Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

"Vice City" redirects here. For the song by Jay Rock, see Vice City (song).

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Developer(s)	Rockstar North
Publisher(s)	Rockstar Games
Distributor(s)	Take-Two Interactive JP Capcom
Producer(s)	Leslie Benzies
Programmer(s)	Obbe Vermeij Adam Fowler
Artist(s)	Aaron Garbut
Writer(s)	Dan Houser James Worrall
Composer(s)	Lex Horton
Series	Grand Theft Auto
Engine	RenderWare
Platforms	PlayStation 2 Microsoft Windows Xbox Mac OS X Android iOS PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4
Release date(s)	October 27, 2002 PlayStation 2 NA October 27, 2002 AUS November 8, 2002 EU November 8, 2002 JP May 20, 2004 Microsoft Windows NA May 12, 2003 EU May 15, 2003 AUS May 20, 2003 Xbox NA April 11, 2003 EU January 2, 2004 AUS January 2, 2004 JP July 29, 2004 Steam January 4, 2008 Mac OS X NA November 22, 2010 EU November 12, 2010 iOS WW December 6, 2012 Android WW December 12, 2012 PlayStation 3 NA January 29, 2013 EU January 30, 2013
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter, action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (abbreviated as "GTA: Vice City" or "GTA:VC") is a 2002 open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by Rockstar Games. It is the second 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto series and sixth original title overall. It was released in North America on October 29, 2002 for the PlayStation 2 and was later ported to the Xbox, and Microsoft Windows in 2003. It was made available on Steam on January 4, 2008, and on the Mac App Store on August 25, 2011. Vice City was preceded by Grand Theft Auto III and followed by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City draws much of its inspiration from 1980s American culture. Set in 1986 in Vice City, a fictional city modeled after Miami, the story revolves around Mafia hitman Tommy Vercetti, who was recently released from prison. After being involved in a drug deal gone wrong, Tommy seeks out those responsible while building a criminal empire and seizing power from other criminal organizations in the city. The game uses a tweaked version of the game engine used in Grand Theft Auto III and similarly presents a huge cityscape, fully populated with buildings, vehicles, and people. Like other games in the series, Vice City has elements from driving games and third-person shooters, and features an open world gameplay that gives players more control over their playing experience.

Upon its release, Vice City became the best-selling video game of 2002. Until July 2006, Vice City was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. Vice City also appeared on Japanese magazine Famitsu's readers' list of the favourite 100 videogames of 2006, the only fully Western title on the list. Following this success, Vice City saw releases in Europe, Australia and Japan, as well as a release for the PC. The game was later bundled with its predecessor in the Xbox compilation Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack; both games were later bundled with GTA: San Andreas in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy. Vice City's setting is also revisited in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, which serves as a prequel to events in Vice City. In December 2012, Rockstar released Vice City for iOS and Android platforms as celebration for the game's 10th anniversary. The game has also been ported to Mac OS X and the PlayStation Network.

Plot

In 1986, Tommy Vercetti, a loyal and former member of the Forelli Family, is released from prison after having spent 15 years inside for the murder of 11 men in Liberty City. Tommy's former boss, Sonny Forelli, fearing that his presence will heighten tensions between the other Liberty City families and bring unwanted attention to his own organisation's criminal activities, ostensibly promotes Tommy to a capo and sends him to Vice City to act as the Forelli's buyer for a series of cocaine deals, under the guardianship of a crooked lawyer and Sonny's contact, Ken Rosenberg. Sonny's interest for the deals is to help expand his family activities down into the South, overrun the Liberty drug market with the high-end cocaine from Vice City, and thus hopefully create a monopoly on the Liberty City drug ring that will establish the Forelli Crime Family as the best in the city. When Tommy and his bodyguards arrive in Vice City, Ken takes them to the deal's site at the dock, where they meet with the prominent drug kingpin of the Vance Crime Family, Victor Vance, brought in by chopper by his brother, Lance Vance. Just before they settle the deal on the drugs, the group are ambushed by several armed and masked men, who kill Victor and Tommy's bodyguards. Tommy narrowly escapes with Ken from the docks, losing the Forelli's money and the cocaine in the process. After Ken returns to his office, Tommy drives back to his hotel and informs Sonny, promising him under the threat of consequences to get back the drugs and money, and kill whoever was responsible for the ambush.

