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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (GTA:VC) is the fourth computer and video game in the hit Grand Theft Auto franchise. Designed by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by Rockstar Games, it debuted in North America on October 27, 2002 for the PlayStation 2 and quickly became the best-selling video game for that year. As of July 2006, Vice City is, in the American market, the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. Vice City also appeared on Japanese magazine Famitsu's readers' list of all-time favorite 100 videogames in 2006 *. Following this success, Vice City saw releases in Europe, Australia and Japan, and became available on the PC. Rockstar Vienna also packaged the game with its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto III, and sold it as Double Pack for the Xbox.

It uses a tweaked version of the game engine used by its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto III, and similarly presents a huge cityscape, fully populated with buildings (from hotels to skyscrapers), vehicles (cars, motocycles, boats, helicopters, and planes) and people.

The game was succeeded by San Andreas.

Setting

The game is set in fictional Vice City, which is based on Miami, Florida. The game's look, particularly the clothing and vehicles, reflect (and sometimes gently parody) its 1986 setting (with the packaging and artwork in particular owing a great debt to 1980s artist Patrick Nagel). In contrast to the gritty urbanism of Grand Theft Auto III's Liberty City, Vice City appears (mostly) clean and upscale, with golden beaches, waving palm trees, and vivid purple sunsets.

Vice City is a loose prequel to the preceding game in the series, GTA III, which took place in the present day at the time of its 2001 release.

Plot

The player takes the role of Vice City#Tommy Vercetti, who has recently been released from prison in Liberty City. While attempting to re-establish himself within the Forelli Mafia family, local boss Vice City#Sonny Forelli sends Tommy to Vice City to supervise an important drug deal. At the exchange, masked gunmen kill several of the people involved in the trade, stealing both the drugs and the money Tommy was charged with protecting. Vercetti narrowly escapes and informs Sonny, who demands that Tommy get back both the "product" and the money. Both Sonny and Tommy wish to kill those responsible for the theft.

Much of the action in Vice City concerns Vercetti's burgeoning criminal empire, spanning drug trafficking, murder for hire, counterfeiting, and protection. The player progresses through the game narrative by performing a series of missions, most of which involve criminal activities. This takes Vercetti from being a small-time hood staying in a beachfront hotel to being the city's crime kingpin, but Sonny is looming over Tommy until he finally comes down to get his stuff personally.

Theme

Many themes are borrowed from the Brian De Palma film Scarface and from the hit 1980s television series Miami Vice. Vercetti's opulent mansion, Club Malibu, and the climactic battle which takes place in it at the game's end, are very similar to their counterparts in Scarface. Most of the characters wear the then-fashionable white or pastel baggy cotton suits and, like Miami Vice, much of the action takes place in mansions, on speedboats, or in other glamorous settings. In fact, if the player's "wanted level" reaches three stars, an undercover sports car joins the police in chasing the player; the occupants of the sports car are two undercover police officers who dress in a manner reminiscent of Miami Vice's lead characters.

Not to forget, the "Mr. Vercetti" suit players receive when purchasing a local strip club, strongly resembles Tony Montana's suit which he wears toward the end of the movie. The only difference being that Tommy's undershirt is pink instead of white. Also, a hidden hotel room in the city features a bathroom covered in blood containing a chainsaw that can be picked up by the player - another homage to Scarface and the chainsaw torture scene featured in the film.

Characters

The game features dozens of characters, many appearing only in the cut scenes which describe each mission.

Although the main character is not the same as the one in Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City contains a few characters from GTA III at an earlier point in their lives. Donald Love, a business tycoon in GTA III, makes an appearance as an apprentice to real estate mogul Vice City#Avery Carrington. Lazlow, who played the host of Chatterbox, the talk radio station in GTA III, is the DJ for Vice City soundtrack#V-Rock in Vice City (he mentioned in passing in GTA III that he used to be a DJ on a rock station). Toni, the burned-out, female disc jockey of Flashback 95.6, the 1980s music radio station in GTA III, also appears as a young, club-hopping DJ in Vice City soundtrack#Flash FM, Flash FM, an obvious reference to GTA III. Finally, Fernando, a self-glorifying procurer of women ("not a pimp... a savior" he claims) who appeared on Lazlow's show in GTA III runs Vice City soundtrack#Emotion 98.3. The one armed Phil Cassidy from GTA III appears in Vice City as well, and one mission actually explains when and how he lost his arm.

