Massive world to explore, fantastic mission structures, and fun as hell. One of my favorite games to date.
While GTA III was the original blockbuster that completely changed video games forever, Vice City improved on GTA III in so many ways. In Vice City, you follow Tommy Vercetti as he comes down from the north to take care of a drug deal for his boss. The plan quickly goes south however, and both the drugs and the money are stolen, leaving Vercetti with nothing but an ultimatum from his boss; get me my money, or else.
With that, you're unleashed upon one of the most wide open worlds in video game history. While icons on your HUD will tell you where to go for missions, you can when and how you complete those missions. If you want to just walk around Vice City and soak it all in, you can. If you want to jack a car or motorcycle and cruise, you can. If you want to unleash mayhem and toss some grenades into traffic, you can. The openness of Vice City is staggering and can lead to hours of just screwing around and having a blast.
When you do choose to complete missions, you'll have plenty to do. There must be more than 60 missions in Vice City, and none of them are boring. In fact, two or three of them are very difficult, and that's before you ever get to the final boss fight. You'll drop off advertisements from an airplane, pose as a police officer to plant a bomb, kill a pizza delivery boy, etc. No mission really feels like another, so you're always doing something new. Missions can last anywhere from five to 15 minutes, which is good enough given the sheer number of missions available.
Most of the time you'll spend driving around Vice City, which is so satisfying because of the game's driving engine. The driving physics, while not 100 percent realistic, are just slightly exaggerated for a fun experience. There are only a few problems with the game's draw distance, so every now and then you'll be going too fast for the game to catch up and a car or building will appear out of nowhere, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
But the best aspect of driving around has to be the radio stations. Vice City has several genre-specific radio stations playing some fantastic '80's music. Whether it's rock, pop, hip-hop or new age, or even some hilarious talk radio, the stations are a unique aspect that truly sets Vice City apart.
While the graphics aren't tremendous by today's standards, they're still pretty good and they do the game a great service. Bottom line, Vice City features wonderful gameplay, a monstrous open-ended world and more fun than amost every other video game out there. You need to play this game.