Seeking information, Ken points him towards Juan Garcia Cortez, a retired Colonel and the man who organised the deal between the Vances and Forellis. Expressing regret for the matter, Cortez promises to help Tommy find out who masterminded the ambush plot, while introducing him to his daughter Mercedes, who becomes Tommy's confidante shortly thereafter. In the process of finding leads, Tommy soon meets with and works with some of Vice City's residents as an errand boy and a hitman, including cocky 21-year-old British record producer Kent Paul, real estate mogul Avery Carrington, and Lance Vance, younger brother of Victor and the underboss of the now-defunct Vance Crime Family, who wants revenge for the death of his brother and also wants the Vance Crime Family back on the map. As time passes, Tommy also meets with a drug baron named Ricardo Diaz, who is impressed with his skills after he protects him during a deal with a group of Cubans by killing a gang of Haitians that ambush it, and thus hires to him to help with his own agenda.

After Tommy kills Cortez's lieutenant Gonzalez, who was partially held responsible for the ambush on Tommy's cocaine deal, Cortez voices his suspicion that Diaz might have been behind the ambush. Tommy decides to continues the status quo with Diaz until he can prepare an attack, but has his hand forced when Lance attempts to take revenge by himself and fails. Upon rescuing him from a junkyard, Tommy and Lance quickly raid Diaz's mansion and execute Diaz. With Diaz dead and Cortez forced to leave the city after stealing French military property, the established drug empires in Vice City soon begin to quickly crumble, allowing Tommy and Lance to personally take over and become Vice City's drug kingpins. In the process, this allows Tommy to create his own organisation, the Vercetti Crime Family, allowing him to distance himself from the Forelli Family and Liberty City so that he can personally control Vice City rather than doing so as a Forelli puppet.

Building up his empire, Tommy works with the Cuban's leader, Umberto Robina, in their fight against the Haitians, despite their leader, Auntie Poulet, hypnotising him to assist her in fighting the Cubans. After destroying the Haitian's drug factory, Umberto becomes Tommy's partner in the drug trade. Along with his help, Tommy earns the respect and friendship of Big Mitch Baker, leader of a biker gang and a Vietnam veteran, whose bikers work alongside the Cubans to become protectors of Vercetti family business. Along with working for the bikers and Cubans, Tommy also becomes a personal bodyguard to glam metal band Love Fist, pulls a major bank heist, and expands his drug business by buying up assets in nearly bankrupt companies and turning them back into a competitive business, in the process using them as a front to either produce or distribute drugs, launder money, control the underground movie scene, or operate as a chop shop. But as Tommy becomes more powerful and rich, he soon begins to suspect Lance is up to something when the latter begins slowly exhibiting paranoia and sociopathic behaviours, to the point that he begins to abuse his own bodyguards and constantly call Tommy in states of hysteria, losing his mind over being just a powerless second-in-command as he was under his brother for the past 2 years.

Eventually, Sonny soon discovers that Tommy has gained complete control over Vice City's drug trade but without sending a single dime back to the Forelli family. Enraged that Tommy has become independent and is hustling him, Sonny sends high-ranking Forelli members to forcefully collect money out of Tommy's assets. Tommy quickly disposes of them and soon decides to sever his ties with Forelli family after they injure the elderly operator of his counterfeit money operation. Upon his arrival to the Vercetti Estate with a small army of mafiosi, Sonny demands his tribute under threat of force, but just as Tommy attempts to give it in counterfeit money, Sonny reveals that he felt his business would have been taken over by Tommy, thus he was set up fifteen years ago when he was sent to kill the eleven men he went to prison for. Lance then exposes Tommy's attempted deception, revealing himself as a traitor after admitting to have informed Sonny about Tommy's activities in Vice City. Lance explains that he did so because Tommy started to disown him and was not treating him equally, and so wanted him dead so he could rebuild the Vance Crime Family and the fortune that he had had with his brother.

Angered at this betrayal, Tommy starts a gunfight, in which he chases and ridicules Lance, before killing him for his treachery. Heading through his estate, the gunfight eventually culminates in Sonny's death, allowing Tommy to establish himself as the undisputed crime kingpin of Vice City, before reassuring Ken, who arrives and is shocked by events, that everything is fine.

Setting

The game is set in 1986 in fictional Vice City, which is based heavily on the city of Miami and Miami Beach, Florida. The game's look, particularly the clothing and vehicles, reflect (and sometimes parody) its 1980s' setting. Many themes are borrowed from the major films Scarface, Carlito's Way, Goodfellas and Blow, along with the hit 1980s television series Miami Vice. Vice City also parodies and pays tribute to much of 1980s' culture in the cars, music, fashion, landmarks, and characters featured in the game.

