Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
2002
Audio: English · Subtitles: English
- shooter
- racing
- adventure
- arcade
- action
- comedy
- sandbox
- open world
- single player
The story
In the year 1986, Tommy Vercetti is heavily indebted to his mafia superiors after a drug deal gone awry, but his dreams of taking over Vice City (based on Miami) push him down a different path. Featuring a wide variety of vehicles and weapons, radio stations playing hit songs from the era and an intense atmosphere, GTA: Vice City is an open-world sandbox satire of '80's Miami.
What it’s like
Neon-soaked and sun-bleached, Vice City runs on pastel sunsets, palm-lined boulevards and the saturated glow of pink and turquoise Art Deco at night, all rendered in a bright, stylised 3D that reads like a painted postcard gone sour. The soundtrack is the engine of the mood: radio stations stacked with synth-pop, New Wave and classic rock from 1986 pour out of every car, so driving at dusk with the windows down feels like the whole game is humming along. Gameplay pacing is loose and sprawling, with long cruises along the coast, bike and speedboat runs, and short, frantic mission bursts that break into chaos before settling back into aimless wandering. The emotional register is cynical and wry, a satire of ambition and excess with a crime-story spine about a small-time hustler climbing a ladder he may never own. Violence is frequent and cartoonishly bloody, with shootouts, car crashes, drug-deal killings and profanity-heavy dialogue; there is also drug and sexual content played for laughs. It suits late-night solo sessions, background nostalgia for the eighties, and players who want a rowdy, funny open-world playground rather than anything gentle.
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