The voice-talent includes Ray Liotta as Vercetti, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Luis Guzmán, Miami Vice star Philip Michael Thomas, Danny Trejo, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Fairuza Balk, and porn actress Jenna Jameson. The voice of the taxi dispatcher is provided by Blondie singer Debbie Harry.

Gameplay

Because Vice City was built upon Grand Theft Auto III, the game follows a largely similar gameplay design and interface with GTA III with several tweaks and improvements over its predecessor. The gameplay is very open-ended, a characteristic of the Grand Theft Auto franchise; although missions must be completed to complete the storyline and unlock new areas of the city, the player is able to drive around and visit different parts of the city (once "unlocked") and otherwise do whatever they wish if not currently working on a mission. Various items such as hidden weapons and packages are also scattered throughout the landscape, as it has been with previous GTA titles.

Players can steal vehicles, (cars, boats, motorcycles, helicopters, and even a plane) partake in drive-by shootings, robberies, and generally create chaos. However, doing so generally attracts unwanted and potentially fatal attention from the police (or, in extreme cases, the FBI and even the National Guard). Police behavior is mostly similar to Grand Theft Auto III, but there is the addition of spike strips to puncture the tires of a car the player is fleeing in, as well as SWAT teams deployed from flying police helicopters and the aforementioned undercover police units, ala-Miami Vice. A fifth form of law enforcement has also been added: security guards, who patrol certain parts of the city. Armed with only pistols, they will attack if the player commits a crime, but cannot arrest the player or increase the wanted level.

Unlike previous games in the franchise, the player can also purchase a number of properties distributed around the city. Some of these are additional hideouts (essentially locations where weapons can be collected and the game saved). There are also a variety of businesses called "assets" which the player can buy. These include a pornographic film studio, a dance club, a taxi company, an "ice-cream" delivery business, a boatyard, and a printing works. Each commercial property has a number of missions attached to it, such as eliminating the competition or stealing equipment. Once all the missions for a given property are complete the property provides an ongoing income, which the increasingly-prosperous Vercetti must periodically uplift. This makes the storyline and missions less linear than the preceding GTA III, although there are a set of "core missions", some required before the player can purchase properties, and others being triggered as the player complete asset-related missions.

Various gangs make frequent appearances in the game, some of whom are integral to story events. These gangs typically have a positive or negative opinion of the player and act accordingly by shooting at the player or following him. Shootouts between members of rival gangs can occur spontaneously and several missions involve organized fights between opposing gangs.

One is also able to carry out productive and (mostly) non-violent activities in the game such as pizza deliveries, driving injured people to a hospital with an ambulance, extinguishing fires with a fire truck, and much more, usually with monetary rewards and occasional gameplay advantages (i.e. increased health and armor capacity and infinite sprinting).

Weapons

A wide array of mêlée weapons and firearms become available to the player as he or she completes more and more missions. Guns may be purchased at firearm store Ammu-Nation and other types of weapons (such as baseball bats, hammers and chainsaws) can be bought at various hardware stores.

* As given in the Xbox version of Double Pack.

Radio stations

Various radio stations can be received on radios in most vehicles in the game; one is an interview and chat station (KCHAT), another (VCPR) consists of the public radio debate show Pressing Issues, and the remainder are music stations which cover particular musical genres such as rap music (Wildstyle), rock (V-Rock) and (most predominantly) pop music (WAVE 103, Flash FM). The tracks are for the most part licensed works from various real-life artists such as Aneka, Blondie, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Jackson, Mr. Mister, and other artists that fit the retro 80s theme. The radio stations and the game story also feature a fictional band called Love Fist. The multi-CD soundtrack to the game was an instant best-seller.

In addition to music and interviews, the stations also include fake commercials such as the Degenatron, a fictional video game console (Save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!) that's likely a parody of the Atari 2600. The commercials and the game setting are consistent: Degenatron advertisements appear on billboards, and ads air for stores in which the player can actually shop, such as Ammu-Nation.

