4/5 ★ – Jack_Outside_The_Box's review of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The Definitive Edition.

After the astronomical success of Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar were eager to capitalize on the new-found popularity the series had acquired. Original plans had the team considering a mission pack for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto III which would take the player to the Miami-inspired city of Vice City. It was noted after enough internal discussion, the project became too big to be presented in such a small format, so the development team set forth to transform the trip to Vice City into a full-fledged sequel titled Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Developed and published by Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City served as the next official installment in the Grand Theft Auto series and was released originally on October 29th 2002 for PlayStation 2. Taking place within the 1980’s based on a Miami-inspired setting, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City puts players in the role of a recently released gangster by the name of Tommy Vercetti as he sets forth to conquer and take over the criminal network which holds Vice City up. It’s no exaggeration to say this game blew up critically and commercially. Not 2 days after it’s release, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City sold 1.4 million copies, making it the fastest selling video game of all time during that period. The game was flooded with high praise from critics, earning an astounding 95 on Metacritic and ranking as the fifth-highest rated PlayStation 2 game of all time. Development on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City took the Rockstar team a total of 18 months and started off in its initial stages near the tail end of Grand Theft Auto III’s development. After the decision to move forward on a full-fledged game as apposed to a mission pack, the team went full steam ahead with a development budget of $5 million. The team’s decision to base the game around a fictional interpretation of Miami came from their desire to produce something which could contrast against the contemporary setting of Liberty City. The 80’s era of Miami was rife with so much subject matter to base around and satirise so it was considered an ideal time period to focus on. The team took heavy inspiration from movies and shows which reflected that era too, with the likes of Scarface and Miami Vice being notably ingrained in the DNA of the game’s setting and story. The team had a notable challenge in crafting the story, especially with the decision to move forward with a voiced protagonist. The games packed celebrity cast brought Rockstar some difficulty in managing some of the more challenging personalities. The story of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City follows Tommy Vercetti (Voiced by Ray Liotta), a gangster from the Forelli family who was recently released from a 15 year stint in prison for murder. Tommy’s boss Sonny Forelli (Voiced by Tom Sizemore) sends Tommy down south to Vice City to oversee an important drug deal in an attempt to establish a sizable foothold in the city’s drug empire. After the drug deal gets ambushed however, Tommy finds himself without the drugs or money and Sonny threatens Tommy to recover both or face the consequences. Seeking aid from a crooked lawyer called Ken Rosenburg (Voiced by William Fichtner), Tommy sets out to integrate into the drug world of Vice City and meets a number of high-profile characters like Colonel Juan Garcia Cortez (Voice by Robert Davi), Ricardo Diaz (Voiced by Luis Guzmán) and Lance Vance (Voice by Philip Michael Thomas). What follows is a wild and bloody ride as Tommy begins to work to hunt down those who set him up and in turn integrate into and build himself a drug empire the likes of the city has never seen. I found myself really enjoying revisiting the narrative of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City this time around, considering the last time I played it was just as a kid so my understanding of the more mature subject matter wasn’t really there. Now though, I really have come to appreciate how tightly connected the narrative components of this game are with one another. The biggest element of the story’s quality is its voice acting, every character is brought to life wonderfully by their respective voice actors, but none more so than Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti. The journey Tommy goes on as he rises through to the top of Vice City, eliminating all those who get in his way is thoroughly compelling from start to finish. This games narrative achieves what Grand Theft Auto III’s could not, it stays consistent. You don’t feel like you’re just doing random missions for random people, every character and respective mission you follow through on feels appropriately connected. I think the narrative also does an incredible job in representing the key inspirations it was based on. There’s a lot of homages in the games story which accompany its style and tone wonderfully. The mission selection the narrative introduces you to is not as strong as the game’s other elements in my opinion. I can agree that there’s a lot more variety behind the kind of things you’ll be doing in this game compared to Grand Theft Auto III. I think it’s the games later offerings which let it down for me though. As you’ll be acquiring more assets in your attempt to take over the city, you’ll also be getting involved with more complicated scenarios. The delivery on these complicated missions teeters too far into the frustrating area of mission design for me. The enemy’s you’ll be pitted against, the ferocity in which they can gun you down and the lack of any meaningful checkpoint system all combine to make the latter half of this games mission selection an incredibly frustrating experience you’ll be begrudgingly playing over and over. Vice City in itself serves as a delightfully disgusting character to the games larger priorities. Rockstar designed this map with a key intention to make it distinguishable from the large metropolitan terrain of Liberty City and they succeed on that measure substantially. Bright neon colors light up the cityscape spread across two distinct main islands. The key locations do a great job in representing the real-life divisions of Miami within the confines of the map. The layout in itself is so fun to navigate as the map feels very open, especially with the introduction of air and water vehicles. Cruising around Vice City is half the joy of playing this game in my opinion. The vehicles at your disposal make experiencing the life of the city different every time. The radio stations for the game also do a fabulous job representing the very best of all the different kinds of 80’s music from that era. It all just meshes together to make Vice City such a memorable entity unto itself, all these years later replaying the game that feeling is still very much there. While the combat improvements provided through the definitive edition are much appreciated, especially when you remember how cumbersome they were in the original title; I can’t help but feel the definitive edition’s graphical touch ups do more harm than good in this games case. Character models feel a lot uglier with some of the new textures they’ve introduced and the lighting effects make the city feel a bit too artificial compared to the original edition. I know this is a 23-year-old game we’re talking about so I’m not expecting a graphical masterpiece, but I do expect the supposed improvements not to take away from the original games charm and identity and whenever I look at the new model for Tommy Vercetti, I just feel like I’m looking as a bootleg version of him. Despite the games frustrating mission design and questionable graphical touch ups, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City still retains the same core strengths to this very day which helped to make it so iconic. This game is a time capsule of such a profound era and it’s narrative and world design do it’s very best to reflect so much of what made that era of history so memorable. There’s a clear reason Rockstar are choosing to go back to Vice City with Grand Theft Auto VI, the city of sun, sea and sex has established a legacy which has defined an entire generation and it still holds up to this very day.