Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto Vice City logo.svg
Studio Rockstar North (Windows / PlayStation 2)
Rockstar Vienna (Xbox)
War Drum Studios (Android / iOS)
Publisher Rockstar Games
composer Lex Horton
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 October 27, 2002
platform Android , iOS , macOS , PlayStation 2 , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation 4 , Windows , Xbox
genre Action game , racing game , third-person shooter
Game mode Single player
control Keyboard , mouse , gamepad
medium 2 CD-ROMs (PC); 1 DVD-ROM (PS2, Xbox, PC reissue), download
language English, multilingual subtitles
Age rating
USK from 18
USK approved from 16
PEGI recommended for ages 18+
information Abridged version released by the USK from 16. The unabridged version was indexed until October 2014 and was approved from the age of 18 after a re-examination. Vice City Mobile for Android was approved by the USK in 2012 for people aged 18 and over.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City ( GTA: Vice City for short, GTA: VC or just Vice City ; English for "City of Vices ") is the fourth game in the Grand Theft Auto series and a prequel of its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto III ( GTA III ). It was first released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 , then in 2003 for Windows . For the tenth anniversary, a port for iOS and Android devices was also releasedon December 6, 2012. The game was indexed in Germanybecause in the first edition there was the possibility of circumventing the censoring that is fundamentally anchored in Germany by installing an installation without a German country code. Shortly thereafter, a defused version appeared that could be freely sold and purchased. This game was also very successful commercially. It has been sold more than ten million times worldwide.

The graphics have only changed slightly compared to the predecessor. The game transports the player to the 1980s with their fashionable appearances: music, neon colors (especially in buildings with nighttime lighting), clothing, computers in the early stages of development, political and social conditions.

action

The action takes place in 1986 . The main character is Thomas "Tommy" Vercetti (voiced by Ray Liotta ), who committed several murders for Sonny Forelli, one of Liberty City's Mafia bosses, and served a 15-year prison term for them. At the beginning of the game he is released from prison and Sonny sends him to Vice City with two friends to handle a drug deal. During the deal, those involved are attacked by masked gangsters. Only Tommy and Ken Rosenberg can escape. Tommy's two companions are shot and the gangsters escape with the money and drugs. Sonny now asks Tommy to get his drugs back.

Lance and Tommy (meet in the course of the game) find out after a while that the millionaire Ricardo Diaz, the largest cocaine dealer in Vice City (for whom Vic Vance already worked in GTA: VCS ), was behind the attack. They kill him in his villa and take all of his property. Tommy begins to buy up real estate and so ranks the city.

Now Sonny Forelli steps in, who had planned from the beginning to expand his domain to Vice City. When Tommy learns of Sonny's arrival in Vice City, he tries to stop him, but Sonny begins to take control of Tommy's property. Tommy agrees to a meeting with Sonny in Diaz's villa, during which Tommy Sonny wants to return the money he lost at the start of the delivery in order to pay off his debt and to rule Vice City independently of Forelli. In the course of the conversation, Lance reveals himself to be a defector and tries to kill Tommy together with Sonny, but they are instead turned off by Tommy, so that from now on, with the support of his lawyer Ken Rosenberg, he can further expand his influence in Vice City.

Game principle and technology

General

Like the other games in the GTA series , the game mainly consists of a combination of shooting and driving sequences. The tasks for the player can be divided into three categories: main missions, side missions and free play.

Both in the missions and outside the missions, the police react to certain criminal acts of the player. The more crimes the player commits, the more police officers and other units will pursue the player.

The main missions form the plot of the game and are therefore completed in a fixed chronological order. To do this, the player has to visit various clients in the game world. In the following short cutscene the plot is continued and the problem to be solved is described. The player then has to solve the mission with weapons and / or vehicles that he finds in the game world or that are made available to him.

The game follows the open world principle and therefore offers the player various employment opportunities apart from the missions. For example, the player may intentionally commit crimes in order to obtain police pursuit or simply explore the game world.

Innovations

As an innovation, real estate can be acquired for which the player can later also fulfill orders. If all orders for a property have been successfully completed, it regularly throws protection money. In addition, the game can be saved in a property, which is an improvement on GTA III . In GTA III there was only one savepoint per island , which meant that the player often had to take longer trips to the missions. Depending on the price range, the property has one or more garages in which the player can park his vehicles. These are then still available after restarting the game.

