fantastic game and improves on some of the things that GTA3 lacked in. This game had a lot I liked about it and felt good to play overall.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Engaging and Charismatic Storyline
Immersive Open-World Gameplay
Outstanding Soundtrack
Cons
Limited Mobility While Aiming
Vehicle Despawn Issues
Unmarked Map Elements
Presence of Bugs
Story
Tommy Vercetti just got released from prison after coming out of a 15-year sentence for a murder he committed. His boss, Sonny Forelli is trying to start drug operations in the South and sends Tommy to keep an eye on this very important drug deal. He is with a corrupt lawyer named Ken Rosenberg, the deal, however, is ambushed by unknown assailants, with Tommy and Ken escaping just barely. Sonny then orders Tommy to get the drugs and money back from these people or he will suffer heavy consequences.
The story for Vice City is really fun, it’s an improvement from GTA3 in my opinion as there is charm in this story. The characters are very fun and enjoyable, having their own charm to them that makes them stand out. Even the side characters had fun personalities that made them all special as well.
Gameplay
The gameplay for Vice City is very fun and I think this is just one of those games to me, that just feels good to play. The core gameplay remains the same as GTA3 but with some big improvements that make the game more enjoyable to play. Shooting has improved in some ways which is very nice, your not a sitting duck while aiming for some of the weapons (which I will get back to this part soon) so you can move while shooting for the most part.
You are given a list of missions to do and some of them will have you do different objectives like planting bombs, destroying things, etc. To get access to certain missions though, you will need to complete other missions to advance. The good news is that the missions aren’t really like the ones in GTA 3, so no missions will be like you delivering cars in a six-minute time limit.
Exploring the world is very fun as there is more charm to it unlike in GTA3 in my books, like I really did enjoy driving around the city very much. Another improvement that I loved is that you can get the weapons you lose when respawning out of a hospital or police station. I should mention though that there isn’t a whole lot to do in the world but there are more options for things you can do than in GTA3, so I consider that an improvement.
So, with all of the good stuff out of the way, there are a few issues I do have with Vice City. The first issue being the fact you are still a sitting duck while aiming some of your weapons. Now I did mention that there are a few that don’t do this, those weapons being the pistol and submachine gun, etc. However, for weapons like the AK, you are a sitting duck, although thankfully enemies will die in a single hit mostly, this issue can be ignored slightly.
However, one issue I absolutely hate is that sometimes your car can despawn during missions, while this bug did not appear often. It still did annoy me and it actually made me fail a very hard mission where you had to escape the police after breaking into this mall with a five-star wanted level.
There is also an issue with things not being marked on the map, I could not really find any of ths stuff in the game. Besides marked missions, gun shops, and repair shops, I have no idea if this was intentional or a bug but it’s something I did not like at all.
Soundtrack
If there is one thing that I loved about Vice City, is it’s soundtrack and I think it’s honestly the best part about this game. You got songs Love My Way by The Psychedlic Furs, 2 Minutes to Midnight, my favorite Iron Maiden song, Out of Touch by Daryl Hall and John Oates, Never Say Never by Romeo Void. They even have Toto Africa, out of all the remasters that the trilogy has, this is by far my favorite soundtrack.
Although I should mention that there are removed songs from the game, so the entire soundtrack is not in the game.
Graphics and Performance
I have already stated that I personally don’t like how the graphics were done for the remake for GTA3 and my opinion stands for this one as well. It’s kind of sad that this is the case because everything else about this game is almost fantastic and then I am reminded of the game's bugs.
They are still present here and I definitely came across some here, besides the cars despawning during the missions, I also did come across one crash. Other then that, I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. besides the issues I mentioned, I had no issues with the game’s performance.
Final Verdict
Vice City is a very interesting game, while it has a few bugs with it, I can’t deny that I had a ton of fun while playing this game. Out of the three remakes, I think the soundtrack has definitely really shined the most out of this one. The gameplay is also a big improvement which is something I do love as well, overall, the remake is fine for what it is, although as always, the original is better.
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