The complete list of Vice City radio stations is as followed:

Sales

PlayStation 2

To date, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the best-selling of the entire series for the PlayStation 2. While Vice City was expected to outsell its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto III, due to incremental improvements and greater hype stemming from the success of the latter, Vice City managed to outsell the succeeding San Andreas. One reason for this was Sony's exclusivity deal with Take-Two Interactive at the time which had recently been signed before Vice City's release, which not only ruled out an Xbox version but also put the PC version in doubt. However, the deal was modified to Double Pack for the Xbox and when San Andreas was released in 2004, it was widely expected that the Xbox and PC ports would be released next year.

It is also one of the top-selling PlayStation 2 games, often interchanging spots with A-Spec.

PC

The PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City featured significantly improved performance over the preceding Grand Theft Auto III. Part of the reason was because GTA III rendered everything around the player even when not seen by them, while Vice City restricted it to what could be displayed, which reduced the amount of processing required. Vice City supposedly had higher performance requirements, however some gamers reported that a Pentium III 500 MHz system with 128 MB RAM and an ATI Rage 128 graphics card could run it at playable speed. The PC port's advantages were higher quality textures, higher resolutions, and a custom radio tracks, although the police AI seems to be lacking at times in comparison.

Xbox

Although the Xbox version was released a year after the PlayStation 2 version, it nonetheless sold well as part of the Double Pack. The Xbox version featured numerous improvements over the PC and PlayStation 2 versions. The Xbox version included better graphics (due to more capable console hardware) which included more detailed polygon models, real time reflections, real time shadowing, greater draw distances and weather effects. The Xbox version also featured custom radio tracks which included the ability to play a user's own songs from their Xbox hard drive. However, the lower resolution of the Xbox port reduced somewhat the effect of the improved textures overall.

Homages and references

The game features many references to 1980s trends and events:

Popular culture references:

  • Scarface - various references including a hidden apartment with blood on bathroom walls and a free chainsaw; the overall storyline is highly similar to the film's, as is the design of the final mission.
  • Top Gun. Across town there are several Top Fun vans to be found, trough which a minigame is played, often involving racing miniature planes.
  • Taxi - The interior of Kaufman Cabs is almost identical to that of the taxi depot in the television series that aired in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The name is an homage to one of Taxi's stars, the late Andy Kaufman.
  • Heat - during the bank robbery during the 'Heist' mission is very similar to the one in the movie.
  • The Godfather Part II - a condo available for purchase is called the Hyman condo, a reference to a character from the movie.
  • Carlito's Way - Vice City#Ken Rosenberg, Tommy Vercetti's lawyer and advisor looks and acts like David Kleinfeld from the film.

Controversy

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been labeled as violent by many special interest groups, and is considered highly controversial. Some suggest that parental supervision is necessary when young people play this game, in spite of the fact that children were never the game's intended audience and are very unlikely to understand its humour. The ESRB rated this game "M" for Mature. In Australia, it was slightly modified to comply with current Australian censorship laws; the ability to pickup prostitutes was disabled, allowing the game to be given an MA15+ rating by the OFLC. In the UK, Vice City received an "18" certificate from the BBFC.

In November 2003, Cuban and Haitian groups in Florida targeted the title. They accused the game of inviting people to harm immigrants from those two nations Players of the game pointed out that lines such as "These Haitians! We take 'em out!" refer specifically to members of a Haitian drug cartel, not every Haitian person, and a similar line appears in a mission to kill the Cubans. Nevertheless, the groups' claims of racism and incitement to genocide attracted a good deal of public attention towards Vice City. Rockstar Games issued a press release stating that they understood the concern of Cubans and Haitians, but also believed those groups were blowing the issue out of proportion. Under further pressure, including threats from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to "do everything we possibly can" if Rockstar didn't comply, Take-Two (the game's publisher) did agree to remove several lines of dialogue state court, downgraded from the initial decision to refer the case to a federal court [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/grandtheftautovicecity/news.html?sid=6087048&mode=news" target="_blank" >*. In 2004, a new version of the game was released, removing and changing those lines of dialogue .

In February 2005, a lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a Fayette police station regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car *. One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was GTA's graphic nature - with his constant playing time - that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages are being sought from the Jasper branches of GameStop and Wal-Mart, the stores from which Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, and the PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment. The case is currently being heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to death for his actions.

External links

Official sites

Third party resources

Fan sites

Modding sites

1980s retro movement | 2002 computer and video games | 2003 computer and video games | Controversial computer and video games | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | PlayStation 2 games | Third-person shooters | Windows games | Xbox games | Vehicular combat games

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