Grand Theft Auto Vice City - PS2

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Release Date: 10-29-2002
Moby Score (1-10): 8.5
Player Score (1-5): 4
Genre(s): Action

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City follows Tommy Vercetti, a mobster recently released after serving a fifteen-year prison sentence. Having refused to betray the Forelli crime family, Tommy is sent by his boss, Sonny Forelli, to Vice City to help expand the family’s operations. What should be a routine drug deal quickly turns into an ambush, leaving Tommy without the money, the drugs, or an explanation. With Sonny demanding repayment and rival criminals, corrupt officials, street gangs, bikers, and other local powers standing in his way, Tommy sets out to recover what was lost and build his own criminal empire.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an open-world action game that builds on the free-roaming driving and shooting structure of Grand Theft Auto III. The game is set in Vice City, a fictionalized version of Miami, during the 1980s. The city includes beaches, neon-lit streets, hotels, mansions, shopping districts, docks, industrial areas, and islands connected by bridges. Access to the full city opens gradually as the story progresses, with bridges and districts becoming available after key events. As in the previous game, the player can explore the city, steal vehicles, complete story missions, and engage in criminal activities that attract police attention through a wanted-level system. As the wanted level rises, the police response escalates from patrol officers to roadblocks, helicopters, SWAT teams, federal agents, and military forces.

The mission structure includes car chases, shootouts, assassinations, robberies, escort jobs, timed objectives, and missions involving boats or aircraft. The vehicle selection has been expanded with many cars inspired by 1980s designs, along with boats, helicopters, and small aircraft. One of the major additions is the ability to ride motorcycles, including street bikes, dirt bikes, and heavier cruiser-style bikes. Helicopters also play a larger role, allowing the player to travel across the city, land on rooftops, and take part in missions built around flight.

Tommy has access to a wide range of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, explosives, and heavy weapons. Melee weapons are more prominent than in Grand Theft Auto III, with items such as bats, knives, machetes, clubs, chainsaws, and other close-range weapons available throughout the city. Combat remains third-person and mission-based, with the player often moving between driving sequences and on-foot gunfights.

Outside the main story, the player can take part in numerous optional activities. Returning side activities include taxi driving, paramedic missions, firefighting, vigilante missions, races, hidden package collection, rampages, and stunt jumps. Vice City also adds a stronger emphasis on property ownership. Tommy can purchase safehouses and businesses across the city, some of which provide save points, garages, income, or asset missions that expand his criminal operations. Several purchasable businesses include their own mission chains, and completing them turns those properties into income-generating assets. Tommy can also change outfits at certain locations, sometimes for mission purposes and sometimes as an optional cosmetic feature.

The game’s 1980s Miami-like setting is reflected through its music, fashion, vehicles, architecture, dialogue, and satire of crime films, pop culture, television, celebrity, consumerism, and the drug trade. The soundtrack is presented through in-vehicle radio stations featuring licensed period music, talk shows, commercials, and parody programming. These stations include pop, rock, metal, hip-hop, new wave, Latin, and talk radio, helping establish the tone and atmosphere of Vice City.

*** Data by MobyGames.com ***