Another novelty is the ability to change clothes in the game. However, this is limited to specified clothing combinations (e.g. jeans with a Hawaiian shirt , golf clothing, suit, etc.). This means that the wanted level (at most two out of six wanted stars) is reduced back to zero.

The last major change is that some buildings in the game can now also be entered, including the Ocean View Hotel, the mansion and the shopping center.

Side missions

Side missions are not part of the plot and can therefore be performed at any time. For example, as part of a collection mission, 100 hidden parcels have to be found in the game world. Monster stunts require the implementation of long jumps with vehicles. With taxi missions you drive passers-by to the desired destinations. These types of missions do not have to be completed consecutively and can therefore be interrupted and continued later. In contrast, the fire, police and ambulance missions cannot be interrupted. There must be a certain number of the same tasks, such as B. extinguishing fires or killing criminals can be carried out. Compared to its predecessor, an additional side mission is the delivery of pizza by moped . In order to achieve the goal of a 100 percent game, the side missions must also be completed. Parallel to the main plot there are also subplots with various other clients, similar to the previous one in GTA III . These include u. a. real estate king Avery Carrington, Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina and the rock band Love Fist . These missions are structured like the main missions.

Game world

The game world consists of the fictional American metropolis Vice City of the 1980s , in which hotels, bars, beaches, etc. are the main features. It is obvious that Miami and Miami Beach served as models.

The eastern half of the game world (Miami Beach) can already be reached at the beginning of the game via the normal routes, but the bridges to the western part of Vice City are closed due to a storm warning, so that the player first has to complete a few missions of the main story in order to have easy access to unlock the western half. There are several smaller inhabited islands between the two large islands that make up the main part of the city. Starfish Island is the mansion district of the beautiful and the rich, a nod to Fisher Island . Prawn Island is a shabby island with a movie factory and ruined villas that street gangs use as a meeting point. Three other islands make up the Leaf Links golf course .

There are various gangs within Vice City, each of which has established itself in the city in its own way. In the north of the Vice City Mainland, i.e. the western island, the bikers have their district in Downtown. Years ago they were better represented in the city, but were very much weakened in the years before that. Further south in the mainland is Little Haiti, where the Haitian gang has its territory. Your direct opponent is the Cuban gang in Little Havana . The power struggle between Haitians and Cubans repeatedly leads to great bloodbaths, with Tommy helping the latter. Vice Beach (eastern island) is controlled by wannabe gangsters, but they only stay at a shopping center and on Prawn Island. There is also Ricardo Diaz's gang, which can be found around his villa on Star Fish Island until Diaz's death. The last course to be mentioned is Tommy Vercetti's own course. It is created in the course of the Vice City deal and can only be found around Vercetti commercial properties.

In addition to the means of transport adopted from GTA III , there are also helicopters, a seaplane and motorcycles. The latter offer the advantage that the player can escape pursuers better and that the player can fire shots forward while driving. In contrast to the predecessor and successor, however, there are no rail vehicles. A military combat helicopter can also be found on the military site. A total of 106 different means of transport are available to the player.

Influences

The story has some similarities with the movie Scarface . Both in the film and in the game, an insignificant man succeeds in advancing within a criminal organization and ultimately taking over it. However, the game ends at this point and thus offers a happy ending, while the film also shows the case of the main character. The last mission in GTA: Vice City thus also corresponds to the last scene of the film, in which a villa is stormed by enemy gangsters. While Tony Montana, the main character in the film, dies, it is up to the player to survive the attack.

Both acts playing in the 1980s in Miami (or in a closely following Miami city) and treated the then drug trafficking.

The large mansion in Vice City is modeled after the mansion in the film. It contains the large lobby and Tony Montana's work office with the surveillance monitors. There's also an apartment in Vice City with a chainsaw and blood-smeared bathroom, alluding to the “chainsaw scene” in the film. The interior of the Malibu Club is also very reminiscent of "The Babylon" from the film.

The visual appearance of the city and some other details are based on the Miami Vice series . For example, the character Lance Vance resembles the Miami Vice character "Ricardo Tubbs", whose actor Philip Michael Thomas also lends his voice to Lance. Some missions that deal with drug and arms trafficking or gang wars can also be compared with some TV episodes.

The character of the shady, nervous lawyer Ken Rosenberg is in turn based on the lawyer David Kleinfeld (played by Sean Penn ) from the film Carlito's Way .

