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IGN Review of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
With Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Rockstar has once again revisited a previous title's setting. Vice City Stories takes place two years prior to the events of the original PlayStation 2 game, and essentially works as some sort of an introduction to GTA: Vice City. It's a much bigger game in almost every way than the first GTA Stories release, Liberty City Stories, though once again the PlayStation 2 port of the PSP game does nothing to take advantage of the system's stronger hardware.
Still though, it's Grand Theft Auto through and through. By that we mean that while things have been cleaned up or expanded a bit here or there from Liberty City Stories, it's still largely the same game that we first saw with Grand Theft Auto III. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you've begun to grow tired of the franchise's mechanics, mission structure or overall feel, this won't renew your love of the series.
In fact, after remembering our time with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, we can't help but feel that Vice City Stories isn't quite everything it could be. Sure, the handheld version was a big technical improvement over Liberty City Stories, but there's nothing substantially new to the series here and once again it comes off feeling weak on the PlayStation 2. We suppose that'll have to wait for Grand Theft Auto IV, and we're more than willing to hold our breath, but it seems like this would be the perfect platform, literally and figuratively speaking, for some new experimentation. Being able to swim this time out is nice, but we've seen that before and it really just feels like we're getting something back that we've already had.
As mentioned, Vice City Stories makes a number of technical improvements over what we saw with Liberty City Stories last year. The framerate has been improved a bit, maybe not leaps and bounds on average, but it's a little steadier than last time out. It's certainly not perfect, as the game does chug a bit here and there, but we suppose that's the case with most games in the series. There's a little more detail to be seen in nearly every facet of the game - from the characters to vehicles to the environments, Vice City Stories is a more intricate looking title than the last title.
There's also a tiny bit less pop-in than before, which was a pretty big problem last time out, but it's still far from perfect. Cars and pedestrians fade into view a couple hundred feet in front of you, and buildings and such pop into view as you drive forward. Fortunately, it's a little better than what we saw in Liberty City Stories as things generally don't just appear right in front of you, but it can still happen from time to time. It's somewhat odd that this seems to plague the PS2 version of the game significantly more than the PSP title.
Vice City Stories brings with it the same driving physics system that we've seen slowly become refined since Grand Theft Auto III. It's responsive yet wiley, fast and yet controllable, completely unrealistic and yet really damn fun. In other words, you'll have just as much fun flying down the streets of Vice City as you did the first time around.
The game includes the same "mission acceleration" options that we've seen in the past few games, namely Quick Trip and the taxis that await you after failing a mission. Quick Trip allows you to skip the non-action driving sections of a mission, which is nice in theory though it isn't always available when you'd think it should be. The taxi system returns, where a cab will wait for you outside of a hospital or prison and will take you back to the starting point of the mission you just failed. The old problem of being ill-equipped has been addressed this time in that you can bribe the police to buy back all of your confiscated weapons. It's not exactly cheap, but it can be a big time saver.
The combat has been fixed a bit in a few ways, but other problems still linger. Vice City Stories seems to do a better job of targeting enemies than Liberty City Stories, ignoring civilians for the most part. If there's an enemy behind you and a civilian in front, or a civilian much closer to you than an enemy, it may still target them first, but the auto-target works a fair bit better in this respect. However, it doesn't always target the person that you think it will, sometimes aiming at someone behind you rather than in front of you, dizzying your view as the camera jumps around. You're also still unable to run and shoot with most weapons. Pistols and uzis are fine, but anything besides those will require that you stand in place while firing. You can get used to this, but it's still an annoyance.
There is a rather major problem with hand-to-hand combat while wielding a gun, however. If an enemy gets too close to you, you'll basically be unable to fire off clean shots at him and he'll continuously pummel you until you either run away or drop dead. On multiple occasions, we were told to enter a building mid-mission and were unknowingly attacked immediately by someone wielding a bat or other melee weapon. In tight spaces, you can't get far enough away to fire off clean shots so you need to quickly swap to a proper weapon while you're getting beaten to death. Worse than this though is when you're caught by an entire mob and basically get stuck, unable to flee the massive beating and must simply reside to death. That's especially fun.
The Grand Theft Auto series has always had a rather patchwork storyline. Regardless of how well told the overall big picture is, the smaller, individual mission ideas have often seemed at least a little tacked on. Unfortunately, none of this has ever been more evident than what we see in Vice City Stories. The storyline simply starts out weak and doesn't really ever get any better. As Vic Vance, you start out in the Army and begin running some rather shady missions for your commanding officer. You tell him that you need some cash to help your ailing brother, but that you're against illegal activities. Regardless, you start running drugs, killing gang members and doing all sorts of other rather illegal things, all while complaining about it at every opportunity. It seems that Vic is completely against this sort of behavior, and yet he continuously partakes in it and carries out commands from shady character after shady character.
