Vice City Docks,
Container Ships abound here.

Sound familiar? Well it should because the setup is strikingly similar to Grand Theft Auto 3 as is the gameplay. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (hereafter referred to as Vice City) is very much an evolutionary step over it's predecessor. In fine film tradition it is also a prequel being set in the 1980s and features younger versions of quite a few recognisable Liberty City characters.

If you haven't played Grand Theft Auto 3 then we can tell you the game is played from a third person perspective where you get to travel around a reasonably large cityscape committing crime and doing missions for people - which often involves committing crime. Spot a trend here? The Grand Theft Auto bit comes in with the fact that aside from some locked parked cars any car in the game can be stolen. Indeed a healthy part of the gameplay comes from choosing the right kind of vehicle to help achieve the mission objective.

Cut scenes take place in varied places.
Here we are at a recording studio.

It is worth noting that it is very difficult to fully die in this game - losing all your health simply results in you being taken to the nearest hospital to be patched up and released. You DO however fail the mission you are on, lose all your weapons and body armour not to mention get charged a few hundred dollars for the patch up work. Generally death is but a minor inconvenience forcing you to retake a mission - unless you completely run out of money in which case you will die permanently. Missions too can be taken as often as necessary till you complete them - again allowing a great deal of experimentation to occur till you can find the right approach. The missions can consist of a wide variety of tasks (considerably improved over GTA 3) including rescues, jury rigging, extortion, grand theft tank, assassination, courier work, gang initiation, speed trials, boat defence, boat theft, remote control bombing and a large variety more beyond that. Missions are also now routinely multi-stage with two or three objectives per mission often with a little curl in them to spice things up or to lampoon a film.

Ocean Beach by night.
You start the game here at one of the Hotels.

One of our favourite missions is the one where a bottle of boomshine, a heavily alcoholic drink, has been rigged to explode if the limousine it is in drops below fifty. Consequently fast driving is the order of the day while you try not to lose concentration too much due to laughing at the inanities the passengers you are carrying utter while they try to deal with the bomb. Film, literature and generally funny references abound throughout the game. At any stage when you have to reach a particular destination or are chasing someone your objective is always clearly indicated on your radar so knowing where to go is never an issue. Sometimes, usually because the game made a particularly funny reference, you can miss the instructions on what exactly you are meant to do at a given point but by and large the mission design is clean and clear.

Ocean Beach Hotel Loby.
Note the shiny reflective surfaces!

Naturally missions involve a lot of crime. The more crime you commit the more interested the police get in chasing you down. The stars ranking system has stayed the same with one star being a minor misdemeanor that is quickly forgotten if you can stay away from police long enough. Two stars and above isn't forgotten - you must access police bribes to get the police off your back and the more stars you get the more vigorous the pursuit. At two stars it is just cop cars ramming you, three stars you get the police helicopter and the vice squad (looking awfully like two certain Miami Vice characters in dress and car). Four stars and the S.W.A.T. team gets called in with their special wagons. Five brings the FBI who pack heavy assault rifles and finally at six stars the police give up and the army come for you in tanks. Being extremely well armed is a vital thing at six stars.

On top of ramming you cops will also try to shoot out your tires, deploy tire spikes in front of you and set up roadblocks. All in all the law is well armed, persistant and generally better left alone till you pack some serious firepower. One new twist Vice City brings to getting the police off your back is the concept of 'clean clothes'. Grab this token and not only does your outfit change but you can lose two stars off your wanted level (most of the time). Getting caught by the police (and they will haul you out of cars given half a chance) results in you being arrested. Lucky for you not only are the cops bribeable but you have a lawyer on call - for a fairly modest fee he gets you released quickly, albeit without weaponry and body armour.

Dirtbike fun, some of the
jumps can be quite impressive.

Experimentation is encouraged at every turn and is half the appeal of the game. Indeed there are quite a few hidden details in throughout. Various vehicles, when stolen, have mission modes of their own which all offer money upon completion but also can offer benefits like increased running speed or police bribes or health tokens spawning at your hideouts. Hidden packages abound all over the city with one hundred to find. Collect enough and you get tokens spawning at your hideouts that give body armour and weaponry. Indeed it is well worth collecting these as then, when you die or are arrested, you simply return to the closest hideout and become quickly re-armed and ready to rumble across the streets once again. To date we here at Gameplanet have found sixty four packages and at the sixty mark were given access to the highly deadly gatling gun as a weapon. The mayhem now raging on the streets scarcely bears contemplating!

Lee Harvey was a wussy.
(But he made 'The Usual Suspects'.)