
I would remiss not to mention the horrendous RC missions, of which there are thankfully few. Driving through the sunny streets of Vice City is a genuinely enjoyable experience Boats & helicopters are also fun to use. There’s an arcade-like feeling to it, that is all too uncommon these days. One archaic mechanic I was happy to return to was the driving. In Vice City, real relationships between characters are formed whether it be the unlikely friendship between crooked lawyer Ken Rosenberg or the respectful camaraderie between Tommy & colonel Cortez.Ĭombining the fastest car in the game with some classic ’80s rock, is an experience as yet unmatched in modern GTA games Tommy wasn’t simply an impartial actor that completed tasks for others, like Claude. A voiced protagonist added a new dimension to the franchise, creating an increased level of agency. Voiced by Ray Liotta, Tommy is an angry, wise-cracking smart-ass. Unlike Claude, the mute protagonist of GTA 3 who followed orders from whomever gave him a task, Tommy was far more vocal. They send Tommy down to Vice City, to take advantage of the lucrative drugs trade, but when a deal goes wrong, Tommy has to survive the city & its inhabitants, while trying to find the guy who double-crossed him. One of their fellow mafioso, Tommy Vercetti, has been released from prison after fifteen years & this poses a problem for the family, as Tommy’s presence would be bad for business. The story of GTA: Vice City begins back in Liberty, opening on a backroom meeting between several gangsters. The challenge lay in the setting itself, how do you bottle the essence of a decade? After only a year in development, Rockstar released GTA: Vice City, a game that surpassed its predecessor in every respect.

From an R&D point of view, this was a fantastic idea as everything that happened in the ’80s was set in stone. Moving on from GTA 3, the developer wanted to transport us back to the era in which Dan & Sam Houser (The CEOs of Rockstar) grew up in. Apart from being a groundbreaking game, it also laid the foundations for the parodical satire that the series is known for today. In 2001, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto 3, blowing up the standard rules of making video games in the process. The ’80s were now simply a memory, called to mind by the lyrics of a Flock of Seagulls track an echo of a time long since passed. The neon lit era had giving way to a more sanitised world. GTA: Vice City captured the decadence & greed of the ’80s How GTA: Vice City Bottled A Decadeīy the time 2002 rolled around, the world had change significantly in twelve years.