Of course, many fans of the series will mostly ignore the actual events of the storyline and simply focus on character traits to provide them some semblance of storytelling, but it's hard to overlook the fact that someone who's so against violence and illegal activity will take commands from racist, wife-beating bosses while barely questioning their motives.
One new aspect of the series that works somewhat well is the ability to not only take over businesses but being able to manage them. There are 30-some-odd businesses in Vice City that span six different front types, from brothels to "protection" rings to repossession businesses. Each of these can be upgraded, for a fee, and will give you a daily return on your investment. Not only can you pay to increase the quality, and hence profitability, of any of your establishments, but you can go on Empire missions in order to increase the standing of said business in the city. The more Empire missions you complete and the more you upgrade the building, the more profit you'll make.
However, the Empire missions are anything but exciting. You max out your standing upon completing fifteen missions. For the repossession missions, you'll go after a bike, then a truck, and then a bike, and then a truck, and then a bike, and then a truck, and then a bike, and so on and so on. The prostitution missions simply have you pick up one trickster, take her to a John, and then pick up another and do the same. Every now and then the John won't pay and you need to gun him down, but they never put up a fight. Regardless of which Empire missions you're doing, they're all exercises in tedium.
By now, you may be wondering why a game that we've basically talked about negatively for half the review still deserves a good rating. Regardless of how bad the story is or how little innovation is in the game, it's still a Grand Theft Auto title through and through. Rockstar has consistently imbibed a sense of humor into an expansive and fun world, and it keeps you coming back for more. This is 100% true of Vice City Stories. Navigating the world, be it on foot, in vehicle or in the air is fun as hell. Even though the story sucks, the characters are unique and intriguing enough that you likely won't skip the cutscenes. And most of all, it's simply and purely fun.
On top of the basic play mechanics that make any GTA game fun, Vice City Stories also has one hell of a soundtrack, quite possibly the best to date. The variety of music is fantastic, and although it seems like there might not be quite as many tunes as we've seen in the console games (though we didn't count), we were rocking out to each and every tune every time they came on the radio.
Sadly, as was the case with the PlayStation 2 port of Liberty City Stories, all of the multiplayer functionality is lost in the translation to the PS2. Oh well...
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Still though, it's Grand Theft Auto through and through. By that we mean that while things have been cleaned up or expanded a bit here or there from Liberty City Stories, it's still largely the same game that we first saw with Grand Theft Auto III. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you've begun to grow tired of the franchise's mechanics, mission structure or overall feel, this won't renew your love of the series.
In fact, after remembering our time with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, we can't help but feel that Vice City Stories isn't quite everything it could be. Sure, the handheld version was a big technical improvement over Liberty City Stories, but there's nothing substantially new to the series here and once again it comes off feeling weak on the PlayStation 2. We suppose that'll have to wait for Grand Theft Auto IV, and we're more than willing to hold our breath, but it seems like this would be the perfect platform, literally and figuratively speaking, for some new experimentation. Being able to swim this time out is nice, but we've seen that before and it really just feels like we're getting something back that we've already had.
As mentioned, Vice City Stories makes a number of technical improvements over what we saw with Liberty City Stories last year. The framerate has been improved a bit, maybe not leaps and bounds on average, but it's a little steadier than last time out. It's certainly not perfect, as the game does chug a bit here and there, but we suppose that's the case with most games in the series. There's a little more detail to be seen in nearly every facet of the game - from the characters to vehicles to the environments, Vice City Stories is a more intricate looking title than the last title.
There's also a tiny bit less pop-in than before, which was a pretty big problem last time out, but it's still far from perfect. Cars and pedestrians fade into view a couple hundred feet in front of you, and buildings and such pop into view as you drive forward. Fortunately, it's a little better than what we saw in Liberty City Stories as things generally don't just appear right in front of you, but it can still happen from time to time. It's somewhat odd that this seems to plague the PS2 version of the game significantly more than the PSP title.
Vice City Stories brings with it the same driving physics system that we've seen slowly become refined since Grand Theft Auto III. It's responsive yet wiley, fast and yet controllable, completely unrealistic and yet really damn fun. In other words, you'll have just as much fun flying down the streets of Vice City as you did the first time around.