Other stars voiced characters in Vice City , including William Fichtner (lawyer Ken Rosenberg), Dennis Hopper (Steve Scott), Burt Reynolds (Avery Carrington), Jenna Jameson (Candy Suxxx), Danny Trejo (Umberto Robina) and series legend Lee Majors (Big Mitch Baker), whose fictional character also bears a certain resemblance to the speaker.

music

As in the previous releases, the game's soundtrack is made up of various radio stations that play songs from the 80s:

In addition, in the Windows and Xbox versions, as in GTA III , your own audio files can be integrated into the game. The soundtrack is also available for purchase. Individual "radio stations" (except for the "talk stations") can be purchased in the form of an audio CD, or all "stations" as a package.

Protection of minors in Germany

The defusing of the game content of the version sold in Germany includes a. the removal of the Chaos City missions , in which the wanted level must be raised as high as possible through criminal offenses within two minutes, as well as dirty methods in which the player has to take out Cuban gang members with a sniper rifle from a roof. In addition, as in the predecessor, the so-called rampage missions were cut out, in which the aim is to kill a certain number of gang members within a given time. In addition, in the defused version it is not possible to kick people lying on the ground or to take money from them. The representation of blood has also been completely removed.

In the first edition sold in Germany, the censorship could easily be bypassed by installing a non-German country code, which is why the shortened German version was also indexed. This no longer works in the version released after indexing and released for ages 16 and over. On the consoles it was possible to play the game in full despite the German version by setting the console's voice output to English.

Mobile versions

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Vice City , Rockstar Games released the 10th Anniversary Edition of GTA: Vice City for iOS and Android on December 6, 2012 . After some technical problems, the Android version was only available on December 12th. In contrast to the PC and console versions, the mobile version is almost completely uncensored. The Android and iOS versions have received the USK classification "No youth approval".

reception

reviews
publication Rating
PS2 Windows
PC Games k. A. 9/10
Meta-ratings
Metacritic 95 94

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City received extremely positive reviews. The review database Metacritic aggregates 30 reviews to an average of 94 for the Windows version and 62 reviews to an average of 95 for the PlayStation 2 version. The German-language PC Games praised the English dubbing and assessed that you feel “reminiscent of a film thanks to the rapid camera and the lifelike animations”. The magazine also praised the dramaturgy of the game - the missions were short and reduced to the bare essentials, but left the player room to “work things out and try things out”. The "hectic, overly sensitive and unbalanced" control was criticized.

  • Bravo Screenfun 06/03 - 96%: "No game has more style: If you don't play this gangster hit enthusiastically, you have to be a cop."
  • GameStar 07/03 - 90%: "Great racing action in a believable sunny city ."
  • Computer Bild Spiele 07/03 - Good "'Grand Theft Auto - Vice City' is a fascinatingly complex game."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GTA: Vice City with no youth approval rechecked on Schnittberichte.com , accessed on October 20, 2014 (German)
  2. ↑ http://www.pcwelt.de/news/Gaming-GTA_Vice_City_erscheint__am_6.12._fuer_Android___iOS-7079983.html
  3. ↑ Indexing of Vice City http://www.golem.de/0303/24358.html
  4. ↑ a b Schnittberichte.com: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
  5. ↑ GTA Vice City celebrates new sales success http://www.golem.de/0212/23169.html
  6. ↑ Worldwide sales figures http://www.vgcharts.org/worldtotals.php
  7. ↑ Sales figures in the USA http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml
  8. ↑ a b PCGames.de: GTA Vice City. Retrieved May 17, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Retrieved April 28, 2020 .
  10. ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Retrieved April 28, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Spieletipps.de: GTA Vice City Tests
  12. ↑ GameStar.de: Test: GTA Vice City
Grand Theft Auto series of computer games


Main series

1997: GTA • 1999: GTA 2 • 2001: GTA III • 2002: GTA: Vice City • 2004: GTA: San Andreas • 2008: GTA IV • 2013: GTA V

Offshoot

2004: GTA Advance • 2005: GTA: Liberty City Stories • 2006: GTA: Vice City Stories • 2009: GTA: Chinatown Wars

Add-ons
GTA

1999: London 1969 • 1999: London 1961

GTA IV

2009: The Lost and Damned • 2009: The Ballad of Gay Tony