As anyone close to me knows, I’m a major fan of the Grand Theft Auto game series. The affair began in 2001, when GTA3 stole six months from my life. Ever since, I’ve eagerly awaited each new opportunity to get my grubby mitts on a Rhino or Hunter and create mayhem on the streets of Liberty, Vice and Andreas.
Of all of them, my favorite of the series is still Vice City. Andreas was pretty damned cool - don’t get me wrong - but VC is just, you know, boss. For one thing, it takes place in a fictionalized Miami and (as my brother pointed out when he played VC for the first time) Rockstar certainly did their research; the Floridian humor that runs throughout the game is very true to life in a Hiassen sort of way. Even better, the game takes place in 1986, complete with period satire and music. As a guy who was a teenager in the mid-eighties, Vice City for me was a wonderful throwback to a more nostalgic time.
As I write this, I’m about two missions away from completing “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories”, the PSP-released-to-PS2 prequel to Vice City. After the uneven (but still enjoyable) kludge that was “Liberty City Stories”, I was just hoping for a new Vice City game that didn’t suck.
Man oh man, does this game not suck.
Vice City Stories takes place in 1984, two years before the events of the original Vice City. Tommy Vercetti is (presumably) still in prison somewhere; Diaz still runs Vice. Cortez is hanging around somewhere, the movie studio hasn’t gone broke yet, and multiple gangs rule the streets. Familiar characters such as Phil Cassidy and Umberto Robina are doing their usual two-bit hood routines. And of course, there’s a hurricane warning that has the bridges closed down.
Vic Vance - the guy who gets killed in Vice City’s opening scenes - is reporting for duty at the Army base; after a short series of unfortunate (and framed) events involving drugs and a hooker, he gets kicked out of the Army. Now he’s on the streets of Vice, cobbling together whatever bucks he can to help his cokehead mother and sick younger brother. His other brother, meanwhile - Lance Vance, from the original - shows up in town to help Vic put together his burgeoning empire. And of course, as Vercetti would learn (and effectively deal with) two years later, Lance turns out to be more a liability than a help.
Okay, let’s start with the basics. For a PSP port to PS2, Stories looks awfully damned good, far better than Liberty City Stories. LCS had all sorts of problems - the frame rates sucked, the models were low-res, playability was buggy. I expected much the same from this one, and was shocked to discover that the whole game looks and plays remarkably like the original Vice. The frame rates look good, the graphics are crisp. Even the writing has improved. Rockstar took this title seriously.
I always thought that the “Stories” series was a clever move by Rockstar to financially leverage their past work. I mean, they have complete engines and designs now for Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas - why not change a few buildings around, do a new script and resell the GTA games under new titles? Brilliant move: create budget GTA games without the expense of building a completely new game! Unfortunately, though, Rockstar’s first attempt att his - LC Stories - looked and played like a budget game. The writing was terrible. Celebrity voices gone. Even the hilarious talk radio stations (a popular signature of GTA) had dwindled down into almost nothing. Lazlow made a brief token appearance. I played my way through LCS, generally enjoyed it, finished it up and never booted it again.
Again, Vice City Stories fixes all of those problems. For one thing, the celebrity voices are back - Philip Michael Thomas, Gary Busey, Luis Guzman, etc. - as are the talk radio bits (the “Bait and Switch” and “Gordon Morehead” radio shows are particularly hysterical). The story works, carefully establishing how even some of the more obscure aspects of Vice City (such as how Phil came to live in the junkyard compound) came to be. By the end of the game, you have a clear picture of the 1984 Vice that became the 1986 killing grounds of Tommy Vercetti.
We also get a bunch of wonderful new vehicles - which you have to re-”buy” every time you use them, I guess making them more rentals than purchases. A one-man helicopter called the Little Willie. A Jetski, tons of fun for blasting around the waters of Vice. Six-wheel ATV’s. And of course, by the end, the Hunter (a fully armed Apache gunship).
Seriously - what Vice City game could ever be complete without the Hunter? Eat Hellfire, VCPD!
Rockstar also apparently has been listening to its critics. The protagonist of this game is an African-American criminal, but with none of the racial stereotypes found in San Andreas - he’s a criminal, but he’s not a thug or gangsta. He has real human motivations and a sense of honor. There’s an actual borderline-compelling and believable (and interracial, if you can believe it) romantic subplot that doesn’t involve hot coffee, one that concludes on a dramatically workable note. There are plenty of 1980’s jokes, but this Vice City isn’t drenched nearly so thoroughly in sexual jokes and references as the original (though the “Little Lacy Surprise” radio commercial made me do a spit-take). Bravo on the writing, Rockstar.
My only real criticism about VCS is the whole Phil Collins bit.
Ugh. The Collins missions were fun and challenging enough, but come on, guys - that’s pure sellout. Every other celebrity reference in every other GTA game has been a parody rather than a real person, and better for that; would Vice City have been better with a guest appearance by Ozzy Osbourne, rather than Love Fist? I doubt it - the fictional nature of the Love Fist characters allowed a whole class of 1980’s folks get skewered at once. Instead, here we get treated to a tasteful, respectful and utterly humorless homage to Phil Collins.
(On that first mission, when the manager talked about bring some limey rock star to town, I thought for sure we’d see the introduction of Kent Paul. Or maybe an early glimpse of Love Fist. Instead, we got Phil Collins being, well, Phil Collins. And then got him again. And again. And again. And then finally a friggin’ PHIL COLLINS CONCERT. Let’s skip that in the future, okay, Rockstar? Can we stick to parodies? Please?)
So will we now see a “San Andreas Stories”, before the GTA series stumbles forever into the darkened domain of the PS3? If it’s done to the quality level apparent in VCS, I certainly hope so. Even so, Phil Collins notwithstanding, making a return trip to Vice was a special event for me that probably couldn’t be duplicated with Andreas.
I’m just grateful for the chance to have such fun, cruising the streets of Vice once again.
