GTA: Vice City Stories - First Impressions

You fine folks all know how much I love the GTA series in particular GTA: Vice City. I don't have to rehash my Rockstar fanboy ranting.

GTA: VCS is potentially awesome. I'm only a few hours into the game and haven't gotten any heavy duty game time in but so far so good. I hit a brick wall mission last night but I blame being drunk more than the difficulty of the mission. Oddly enough it was a forklift mission...do not operate heavy machinery...huh maybe that's why I kept dying.

It's really nice to be back in Vice City. Everything isn't as the same as I thought as it was going to be. The game begins on VC's western island and it's pretty undeveloped. Sunshine Autos is a complete dump. Parts of town are still under construction. It's pretty cool actually. The radio stations are still one of the best parts of the game. Many of the familiar DJs from GTA: VC are either interns or co-hosts. The music is a mix of familiar, b-sides, and some "who the hell are they bands" i.e. Japan, Scandal, Krokus. V-Rock has a giant block of metal hits: Dokken, Scorpions, Dio, KISS, Quiet Riot, Accept, and more! Check out the full listing.

The story so far is a bit different. Vincent Vance - Lance Vance's older brother - is booted out of the Army and from there has to support his family. I like Vince Vance because so far he's a good guy. GTA protagonists aren't exactly the nicest guys and it's nice to have a change of pace. Now I don't think he'll be saving any puppies or acting in a Coke commercial anytime soon but still he's all right.

All in all after a few hours of play I am fairly pleased and looking forward to put some real time into this. Apparently Rockstar has been recording my ranting because in GTA: VCS there's Empire Building. I'm not sure how it works but I think you take over businesses, adapt them to what you want, build them up, defend them, and all that good stuff.

I'll post again when I've got some gameplay under my belt or if anything awesome happens.