Ricardo Diaz's opulent mansion and the climactic battle which takes place in it are very similar to their counterparts in Scarface. Another reference is the game's overall storyline, as it is highly similar to the film, as is the design of the final mission. There are also more subtle references, such as an apartment hidden within the game with blood on the bathroom walls and a chainsaw (in a nod to the film's "chainsaw torture" scene), or the pair of detectives who come chasing Tommy in a car resembling the Ferrari Testarossa after a three-star wanted level is attained, who look like characters portrayed by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in Miami Vice.

Characters

Vice City features dozens of characters, many appearing only in the cut scenes which describe each mission. The voice-talent includes Ray Liotta as protagonist Tommy Vercetti, Tom Sizemore as Sonny Forelli, Robert Davi as Colonel Juan García Cortez, William Fichtner as Ken Rosenberg, Danny Dyer as Kent Paul, Dennis Hopper as pornography Director Steve Scott, Burt Reynolds as Avery Carrington, Luis Guzmán as Ricardo Diaz, Miami Vice star Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance, Danny Trejo as Umberto Robina, Gary Busey as Phil Cassidy, Lee Majors as "Big" Mitch Baker, Fairuza Balk as Mercedes Cortez, and porn actress Jenna Jameson as Candy Suxxx. The voice of the taxi dispatcher is provided by Blondie singer Debbie Harry.

Although the main character is not the same as the one in Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City contains a few characters from GTA III at an earlier point in their lives. Donald Love, a business tycoon in GTA III, makes an appearance as an apprentice to real estate mogul Avery Carrington. The one-armed Phil Cassidy from GTA III appears in Vice City as well, with both arms intact, and one mission actually explains when and how he lost his arm.

Several of GTA III's radio hosts can also be heard in Vice City: Lazlow, who was the host of Chatterbox, the talk radio station in GTA III, is the DJ for the hard-rock station, V-Rock, in Vice City (he mentioned in passing in GTA III that he used to be a DJ on a rock station). Toni, the burned-out, female disc jockey of Flashback 95.6, the 1980s music radio station in GTA III, also appears as a young, club-hopping DJ in Vice City's pop music station, Flash FM. Finally, Fernando, a self-glorifying procurer of women ("not a pimp... a savior", he claims) who appeared on Lazlow's show in GTA III, runs Emotion 98.3. Also naturist Barry Stark, a caller for Chatterbox in GTA III, appears as a guest on VCPR in Vice City.

Gameplay

File:GTAVC Skimmer.jpg

Screenshot of the player flying a seaplane

Because Vice City was built upon Grand Theft Auto III, the game follows a largely similar gameplay design and interface with GTA III with several tweaks and improvements over its predecessor. The gameplay is open-ended, a characteristic of the Grand Theft Auto franchise; although missions must be completed to complete the storyline and unlock new areas of the city, the player is able to drive around and visit different parts of the city at their leisure and otherwise, do whatever they wish if not currently in the middle of a mission. Various items such as hidden weapons and packages are also scattered throughout the landscape, as it has been with previous Grand Theft Auto titles.

Players can steal vehicles, (cars, boats, motorcycles, tanks, and helicopters) partake in drive-by shootings, robberies, and generally create chaos like destroying vehicles. However, doing so tends to generate unwanted and potentially fatal attention from the police (or, in extreme cases, the FBI and the National Guard). Police behaviour is mostly similar to Grand Theft Auto III, although police units will now wield night sticks, deploy spike strips to puncture the tires of the player's car, as well as SWAT teams being rappelled down from flying police helicopters and undercover police units, à la-Vice Squad. Police attention can be neutralised in a variety of ways.

A new addition in the game is the ability of the player to purchase a number of properties distributed across the city. Some of these are additional hideouts (essentially locations where weapons can be collected, vehicles stored and the game saved). There are also a variety of businesses called "assets" which the player can buy. These include a film studio, a dance club, a strip club, a taxi company, an "ice-cream delivery business" (acting as a front company), a boatyard, a printing works, and a car showroom. Each commercial property has a number of missions attached to it, such as eliminating the competition or stealing equipment. Once all the missions for a given property are complete, the property will begin to generate an ongoing income, which the increasingly prosperous Vercetti may periodically collect.

