In 2003, I didn’t realize how good Ray Liotta’s performance was as Tommy Vercetti, the annoying protagonist in Vice City. I certainly thought he was hilarious, but it was only in retrospect that I realized how different and natural his performance was compared to the Command & Conquer cutscenes I used to watch as a kid. I noticed. Twenty years later, Liotta’s performances still revolve around works like Crime Boss: Rockay City.
Former PC Gamer reviewer Alec Meer didn’t quite agree with me, calling Liotta a “decent” actor (Goodfellas, Alec!? Copland?? Come on!). But what matters is the context. Liotta certainly had a decent string of movies in the early 2000s, but it was his standout performance in 2019’s Marriage Story that revitalized his career. Meer goes on to highlight the “legendary” Dennis Hopper, who also appears in Vice City, and I think it’s safe to say that Liotta is in that canon.
Liotta will always be best known for Goodfellas, except for a very specific audience: teens playing video games in the early 2000s. Even if Vice City was an unabashed imitation of Scarface, this was the clear start of Rockstar’s ambition to tell Hollywood-level gangster stories using real Hollywood actors. No wonder he scored an unusual 93% on PC Gamer.
This is our original review published in the July 2003 UK issue of PC Gamer magazine.
need to know
the publisher rockstar games
developer rockstar north
price £35
minimal system PIII 800, 128Mb RAM, 32Mb 3D card
Recommended P4 1.6GHz, 256Mb RAM, 64Mb 3D card
multiplayer none
web address www.rockstargames.com/vicecity/pc (opens in new tab)
release date out now
I’ve been naughty. I was at fault. I was even the bad guy. I have lied to my parents, I have lied to my girlfriend. I stole, threatened, deceived. I once tried to hit a smaller, weaker boy in school (probably nationally) with a Tupperware lunch box filled with Dairy sandwiches.
I regret everything now. But in Vice City, at least I have an excuse to be a terrible, horrible human being. I saw a yellow car—arguably the rarest and therefore most coveted automotive color in my impoverished materialistic worldview—and I couldn’t help but tap the door handle as I passed by. , I tested it gently with a trembling and inquisitive mind. Fingers, slightly smiling and just… wondering. And I know why. Why am I tempted to beat the woman in the stroller who is impeding my progress through WH her Smith, faceless with her own handbag. and. I. I feel. good. Because not only can you go home with mercy and safely carry out all the violent fantasies you have in your head on your PC, but you can do it while screaming into baritone madness. “There’s nothing more than a hundred men can do.” Bless the rains in Africa. It takes a little time to do something you’ve never done before. ”
You are Tommy Vercetti. Recently released from the turmoil and active in Vice City. Various employers offer you to work in a non-linear way, with individual missions leading to short stories. These stories usually end with you taking over the property and business of your criminal rivals in Scarface fashion.
If you don’t like this game, you don’t like video games. To like it means that you are a perverse little individual, rude and a mass market conformist like the rest of us best people. But don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I am fully aware that it is a game that can kill people after all. many Drive and shoot in a more fun way than anywhere else. True, it is not without its drawbacks. Repetitive missions, some dangerous AI and physics, and city interactivity are limited by the PS2’s origins. Most notably, it’s a retelling of a show we’ve seen four times before, even though it’s light years ahead of its predecessor.
The production value is insanely high.
But Vice City is really nice, and probably the most polished game you’ll see on this side of the Brasso factory. The production value alone is very high. Estimates for all Hollywood actors from so-so (Ray Liotta) to legendary (Dennis Hopper) to Luis Guzman’s sublime Touretism, plus over 100 hits from the ’80s The cost would be daunting.A bitter reminder of how populist Grand Theft Auto III was, no matter how it felt yoursheart and soul.
But it doesn’t matter. largely. The lurking, compelling issues that haunted GTA III’s grimy, glamorous hell and held it back from true greatness are no longer there. The last game, on 3 he seems to only work on 1 PC and probably only if it was built by a god driver. Now it’s almost impossible to recall jerky, choppy, insanely cloudy, or illegible text. Vice City runs smoothly and beautifully, but it’s hardly worth playing if you don’t have a halfway decent machine.
The drawback of the conversion to PC is that the game’s social elements have been removed (it’s harder to have a group of people huddled around a monitor laughing at lighthearted murder than around a giant TV), but Play is taken to a new level. With mouse support. His ability to snipe with precision (you can now shoot through tires and windshields, and, mind you, the police as well) has made him an unbeatable ruler of ganglands Mood essential. Moreover, switching from a gamepad or keyboard to a mouse or his WASD and vice versa, depending on the means of locomotion, divides driving and action more definitively. Vehicles, of course, are still a hard-hitting part of the game, generally more sophisticated and less dependent on the job of a delivery man, but it’s the cities that provide such free-roaming independence That’s it. Vice is much bigger than Liberty, with an army base, an airport, buildings you can walk inside, and even an arena featuring his GTA version of his NASCAR and stunt his car mini-games, there’s always something new to discover. Sadly, there are some ill-advised additions. The RC Chopper is frustratingly difficult to pilot, the hidden packages are irrelevant, and some of the latter’s racing missions prove ridiculously difficult to complete. But these are the exceptions.
The city just wanders around and showers you in blood with no results, but at any point it feels as sickeningly aimless, stupid, or almost uninteresting as Postal 2. no. This is overtly the same game as Grand Theft Auto III, but with a giant neon super-powered bell attached to a reinforced torso, making him one of the most captivating and consistently entertaining games. There is no change in the fact that Anytime, any platform.
Good or bad, we don’t care. Because it has class, which is certainly more important. — Alec Meer