Techtite's PC Game Reviews!

"This is merely alluding to the game's best trait: rewards for your efforts. Buying various buildings not only offers save points: some offer added perks, as well as added missions."

---from the review

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Sidebar :

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This isn't just a mission disk. Trust me. People who look at this game superfluously will claim it's just the same game as Grand Theft Auto 3 only with different textures and missions to go on. Hardly. Here is just a Top Ten List of the best enhancements to this game, compared to its predecessor:

---The voice cast, including Ray Liotta, is a magnificent addition, and far better than the bland, nameless, voiceless cipher you played in the prior game.

---The car handling is vastly improved, with roads that are much more sensible and easier to have fun on (race, do stunt maneuvers, and so on)

---you can actually enter a building or two, making this city far more "real"

---The radios actually play music that is GOOD, probably because the game team can pay for better music licenses...

---...in addition, the mock "talk shows" on the radio are a howl. It's almost worth it to put your car in neutral for a while just to hear them all.

---The homage to the 1980's is far superior to any of the crap shown on TV lately, like That 80's Show and Do Over. The "Miami Vice" fashions are a cute touch, too.

---The ability to buy buildings is a nice added touch, including the additional save points (and often, a few side- missions) for doing so.

---When you die or get arrested during a mission, go to the street and you'll see a cab waiting to drive you back to the mission automatically, instead of having to drive all the way there yourself. Thanks!

--- You can change your attire throughout the game. Doing so removes any wanted rating of two stars or less. Cool!

--- Last but not least: the finale to the main story missions is not merely a joke, is not disappointing, and in fact, is totally cool.

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Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted!

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Grand Theft Auto: 

Vice City

Click picture to order this game (PC/windows version)

A Techtite Review

I admit it: I gave Grand Theft Auto 3 a very stern review. Its driving cross-country just to save your game at a mere three "hideouts," its madcap roadways and map design, and most of all its nameless, voiceless hero, kept it from being the "Game of the Year" most game fans herald it to be. Well, Rockstar Games heard all of our gripes, and came out with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, now available on PC. Finally, this is the game of the Year contender we've been waiting for.

Now, I know this game has gotten a lot of flak from the parental groups, so let's get one thing straight: this is an M for Mature game. Did Mr. Roger's Neighborhood get nominated as Best TV Show for the past 10 years? No; shows like The Sopranos and Sex and the City did. Did Disney's Beauty & the Beast win a deserved Oscar as Best Picture that year...? No; Silence of the Lambs won that year instead. Don't cry me a river when you confess that Sopranos is a good show, only to want everything in game land to be Smurfs and Pac-Men. This is a game woven from the same cloth as Sopranos, and if you didn't want a game designer to conceive such a concept, well then you shouldn't have nominated that show for an Emmy, you know? 

The game does a lot of wise moves, right off the bat. One, this is not a sequel, as much as a totally new story. Two: it's set in a new decade, the 1980's, when drugs and drug kingpins were a force to contend with. Three: your character is not a nameless, voiceless cipher, though is voiced by none other than Ray Liotta, and is a really fun character to play as. Last yet not least: the story has more than a little depth to it. Tony (Liotta) has just been paroled, yet hasn't forgotten the turncoats let him rot in jail. You must help him get back on his feet, become a major force in the mob world again, and inevitably, gat back at his #1 enemy.

All the best traits of Grand Theft Auto 3 are here. Missions are begun by standing in little glowing discs on the ground, which can be done in any order. They can even be done non-consecutively. You can do three jobs for your friend with the cool yacht, only to go finish the lawyer's missions, and come back to the rest of the yacht missions later. Optional missions are scattered about, including those mini-games where you get to be a rescue worker or "police officer" for a while, if you jack into a police car, ambulance, or fire truck. People familiar with the prior game will be playing in no time.

The most noticeable changes in Vice City are corrected flaws of the prior game. This isn't even getting into the cooler cars you can drive, including motorcycles (no more puttering away in a racecar mission with a Ford P.O.S.!). Not only are there more cars to steal; there are also more places to save your game (YES!). Getting enough cash earns you the liberty to buy various buildings for sale, all with their own save point! Buy them all, and you'll have over 17 places to save your game, throughout Vice City. That's fair enough, right?

