"The best a game can get, truly amazing and gripping. What more could you ask for?"

Introduction - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is one of many GTA's, the fifth edition if you count GTA1, 2 and London 1969 on the original Playstation. It is a follow up to the groundbreaking GTAIII, which took the large step from 2D GTAs on the Playstation, to 3D on the PS2.

For those that don't know what the GTA series about; GTA is basically a game that you can do pretty much anything you want in, but that also has a story along with missions to go along with it. These missions, and the entire game itself is violent, and some of the things that you are asked to do will not be for the faint-hearted, or for the easily offended.

The wonderful thing about this game is the freedom you have, and the lovely environment you have to play in. What makes this GTA stand out from the rest is the perfect environment, time era and setting. It is based in the iconic and glistening setting of Miami, and guess in what decade... The 80 's.

When you think of Miami in the 80 's, you can imagine fast cars, rich people, and of course, violence, corruption and Miami's excellent weather, and all of these features are there for you to enjoy in GTA: Vice City.

Story 8/10-
You play as Tommy Vercetti (voiced by Ray Liotta from GoodFellas), on arrival to Vice City, you are involved in a drugs-for-money exchange that goes wrong, and you end up the loser, with nothing left, not a cent to your name. Its up to you to find out who took your money, and you will do anything for anyone to get it back. "Businessmen" around the sunny Vice City are looking for a man that will do their errands for them, no questions asked, in exchange for money and information. Along the way, you'll make back some money, and make yourself known throughout the city.

Gameplay 10/10 -
At the time of the game (late 2002), Vice City was top-notch, truly amazing, hugely satisfying and just one of those games that don't come around that often, and it still is, thanks to this significant section of the game.

As said in the introduction, Vice City, and any of the GTAs to be precise, give you something that few games do, and environment that is all yours, and has no real limits. Imagine this; It is midday on a sunny, beautiful and quite frankly gorgeous day in Vice City. You are walking by the beach, but you see a nice yellow Lamborghini that catches your eye, you like it don't you? Why not press triangle and take it, the owner won't mind after all, but what if he does? What if he gets violent? Be prepared and cautious, and do it anyway. But what about the police? There is a squad car just on the opposite side of the road, won't they notice and try to arrest you? So? You have a fast car, get in and floor it. So you open the door, throw the driver out, and hop in. Oh noes, you were right, the police did see you, and now you have a star, what is a star you ask? Its the device that informs you on your current status with the police. It goes from 1 star (nothing much, you will be chased by one policeman or squad car) up to 6 stars, where the entire city's police and defence is after you. The Police, SWAT, FBI and the army will be chasing you, and won't give up until you are dead, and unless you are skilled and know your way around, this is the most likely outcome.

Get bored of the car? Leave it in the middle of the road, nothing will happen. So you get out, leave the car, and notice a wealthy man that should have some cash on him, and you are running short, so why don't you go over there, and introduce you baseball bat to his face? You do, and now he is bleeding on the floor, but look at all the pretty green money he dropped. So you go and collect it. Then another man rushes over to see what is going on, and is horrified at what he sees. Why not do it again? You get the idea.

When you are not free roaming, exploring, having fun, whatever you want to call it, there are missions available to you from certain people. They will follow roughly follow in the same sequence, but you will be doing very different things during the mission obviously. You walk into the pink circle, and await you mission briefing/cut scene. After this, you will have an objective to complete in order to pass your mission, and get your cash. It could be anything from collecting someone and taking them somewhere, or more likely finding someone and killing that someone, along with their friends, to distributing leaflets for one of your assets.

So, because of Vice City's way of life, your missions will not always be linear, and could be completed in as many different ways as possible, with the different methods available to you, as long as the job gets done. To aid you throughout your missions, and for guidance around the relatively large city that is Vice City, you have a radar on the bottom left of your screen. It will show you where all the roads and shortcuts are around the city, as well as small icons that will be fixed or that will move, which let you see where your mission opportunities are, where your save houses are, landmarks or areas that offer you something, for example, Ammu-nation, or just for you to see where your targets are.

