Here in my car
The vehicles have improved from GTA3. The most noticeable addition being the various motorcycles you can thieve. With these beauties you can cut through traffic in half the time and do insane stunts and wheelies till you’re hearts content, you can also fire directly ahead with an automatic weapon whereas in a car you obviously can only fire to the sides. This is most welcome when you need to chase an opponent down quickly and dispose of them.
Furthermore, vehicles have improved physics to GTA3’s with better suspension and handling for the most part. The only thing I’m not too convinced about is that I still think that the cars get damaged too quickly. The car damage does looks fabulous though so maybe I’m being too picky here.
Fashion! - Turn to the left!
The graphics are a considerable improvement to the PS2 version with a greater draw distance as well as higher resolutions and frame rates (naturally). The detail in the city is amazing with billboards and hoardings making a mockery of brand names such as The Gap and other such establishments. Other details include city lights that flicker off the wet roads, steam rising from storm drains and water glistening as the sun beats down on Vice City. Of course this was a console game at heart so the graphics aren’t anything compared to those of say Unreal 2 or indeed many other newer PC titles in the works but it still looks great and does the part. The characters although looking like they were made out of foam and seeming puppet-like still manage to look quite good and memorable. The amount of people walking around Vice City is also notable and gives the impression of a sprawling city.
There aren’t many display options available apart from resolution and draw distance so those with low end PC’s may experience problems playing the game at higher resolutions – but that’s in the instruction manual!
I love 1983
The sounds of the game are great with all your usual screeching of tires and purring of engines, oh and the screams and gunfire of a gangland shootout. There are nice little touches such as the way the NPC’s continually walk around dishing out abuse with “I’ve got biiiiig Cajones!” being a personal favourite. The dialogue is performed brilliantly with quality voice actors delivering the normally side splitting lines.
It’s the radio stations though that gets a special mention. There are several generic radio stations that each poke fun of DJ’s and chat show hosts of America. The new wave DJ Adam First is quite possible the most self absorbed arrogant man you’d ever heard, DJ Fernando on Emotion FM gives anecdotes about his sexual conquests in-between playing classic ‘80’s power ballads, and lets not forget rebel without a clue DJ Lazlow on VROCK playing “help me I’m unemployed” heavy metal all day and night. The rantings of these DJ’s are brilliantly written and performed as are the cleverly crafted advertisements that break up the shows. I can’t stress how much these will leave you in stitches, so much so you might not be able to concentrate on the mission you are on and might just drive off a bridge while trying to wipe the tears of laughter from you eyes. The music on these stations are all familiar tracks by well known recording artists of the decade such as Gary Numan, Ozzy Osborne and Toto, and there are loads of these songs featured. You can even add your own MP3’s to the MP3 radio station like in the original GTA3 if you like.
McGuyver
The game has very few bugs from what I can tell, the ones I did notice being the targeting system not always working as well as it should. Often you end up targeting the enemy you’re facing towards rather than the one closest and that’s more of a threat. The NPC A.I. can also be a bit erratic with random people firing at you for no apparent reason. One other problem I noticed was that if a boat accidentally gets beached then it’s beached there pretty much for good! It would be nice if there was a way of getting the things back into the water again. Oh and sometimes the solar flare effect can obscure your view of cutscenes which is a very minor problem as it’s not always there. All in all though, a lot of the bugs from GTA3 seem to have been ironed out. YAY!
