Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | Sony PlayStation 2 | PS2

About the Game

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City follows Tommy Vercetti, a mobster recently released after serving a fifteen-year prison sentence. Having refused to betray the Forelli crime family, Tommy is sent by his boss, Sonny Forelli, to Vice City to help expand the family’s operations. What should be a routine drug deal quickly turns into an ambush, leaving Tommy without the money, the drugs, or an explanation. With Sonny demanding repayment and rival criminals, corrupt officials, street gangs, bikers, and other local powers standing in his way, Tommy sets out to recover what was lost and build his own criminal empire.

Story & Setting

Access to the full city opens gradually as the story progresses, with bridges and districts becoming available after key events.

Gameplay & Core Systems

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an open-world action game that builds on the free-roaming driving and shooting structure of Grand Theft Auto III . As in the previous game, players can explore the city, steal vehicles, complete story missions, and engage in criminal activities that attract police attention through a wanted-level system. As the wanted level rises, the police response escalates from patrol officers to roadblocks, helicopters, SWAT teams, federal agents, and military forces. The mission structure includes car chases, shootouts, assassinations, robberies, escort jobs, timed objectives, and missions involving boats or aircraft. The vehicle selection has been expanded with many cars inspired by 1980s designs, along with boats, helicopters, and small aircraft.

Standout Features

• The city includes beaches, neon-lit streets, hotels, mansions, shopping districts, docks, industrial areas, and islands connected by bridges.
• Tommy has access to a wide range of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, explosives, and heavy weapons.
• Melee weapons are more prominent than in Grand Theft Auto III , with items such as bats, knives, machetes, clubs, chainsaws , and other close-range weapons available throughout the city.
• Outside the main story, players can take part in numerous optional activities.
• Returning side activities include taxi driving, paramedic missions, firefighting, vigilante missions, races, hidden package collection, rampages, and stunt jumps.
• Tommy can purchase safehouses and businesses across the city, some of which provide save points, garages, income, or asset missions that expand his criminal operations.
• Tommy can also change outfits at certain locations, sometimes for mission purposes and sometimes as an optional cosmetic feature.
• These stations include pop, rock, metal, hip-hop, new wave, Latin, and talk radio, helping establish the tone and atmosphere of Vice City .

Presentation & Atmosphere

The game’s 1980s Miami-like setting is reflected through its music, fashion, vehicles, architecture, dialogue, and satire of crime films, pop culture, television, celebrity, consumerism, and the drug trade. The soundtrack is presented through in-vehicle radio stations featuring licensed period music, talk shows, commercials, and parody programming.

Audio support includes DTS.