GTA Vice City Review | The Sequel That Fixes What GTA 3 Got Wrong

Everyone’s excited to head back to Vice City later this month with GTA6, but I’d never even played the original, so it’s about time that I dive in before Rockstar brings the iconic city back.

If you haven’t read my GTA3 review, I’m currently going through the GTA franchise for the first time ahead of the hotly anticipated GTA6, which I’ll review down the line. I’m doing GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA4 and GTA5. I’m skipping the original games purely because I don’t have the time, and tracking them down and emulating them is a bit of a nightmare. However, I’ll definitely try to get around to them at some point and potentially add them to this little series.

I’d heard a lot of great things about Vice City, but after GTA3 I wasn’t expecting anything incredible. I enjoyed GTA3, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. It had a lot of ambitious elements, but for the most part it was a relatively okay open-world crime game.

Despite this scepticism about GTA3, Vice City is absolutely fantastic, and will likely end up as one of my favourite games ever made. The way it builds on the foundations of GTA3 without losing what made GTA3 fun is a masterclass. Rockstar made it feel fresh but familiar for anyone who enjoyed that first trip to Liberty City.

Become the Boss of Vice City

The story follows Tommy Vercetti in his journey to become one of the biggest crime bosses in the sun-soaked city. Early on, things go sideways, and you quickly find yourself under threat from a mob boss, so you need to make sure you’re well equipped to make Vice City your own. It’s a simple but highly effective setup that quickly gets you into the grit of the game.

The presentation is largely the same as GTA3, with similar cutscenes and a narrative that throws you straight into the action and rarely lets up. The big improvement is that your protagonist has a voice this time. GTA3’s Claude never spoke, which made him a relatively uninteresting character who’s easy to forget compared with other GTA protagonists. Tommy is engaging. There isn’t a lot of depth to him, but he’s a cool character who’s fun to control, and I always wanted to see what he’d get up to and what weird set pieces he’d get me involved with.

The story is fast-paced and rarely slows down, which makes it very easy to get through. It took me maybe two days to finish, because the pacing was so rapid and I really didn’t want to put it down. That’s a big improvement over GTA3, where the story dragged a little. There were some interesting characters and set pieces there, but I wasn’t connected to anything that was happening. Vice City’s story isn’t something I’d say is a masterpiece, but it is definitely a step up for Rockstar, and that story does a great job driving you into the gameplay.

Go Guns Blazing

Mechanically, Vice City is very similar to GTA3. The missions, checkpoints, gunplay and vehicle movement all run off the same foundation as that game, but a lot of the nuts and bolts have been tightened to feel just that little bit more engaging. The vehicles were badly in need of improvement and seriously feel much better to drive here, and the greater variety of weapons also helps the gameplay feel less repetitive throughout. Driving around Vice City is the absolute highlight though, with 80s hits blaring out the radio, taking out some mob guys and then getting into a fast-paced escape from the police… At no point did this game lose my interest.

It does have frustrating moments, like GTA3. A few missions are real nightmares. The one a lot of people will know is the mall mission, where you steal a police car, get into a blocked-off mall, do the job and then try to escape with a high wanted level and with police giving you absolutely no breathing room. Combined with the checkpoint system from GTA3 (Or lack thereof), it can be frustrating at times. But these missions were few and far between and I found that it wasn’t as constantly annoying as it’s predecessor could be.

The missions I found are far better scripted and paced, and when you die you don’t feel too frustrated because it’s easy to jump straight back in. If you didn’t enjoy GTA3 mission structure, you may well love Vice City, as I did. The gameplay, missions and the driving are all built on the same foundations, but they’re tightened up just enough that you don’t feel the bumps GTA3 had.

Take the Scenic View

How good is Vice City to explore compared with Liberty City? I really enjoyed Liberty City. It was well developed and came together as an engaging city to explore, with the pacing of the missions and the opening up of new areas working well. Vice City doesn’t quite match that pacing which made GTA3’s world feel so unique, but the city itself is leaps and bounds better.

Driving around with a synthwave soundtrack, under a stunning cyan-blue sky with bustling roads and pink lighting, makes it feel like you’re in a synthwave music video, and you feel like a part of the whole environment. I really hope GTA6 takes that on board. My worry is that the next dive into Vice City will lean more heavily on realism in it’s art direction. Vice City keeps the physics of GTA3 but dips it into a little less realistic art direction to make it more engaging and give it that sense of style. I appreciate Rockstar for that, because it’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve played in a while.

The Verdict

Vice City is an incredible accomplishment, and shows how far Rockstar could expand on what GTA3 was trying to do while still feeling fresh but familiar. At no point does it lose the GTA feel; it just expands on what that should be.

GTA3 is quite hard to recommend to new people. I enjoyed my time with it, but I know many dislike the friction in those earlier games. If that’s you, I’m more than happy to say you’d likely enjoy Vice City. What Rockstar did here is nothing short of impressive, and if you’ve never played it, I’d highly recommend checking it out before we head back later this month.