Various gangs make frequent appearances in the game, some of whom are integral to story events. These gangs typically have a positive, neutral or negative opinion of the player and act accordingly by following the player or shooting at him. Shootouts between members of rival gangs can occur spontaneously and several missions involve organised fights between opposing gangs.

Vice City includes a larger selection weapons than Grand Theft Auto III. Firearms such as the Colt Python, TEC-9, SPAS-12, Ruger Mini-14, MP5, M60 machine gun and Minigun have been added in the game. A wide variety of melee weapons has also been introduced, including the chainsaw, katana, machete, meat cleaver, screwdriver, hammer and knife.

Optional side-missions are once again included, giving the player the opportunity to make pizza deliveries, drive injured people to a hospital with an ambulance, extinguish fires with a fire truck, deliver passengers in a taxi, be a vigilante, using a police vehicle to intercept (and kill) criminals, and the ability to drive a bus, transporting fare-paying passengers. Monetary rewards and occasional gameplay advantages (e.g. increased health and armour capacity and infinite sprinting) are awarded for completing different difficulty levels of these activities. Different sums of money are awarded for landing trick jumps in motorcycles or fast cars depending on the number of flips and height achieved.

Vehicles

In total, there are about 114 types of vehicles in the game (including non-maneuverable vehicles and remote-controlled vehicles), compared to the approximate 60 in Grand Theft Auto III. Taxicabs, automobiles and boats return from the game (along with many others), while new additions include helicopters and motorcycles (a citywide ban in 2001 in Grand Theft Auto III prohibited their use in Liberty City). The car physics and features are relatively similar to that of Grand Theft Auto III, and some cars were added to the game, including a sportier variants of luxury cars and new sports cars, while some vehicles from that game were highly modified.

The Skimmer plane is the only flyable fixed wing aircraft in Vice City, and because it features pontoons and is normally found in water, it is a floatplane, a type of seaplane. It can land almost anywhere, in contrast to the jets in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It has been noted that the Skimmer's design is almost exactly like the Dodo aeroplane in Grand Theft Auto III. Vehicle performance varies with location, some vehicles performing better off-road or on the street, while others perform better in the air or on land.

Soundtrack

Vice City includes a large collection of licensed music from 1986 and before. It can be listened to by means of various in-car radio stations. Each station covers a particular music genre, such as rap music (Wildstyle), rock (V-Rock) and most predominantly pop music (Wave 103, Flash FM). The tracks are for the most part works from various real-life artists, such as Lionel Richie, Foreigner, Megadeth, Electric Light Orchestra, Judas Priest, Squeeze, Toto, Hall & Oates, Kool & the Gang, 2 Live Crew, Blondie, Talk Talk, Michael Jackson, Thomas Dolby, Iron Maiden, or Mötley Crüe. Additionally, a talk station (K-Chat) and a public radio debate show Pressing Issues (VCPR) are included. The radio stations and the game's storyline also feature a fictional heavy metal band called Love Fist.

In addition to music and interviews, the stations include satirical commercials, such as the Degenatron, a fictional video game console. The commercials and the game setting are consistent: Degenatron advertisements appear on billboards, and ads air for stores in which the player can shop, such as Ammu-Nation. Months before the release of Vice City, Rockstar Games created a Degenatron "fansite", which allowed users to actually play the "emulated" games. There is also a commercial for the weapons store Ammu-Nation, a deodorant named "Pitbomb", which is a parody of Right Guard, and a car called the Maibatsu Thunder, a parody of the Mitsubishi Starion, which was a favoured import sports car of the day.

The Windows and Mac versions of the game allow users to import MP3 songs, allowing them to hear their own music through vehicle radio when tuning to an extra radio station called "MP3". To be able to do this, the user must copy their MP3 files to a specific folder installed by the game.

In late 2012, the PC version of the game was temporarily pulled from digital stores, including Steam, due to a music licensing issue with one of the songs in the game. The song in question is believed to be "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson, though Rockstar Games has not confirmed this.

