Vice City : Finished

[thermalsatsuma]

After twenty or so restarts, I managed to beat the final mission in Vice City – an extended shoot out, shamelessly cribbed from the end sequence of the movie Scarface. It was a frustrating experience, not least due to the inadequacies of the auto aiming system when you are close to a wall inside and also to the ridiculous number of respawning mafia goons that you have to kill before triggering the next arbitrary cut scene. The game Mercenaries showed a workable movement and firing control mechanism for a third person action game, and it is only in San Andreas that the GTA series starts to match that.

Still, the game was a good experience in many ways – the definitive 80s soundtrack and style, the excellent voice acting in the cut scenes – particularly Ray Liotta as the anti hero Tommy Vercetti, and the open ended freedom of driving through a sun (or on occasion, rain) drenched Miami.

Thief : Deadly Shadows is next on the list to play, although in a moment of weakness I have preordered Call of Cthulhu which is due out next week.

 

Comments

[kaliesin.livejournal.com]

Your not going to let dread Cthulhu loose on your machine are you, eeeeeeeeeeeek. You'll find the next time you load up GTA that you have tentacles instead of arms and have an overwhelming urge to suck there brains and design buildings using non-euclidian geometry, all that will be left in the end is your diary of your descent into madness.

[shullie.livejournal.com]

mhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[madkatsjournal.livejournal.com]

Vice City is great - and it was great when it was released. The graphics are lacking a little now, but you'd expect that.

Yes, I like the aim thing in San Andreas. But the graphics & models haven't been touched up and the engine hasn't been refined in being ported to the PC although they had a year to do it in. It doesn't look very much better than Vice City. OK, so you can see the hot air being wavy. Whoop-te-doo. That's about the only real graphical difference.

The gang is also pretty bloody useless. You can get a bunch of guys to come with you, but they soon get left behind or go the wrong way. And then when you do get into a gang war, they're crap. How is it that when you take control of an area, and go into it, all your peeps are hanging around - but as soon as it's attacked, they're nowhere to be seen? Seems like you do all the work and the people you do it for just don't care.

[kaliesin.livejournal.com]

The Gang mechanic sounds like a good reflection of real life actually!

[thermalsatsuma.livejournal.com]

I've found when taking over territory it's actually better to not take any gang members with you. They end up starting fights and killing enemy gang members before you do, making it harder to trigger the gang war, and then when they get killed you lose respect.

[cerebralpig.livejournal.com]

Lol... love it... you are one cool motherfucker!