This is merely alluding to the game's best trait: rewards for your efforts. Buying various buildings not only offers save points: some offer added perks, as well as added missions. Buy the boat yard and have free control of the boats docked there. Buy the condo complex downtown, and earn the right to use the helicopter parked on the roof there. Buy the film studio, and you can use the seaplane parked at the docks. Buy the taxi cab company, and you can ride all cabs for free. Other locations have non-profitable yet amusing perks: you can even buy a girlie bar, and catch a show or two. Many buildings offer additional missions as well.

Kudos must also go to the designers of Vice City, which is a lot better designed than Liberty City in the prior game. Simply put: it's a much better game map. True, both have the added perk of no wait times; you can drive from one coast to the other with no need to wait while a new area of the city is loaded. What's even better, though, is that it's a better designed city. Bridges are logically placed near the coastline, not with "arcing" highway roads that seem almost like a can of worms (ah, the tales I could tell of timed missions in Grand Theft Auto 3, only to be thwarted by a road one flight higher, that could only be entered three blocks away!!!). All told, this is a much better game map to play in.

It's a more "alive" city as well. For one thing, you can finally enter a shop or two, or even a building. This offers some difference in missions, including taking pictures of a senator across the street for blackmail, and even robbing a bank! Granted, there isn't as much to see here as, say, a pumped-up 3D accelerated masterpiece, like Unreal 2. However, for that small sacrifice in intricate textures and lifelike character models comes a more fluid game experience. Overall, it's a blast!

Not that this game isn't snazzy to look at. Just like the prior game, a clock at the upper-right ticks away, as if minutes were seconds. Days proceed with an actual "sun" moving from the East to West, with random moments of fog, rain, and so on. These may not seem like big details though when the majority of the game is driving in cars, flying in copters, and jetting on speedboats, it's a really cool thing to see the weather and sunshine change the way it does, throughout a "day" of gaming. In that respect, graphics are impressive.

Control is six of one, half a dozen of the other. That is to say: while PC users have a mouse to help with aiming your gun (very cool!), the mouse is no way to control a helicopter, and the game interface doesn't even allow you to try it. Instead, you must use no less than eight keyboard keys for up, down, clockwise, counterclockwise, left, right, forward, and backward. If you ask me, it's best to keep that USB gamepad at the ready whenever the helicopter missions pop up. However, such missions are rare, and when the majority of missions require fast aiming with the mouse, your PS2 gaming buddies will be green with envy that you can aim with such mouse-pointed precision, when they could not.

I think what really blew me over about GTA Vice City, however --the icing on the cake, if you will-- was the exceptional in-game cutscenes and voice acting. Ray "Goodfellas" Liotta --the voice of your character in this game-- is just one example. Mercedes Cortez, your main squeeze in the game, is voiced brilliantly by Fairuza Balk (so brilliantly, you'd never recognize the voice if you didn't read that it was her). Play the (ahem) Film Studio missions on Prawn Island, and hear two equally well cast guest voices: Dennis Hopper as the film director, and Jenna Jameson as the star! Other guest voices include Burt Reynolds, Tom Sizemore, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, and Debbie Harry. Say this for the game; it may not have flashy CGI FMV videos between missions, though the money they saved there they put towards totally cool voice acting...and the game is an even bigger winner because of it.

If Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has one trait that pulls it up higher than GTA3, it has to be the overall "vacation" feel of it all. The prior game was far too gritty and dark, even in the literal sense. Don't argue, friends. Playing a game set in mostly slum-lands just isn't as fun as it could be, you know? This game is different. From its sunny beaches to its colorful streets of a post-disco 1980's, this is the place to set your mob-related game! It is also quite funny at times. Who knew that a shooter game like this would have you actually want to stop your car for a while and listen to KCHAT? That's just one sign of how even the littlest details of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will have you keep coming back for more.

---Techtite