Reception and sales

Reception
Review scores Publication Score AllGame Eurogamer (PC) 9/10 (PS2) 9/10 IGN (PC) 93% (PS2) 97%
Awards Publication Award 1st British Academy Video Games Awards Best Design, Best PC Game, Best Action Game, Sunday Times Reader Award for Games, Best PlayStation 2 Game, Best Sound Golden Joystick Awards Ultimate Game of the Year 2003, PS2 Game of the Year, GameSpot's Best and Worst of 2002 Best Music on PlayStation 2, Best Action Adventure Game on PlayStation 2, Game of the Year on PlayStation 2 IGN's Best of 2002 Best Adventure Game for PlayStation 2 (Editor's Choice and Reader's Choice), Special Achievement for Sound (Reader's Choice), Best Game of the Year for PlayStation 2 (Editor's Choice and Reader's Choice)

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released to critical acclaim. The game received ratings of 9.7/10 from IGN, 9.6/10 from GameSpot, 5/5 from GamePro, and 10/10 from Official US PlayStation Magazine. The game has a score of 95 out of 100 on the review compiling website Metacritic making Vice City the sixth-highest-rated PlayStation 2 game on the site. It was also generally praised for its open-ended action and entertaining re-creation of 1980s culture.

Of the iOS port, Mark Brown of Pocket Gamer wrote that Rockstar did "a commendable job of bringing a stone-cold classic to mobile" but that "controls let the package down".

The readers of Official UK PlayStation Magazine voted it the fourth-greatest PlayStation title ever released.

As of 26 September 2007, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has sold 15 million units according to Take-Two Interactive. As of 26 March 2008, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has sold 17.5 million units according to Take-Two Interactive, making it the fourth-highest-selling video game for the PlayStation 2. As of 2011 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has sold over 20 million copies.

Mobile version

On 26 October 2012 Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would be released on iOS and Android for the game's tenth anniversary, following the tenth anniversary release of a mobile version of Grand Theft Auto III in December 2011. The game was released for iOS on 6 December 2012; the Android version was slightly delayed and was released on 12 December 2012.

There are a few differences between the console versions and the mobile versions of Vice City, including updated graphics and character models, and custom controls with a fully customisable layout. Some features exclusive to the iOS versions include iCloud save game support, and the ability for the player to create a personal playlist using the music on their device.

Controversy

Tommy attacks a Haitian gang in Little Haiti. The game was accused of inviting people to harm immigrant Cubans and Haitians, and of featuring anti-Haitian and anti-Cuban phrases.

Like Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been labelled as violent and explicit, and is considered highly controversial by many special interest groups, some of whom suggest that parental supervision is necessary when young people play this game, since children were never the game's intended audience. The ESRB rated this game "M" for Mature. In Australia, it was censored in case of it receiving a refused classification rating in which the ability to pick up a prostitute was blocked, so the game could be given a MA15+ rating. In 2010, these small cuts were added back and the game still retained its MA15+ rating.

In November 2003, Cuban-American and Haitian-American civil rights organisations in Florida publicly criticised the title, contending that the game essentially invited people to harm immigrants from those two nations. The groups' claims of racism and incitement to genocide attracted a good deal of public attention towards Vice City. Rockstar Games issued a press release stating that they understood the concern of Cuban-Americans and Haitian-Americans, but also believed these organisations were blowing the issue out of proportion. Concerns regarding graphic depictions of ethnically-targeted violence in the title were echoed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, vowing to "do everything we possibly can" if Rockstar did not comply. Take-Two (the game's publisher) did agree to remove several lines of dialogue. This seems to have largely satisfied the organisations who raised the complaints, although the case was then referred to a state court, downgraded from the initial decision to refer the case to a federal court. In 2004, a new version of the game was released, removing and changing those lines of dialogue.

In February 2005, a lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003, when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a Fayette police station regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was GTA's graphic nature — with his constant playing time — that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agreed. Damages are being sought from the Jasper branches of GameStop and Wal-Mart, the stores from which GTA III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, and the PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment. The case Strickland v. Sony was heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to death for his actions. In May 2008, he was criticised by Judge Dava Tunis for unprofessional conduct during the Strickland v. Sony case.

In September 2006, Jack Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father, stepmother, and stepsister on a ranch in Hondo, New Mexico. The suit was filed on behalf of the victims' families. During the criminal trial, Posey's defence team argued he was abused by his father, and tormented by his stepmother. Posey was also taking Zoloft at the time of the killings. The suit alleged that were it not for his obsessive playing of Vice City, the murders would not have taken place. Named in the suit were Cody Posey, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, and Sony. The suit asked for US$600 million in damages. The case was dismissed in December 2007, as New Mexico held no jurisdiction over Sony or Take-Two. Thompson was later disbarred.

References

Notes

Footnotes

External links

• Official website
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on Grand Theft Wiki
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City at MobyGames
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 May 2003)