The game includes the same "mission acceleration" options that we've seen in the past few games, namely Quick Trip and the taxis that await you after failing a mission. Quick Trip allows you to skip the non-action driving sections of a mission, which is nice in theory though it isn't always available when you'd think it should be. The taxi system returns, where a cab will wait for you outside of a hospital or prison and will take you back to the starting point of the mission you just failed. The old problem of being ill-equipped has been addressed this time in that you can bribe the police to buy back all of your confiscated weapons. It's not exactly cheap, but it can be a big time saver.
The combat has been fixed a bit in a few ways, but other problems still linger. Vice City Stories seems to do a better job of targeting enemies than Liberty City Stories, ignoring civilians for the most part. If there's an enemy behind you and a civilian in front, or a civilian much closer to you than an enemy, it may still target them first, but the auto-target works a fair bit better in this respect. However, it doesn't always target the person that you think it will, sometimes aiming at someone behind you rather than in front of you, dizzying your view as the camera jumps around. You're also still unable to run and shoot with most weapons. Pistols and uzis are fine, but anything besides those will require that you stand in place while firing. You can get used to this, but it's still an annoyance.
There is a rather major problem with hand-to-hand combat while wielding a gun, however. If an enemy gets too close to you, you'll basically be unable to fire off clean shots at him and he'll continuously pummel you until you either run away or drop dead. On multiple occasions, we were told to enter a building mid-mission and were unknowingly attacked immediately by someone wielding a bat or other melee weapon. In tight spaces, you can't get far enough away to fire off clean shots so you need to quickly swap to a proper weapon while you're getting beaten to death. Worse than this though is when you're caught by an entire mob and basically get stuck, unable to flee the massive beating and must simply reside to death. That's especially fun.
The Grand Theft Auto series has always had a rather patchwork storyline. Regardless of how well told the overall big picture is, the smaller, individual mission ideas have often seemed at least a little tacked on. Unfortunately, none of this has ever been more evident than what we see in Vice City Stories. The storyline simply starts out weak and doesn't really ever get any better. As Vic Vance, you start out in the Army and begin running some rather shady missions for your commanding officer. You tell him that you need some cash to help your ailing brother, but that you're against illegal activities. Regardless, you start running drugs, killing gang members and doing all sorts of other rather illegal things, all while complaining about it at every opportunity. It seems that Vic is completely against this sort of behavior, and yet he continuously partakes in it and carries out commands from shady character after shady character.
Of course, many fans of the series will mostly ignore the actual events of the storyline and simply focus on character traits to provide them some semblance of storytelling, but it's hard to overlook the fact that someone who's so against violence and illegal activity will take commands from racist, wife-beating bosses while barely questioning their motives.
One new aspect of the series that works somewhat well is the ability to not only take over businesses but being able to manage them. There are 30-some-odd businesses in Vice City that span six different front types, from brothels to "protection" rings to repossession businesses. Each of these can be upgraded, for a fee, and will give you a daily return on your investment. Not only can you pay to increase the quality, and hence profitability, of any of your establishments, but you can go on Empire missions in order to increase the standing of said business in the city. The more Empire missions you complete and the more you upgrade the building, the more profit you'll make.
However, the Empire missions are anything but exciting. You max out your standing upon completing fifteen missions. For the repossession missions, you'll go after a bike, then a truck, and then a bike, and then a truck, and then a bike, and then a truck, and then a bike, and so on and so on. The prostitution missions simply have you pick up one trickster, take her to a John, and then pick up another and do the same. Every now and then the John won't pay and you need to gun him down, but they never put up a fight. Regardless of which Empire missions you're doing, they're all exercises in tedium.
By now, you may be wondering why a game that we've basically talked about negatively for half the review still deserves a good rating. Regardless of how bad the story is or how little innovation is in the game, it's still a Grand Theft Auto title through and through. Rockstar has consistently imbibed a sense of humor into an expansive and fun world, and it keeps you coming back for more. This is 100% true of Vice City Stories. Navigating the world, be it on foot, in vehicle or in the air is fun as hell. Even though the story sucks, the characters are unique and intriguing enough that you likely won't skip the cutscenes. And most of all, it's simply and purely fun.
On top of the basic play mechanics that make any GTA game fun, Vice City Stories also has one hell of a soundtrack, quite possibly the best to date. The variety of music is fantastic, and although it seems like there might not be quite as many tunes as we've seen in the console games (though we didn't count), we were rocking out to each and every tune every time they came on the radio.
Sadly, as was the case with the PlayStation 2 port of Liberty City Stories, all of the multiplayer functionality is lost in the translation to the PS2. Oh well...
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved