GTA’s most underrated game: Vice City Stories

Rockstar Games has finally delivered. The first official trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI has dropped and it is confirmed to take place in Vice City, which is GTA’s in-universe Miami. In celebration, I thought we would deep dive into another GTA game set in Vice City and one that is often overlooked: Vice City Stories.

It’s no surprise that the game isn’t well known as It was only ever released on the Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable and even 17 years after it’s release it still has not been ported to any other platform including PC. If you don’t want to get a used PS2 and snag a copy off Ebay, you could play a fanmade PC mod that’s available. However, it doesn’t have the full completed game. So your best bet is playing this on a PS2 or PSP emulator, which is what I did. Vice City Stories was a PSP exclusive expansion based on GTA: Vice City released 4 years earlier, so how does the game compare to its bigger older brother?

Story and Atmosphere

If you’ve played Vice City, in terms of gameplay Vice City Stories is more of the same. It’s the exact same map so if you’ve played the older game you’ll know your way around quite well. However, the game also improves on various quality of life aspects from games like GTA: San Andreas as well. For example, you’re given the ability to swim and when you drive really fast you’re given this cool blur effect on your screen which is a nice atmospheric touch.

With the game being set in the 80’s, one of the things that remains so iconic about the original Vice City was its 80’s in-game radio soundtrack. Vice City Stories certainly lives up to this, in fact I would argue it even improves upon it in some aspects. While Vice City’s soundtrack is fantastic, at some points it kind of feels like an 80’s greatest hits compilation. What I really like about the soundtrack of VCS is that it really feels like how the radio would sound in 1984. The radio stations are jam packed with great songs from that year with my personal favorite station being Wave 103. It just makes the radio so much more authentic while keeping the vibrant 80’s Miami vibe.

The storyline is, in my opinion, one of the most unique in the entire GTA franchise. You play as Vic Vance, who is the older brother of Lance Vance from Vice City. Vic’s story is so unique because he’s the only GTA protagonist that doesn’t start with a criminal background. He joins the military to get some money for his family when he’s manipulated into doing crime and later framed by his commanding officer (and main antagonist of the game) Sgt. Martinez, and the story spirals from there.

Vic is truly Rockstar’s first experiment with a morally “correct” GTA protagonist. Whereas other protagonists at this point, as loveable as they are, were mostly just sociopaths doing some crime for a quick buck. Vic really paves for future protagonists like GTA IV’s Niko Bellic who is probably my all-time favorite in the series. Another great thing about the story is that chronologically it’s the first story in the series taking place in 1984, meaning if you’re new to GTA you won’t have to play any prior games to understand it. 

Features

Vice City Stories also has unique features that aren’t present in any other GTA game .One of my favorite missions is one where you work for Phil Collins (voiced by the real Phil Collins himself) and you’re hired to protect him from hitmen at his concert. You basically get to watch an in-game concert and it’s such a joy to play through it’s honestly almost worth going through the story to get to this mission alone. There’s truly nothing like this mission with maybe the expectation being the in-game Ricky Gervais stand-up show you can find in GTA IV, which isn’t even a mission in itself.

Furthermore, once you get past a certain point in the game you can start taking over businesses in Vice City with there being about 30 in total. You can even choose how big or small you want the business to be and each one will generate you money for owning it. Taking over these businesses feels so rewarding and truly makes you feel like you’re building your own empire. Thankfully this concept sort of returned in GTA V but I feel this game doesn’t really get the credit it deserves for how innovative it was for this feature.

Cons

Every GTA game has it’s flaws and Vice City Stories is no different. It shares a lot of issues with pre PS3 era GTA games where there’s no mission checkpoints, outdated janky controls and mechanics, and losing all your stuff when you die or get arrested. But where Vice City Stories gets really egregious with it’s difficulty is the level design on some of the missions. For all of it’s positives, this game is absolutely the most frustrating GTA experience you’ll ever have. 

For instance, an infamous mission in the game is “boomshine blowout” where you have to operate a flimsy, slow, and hard to control forklift and get boxes out of a building as fast as you can before time runs out. The worst part is that it’s absolutely unskippable, and it’s one of the earliest missions in the game. After multiple attempts I seriously considered dropping the game entirely because of this mission and if you’re new to GTA I’m sure it will be no different.

The absolute worst mission in my eyes is “unfriendly competition” where after a deal goes wrong you end up being targeted by a bunch of girls with AK-47s. The minute the cutscene ends you immediately starting getting shot at from all angles and if you don’t have armour equipped you are guaranteed to die. It’s ridiculously hard and really makes me wonder: what was Rockstar thinking? I can only imagine trying to play these missions on a handheld like the PSP, must have been a nightmare.

Conclusion

So is Vice City Stories the best in the series? No. However if you’re a GTA fan, and a big fan of Vice City like myself. It’s definitely worth at least one playthrough, and it definitely deserves some love for what it did for the series as a whole. You can check out more of my opinions right here on NR92 or follow me on Instagram @kaisalzl.

All images and mentions of Grand Theft Auto are copyright of Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive and fall under fair use.

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