Now, onto the controls and mechanics of the game. Vice City thankfully has easy to remember controls. After a few minutes of play, you should become familiar with the buttons and basic controls of the game, movement of Tommy being controlled with the analogue stick, and his actions with the buttons on the right hand side of the controller, as well as the L and R shoulder buttons. The vehicle controls are also user friendly enough to just pick up and play, and before you know it, you will get used to and eventually master the car physics, as well as those of the motorbikes and aircraft, which are new additions to Vice City, which weren't in GTAIII.

You could spend countless hours doing whatever you want in the game. Vice City also has mini-missions for you to play about it, from bloodthirsty rampages, which involves your character Tommy being given lethal weapons, and a timer to kill as many people as he can, and cause as much destruction as possible, to taxi missions and doing something you wouldn't quite expect, saving the people of Vice City (O_o) by taking them to a local hospital.

However, there is a bad side to some of the gameplay, but not much. One of which being Tommy's incapability to swim! Yes, it is true, if more than Tommy's ankles touch seawater, he drops down and dies. The game can also slow down quite significantly, with the frame rate dropping plenty if there is far too much going on-screen, but this is understandable with this type of game, and old the ever ageing Playstation2, and don't effect gameplay too much that often, just might be an annoyance occasionally.

The possibilities are just shy of endless, and you'll be struggling to find time to play the game. In fact, I remember reading somewhere a while ago that the average Vice City gamer spent an average of 250 hours playing the game, and if for arguments sake, we say most games will last you about 25-50 hours, thats a hell of a lot of play and value for money right there.

Graphics - 9/10
Some cynics will say that GTAs tend to have only slightly above average graphics, that are usually bland, washed out, and not as high-res as those of other games, but they aren't looking at the right game. Many also criticise Vice City's graphics because they are so similar to those of GTAIII's, but in just over a year, Rockstar really did a lot to them. For a start, they are a lot lot brighter and warmer, but they would be in 80 's Miami, wouldn't they?

When you take into context the size of Vice City, all of its large buildings, the vehicles on the road, the pedestrians, the beach, the sea, you name it, all the little details that you won't really notice until you take a good look, Rockstar have truly pulled it off again, put a lot into the graphics, and deserve to be credited for it.

Buildings, vehicles and pedestrians look realistic and pretty normal, but some more then others. Take a good look at some of the cars, and you'll see that they are near replicas of their real life counterparts, they just aren't branded and named because the manufacturers wouldn't want their Mercedes being used for drive-bys and high-speed police chases, and most likely ending up blown up, full of bullets, or somewhere in the sea surrounding the city.

Some of the games landmarks and and well-known sites are a joy to see. Just stand by the marina on a hot, sunny day in Vice City, and you will be faced with a beautiful stretch of blue sea, as far as the eye can see. You'll see people on boats, just coasting along the sea, not really going anywhere, and you'll do so to at one point or another during the game. It might seem mindless and pretty pointless at first, to be doing something so trivial and simple, yet such a delight to do just for a few minutes, taking a break from decapitating innocent bystanders, or, you could mix the two together, get out your handy sniper rifle, and have fun with Vice City's boats and civilians.

Sound - 10/10
With Vice City having won multiple Soundtrack of the Year awards, you will expect a truly sublime soundtrack from the game, and you will not be disappointed. The soundtrack is split up into different radio stations, and there is some type of music or audio at least that will appear to anyone. With well known records, track and artists from the 80 's, spread into different genres with the radio stations, the player is able to step into nearly every vehicle, turn to their favourite radio station, and drive or fly along. Imagine being heavily chased by the police while on a PCJ600 (fastest super bike in the game), weaving threw traffic, gunshots flying everywhere, cars toppling and exploding, while casually listening to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, not your kind of music? Switch to V-Rock, and listen to "I wanna rock", not amused still? Why not switch to VCPR, and prepare to listen the funniest, crude and most explicit conversations, one-liners and adverts you have ever heard in a game. The other stations also churn out other types of top quality music, with tech-no, dance, POP music, as well as some Esperanto just for the added variety. This is truly one amazing soundtrack, that will probably keep you playing just to hear a mix of some of your favourite songs and one-liners.

Overall - A must have. Ground-breaking, a true gaming masterpiece, that with just a few add-ons and changes to the also remarkable GTAIII, is made perfect. A game that you must have in your collection, get it now.

Score - 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/06