This is part 1 of a double article I have written in collaboration with my buddy, @Yousef. Look forward to their take as they review this timeless classic!
GTA: Vice City is not my favorite game, but it's the game I love the most.
Quite an odd statement to start this off, right? Well, it's gonna get even odder, because this wasn't even a game I could play regularly on my own, so that love was a slow burn that eventually became a full-blown inferno.
The incredible atmosphere is my favorite thing about this game. Sure, I can attack the city with the force of a nuke but, sometimes, it is all about watching the sunset.
If I were to tell you how much money I spent on trips to the internet cafe just to play more of this game I couldn't beat (due to time constrains and the inability to make saves), you would think I'm insane... and you'd be right. What I was doing was the literal definition of insanity. I'd replay that first mission over and over and then roam the beautiful streets of Vice City, entering cheats I had memorized through sheer repetition and not making an inch of progress through entire DAYS worth of gaming. For years, all I would ever know was the first island, with some back alleys I'd find out about by pure luck. And if I playing the same 5% of this game over and over for two years isn't enough to convince you that I loved it, then let me tell you that I once DREAMED about playing it just to wake up actually pissed off that it wasn't real. This game meant the world to me. It still does.
Why? I couldn't possible tell, but something about this whole thing just resonated with me in a way that few other titles have even approached... I can't name any other game when I'm content just booting it up and driving around an area so familiar to me as to rival my real-life city. Getting to watch the sunset on the incredibly scenic Ocean View? A thing of beauty. Driving to Malibu Club to clear its roof in one smooth jump? That's what I lived for. Getting the "Sea Ways" cheat on so I could ram police boats and random NPCs just sailing about the area? Words can't even express how much I liked that.
I can't even really tell you what the majority of the game's story is about, only that I found the gameplay that supported it to be good enough for me to push through whatever insane task it put in front of me. Some of those missions were grueling, but the rewards were so sweet that I kept pushing though them once I got a good enough PC to get the game running home and I was finally ready to conquer it (unsurprisingly, GTA: Vice City was the first game I installed on my 2007 ACER Laptop).
I have always admired the way the game can look both bleak and vibrant through its HUD and gameplay elements. Those loud suits and hot pink markers clash beautifully with the rundown city around them.
Another thing I really liked was that this wasn't a nerdy or niche interest... everyone I knew had this game and it was often what we ended up playing whenever we hung out at someone's house, taking turns challenging Vice City's police department as we kept wrecking the place with a combination of Molotov cocktails, rocket launchers, submachine guns and chainsaws. Seeing how long one would survive before dying and having to relinquish the "hot seat" became a fierce form of competition on its own, and I still remember how much fun it was to pull all sorts of tricks to gain an advantage and extend one's playing time, much to our friends' chagrin. One of the guys had managed to get the AI to jump off a bridge as it kept speeding circles around his character and overshot him like crazy, resulting on THREE patrol cars sinking in the nearby body of water... I can still hear the hysterical howls that followed.
Someone else even managed to locate a program that allowed him to map cheat codes to his numeric keypad and we were so impressed by it (and envious of the whole thing) that we began modifying them in secret whenever he wasn't looking, causing the guy to lash out even more brutally than any of the actual criminals within the game whenever his "Thug Tools" cheat became "Foxy Little Thing". I'll forever remember how we managed to activate the "Big Bang" cheat by extending a pencil near his keyboard as he was about to complete one of the game's hardest missions, just for his character to die on the brutal explosion that ensued. Stuff like that is what makes this game so adored in my mind... it's Minecraft with guns. Your creativity truly is the limit.
Even today I still find incredible joy out of playing this game, mostly by running Vice City: Stories on the PS2 and taking turns with my kids as we ignore the missions (I have since completed it, so it's not like there's a whole lot left to do) and concentrate on securing our places in history through some bloody means. I have enjoyed some great bonding moments by sitting my kids as toddlers in my lap, grabbing a motorcycle and letting them push "X" while I steered the vehicle around the heavily busy streets of this neon city, seeing them laugh their heads off whenever the inevitable crash happened and our character went flying thirty feet forward. They also really liked whenever I would do something truly stupid for the sake of comedy, like trying to punch a couple of SWAT members as my "wanted" rating skyrocketed and they were shooting at me with assault rifles. I even remember one time when I managed to hide behind some NPCs and used them as human shields as the police killed them without a second, virtual thought, and how I started acting like an over-exaggerated clown by asking them to come back, just for my kids to laugh with pure joy as that obviously didn't happen. And once they discovered the "Guys Follow You" cheat code and started piling guys on cars, vans, and helicopters? All hell broke loose on the best possible way, with them pretending to lead their "army" as it was either mowed down by the police or ran over by them as their only way to avoid getting trapped by the ever-increasing mob. My ten-year-old even made a game out of getting a bunch of dudes into one of the medical helicopters just to ditch it into the ocean later. It's all great fun that simply cannot be found anywhere else.
Just another day in Vice City.
If you were to ask me why I love this game so much, it's because of the memories that are still being made. My oldest kid is nearly the same age I was when I first started playing and I know that he will continue to make memories long after he gets to a position where he can pass it down himself. We play this game nearly every weekend and have for almost a decade at this point, a decade of mutual excitement obtained by traveling through a city that feels like a home away from home. And that's what makes this game stand out among all of the others that have stolen my heart in the 34 years I have been in front of a screen.
A single player game I have shared with dozens of people.
What about you? What experiences can you share of your time on Vice City?
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. But after all it's incredible that the game that started as an expancion pack for GTA 3 became the game that would give his identity to the whole franchise. Waffles great article as always.
