Vice City Remake

[Hollie Kipps]

Withthe GTA 6 reveal trailer having finally been shared earlier this month after years of hype and build-up, it's no surprise that Vice City is once again on everyone's mind. Although most of us are just sitting tight and waiting for 2025 to roll around, one group of GTA modders has decided to bring the city back in a big way.

That group of modders is Team Revolution, who announced earlier this week that it's working on a mod that remakes GTA: Vice City using Grand Theft Auto 4's RAGE Engine. That essentially means taking the map, missions, cutscenes, weapons, and more from Vice City and making it all play like GTA 4 does, including its use of Euphoria physics.

Team Revolution shared a trailer for the project, titled GTA Vice City: Nextgen Edition, over on its YouTube page and, while the graphics might look similar to how they did in the original game, it's how it seems to play that will be the difference. As can be spotted in the trailer and in a separate bit of gameplay footage that was streamed, the remake basically looks like a reskinned version of GTA 4 that's set in Vice City, which is absolutely a compliment.

Alongside revealing the project, Team Revolution shared a description of it that calls it a "complete transfer of all missions from the original game" that is "based on the RAGE game engine from GTA 4". The team also said that it features the improved version of Vice City from the Definitive Edition, alongside the cars, pedestrians, and character models from the Xbox version of the game. It'll also have all of the original radio stations and cut scenes from the original version of Vice City.

As interesting as the project looks, it might be worth holding back on getting too excited for it. While it's in a good enough state that gameplay has been shared of it, Take-Two is notoriously harsh with Cease and Desisting fan projects like this - just take a look at all of the mods and remakes that have been cancelled in the past few years. Let's hope that the same fate doesn't befall this return to Vice City.

For context, I'll note that I've worked on large scale software projects with unreasonable timelines. I spent a year trying to patch-up the almost completely broken system that resulted. I was there when some MBA decided it wasn't worth investing more time on. The users had to deal with the mess they received. I know exactly how this goes. A rushed game development project isn't any different than a rushed development project for the unexciting business systems I usually work on.

I'm talking about the games that I think are technically called "Grand Theft Auto [x]: The Definitive Edition". I am referring to them as "GTA remakes" to avoid wearing out my keyboard. You'll have to deal with the lack of name fidelity if that bothers you.

I pre-ordered the GTA remake collection despite some reservations. There were rumors it was going to be a little bit buggy. I waited a full year to play it under the assumption that most modern games aren't actually finished until about a year after you buy them. There was indeed a massive patch waiting for me.

I probably would have said Vice City was my favorite game of all time prior to Breath of the Wild. I don't keep a game ranking and it would change often anyway based on my mood that day. Whatever the case, Vice City would still be very high on such a list. Look, I once convinced a VP I worked for that I completed a business training class called "Motivate, Demonstrate, then Motivate Again". It got me out of taking some other class he thought everyone should take. It was totally worth the deception.

I first played Vice City on PlayStation 2 and later went through the PC and upscaled version for PlayStation 4. Of the three, the PC version is what I would have called the "definitive" version. It was the original game with smoother graphics and multiple control options. I don't think it needed to be improved upon from there.

So why did I buy these remakes then? It wasn't for GTA III. I didn't get into the original that much. It is of course one of the most consequential games ever. I think it's a "you had to be there" situation for me... or more that I wasn't there. I played GTA III after playing Vice City and GTA V. When I tried GTA III it felt very confined and linear compared to the others. It comes across as three smaller games since the map is so divided. If I played it in 2001 I would have been amazed by it. I didn't and here we are.

I bought this collection with the intention of finally finishing GTA San Andreas. I understand why this is considered by many to be the best of the PlayStation 2 era series. I had a lot of fun with it until getting to missions that required traversing the massive map and trekking back to the start after failing. I heard that was maybe fixed in the remake. That was the selling point of this collection.

I started with Vice City though. Mostly out of curiosity. I figured I could get through the main story in a few nights and move on. Along the way I'd learn the new control scheme and be ready to tackle San Andreas.

That did not go as planned. Instead I went on a journey to explore the weirdness in this remake. I naively expected that this would more or less work like the original game but with fancier graphics. In reality, it's much more like playing a bootleg version of the game.

It's strange how bugs can either make a game horrible or incredible. The things that can be exploited in the original Vice City don't break the game and often make it more fun. The same goes for the previously mentioned Breath of the Wild. They aren't bugs that appear out of nowhere, taking you out of the environment. You have to search for them, you have to do them intentionally. They can be used to access locked areas early, defeat missions in comical ways, or finish the game much faster than the developers intended.

Most buggy games aren't like that though. If you're trying to play the game normally and it totally glitches out it's a bad experience. Even things that don't break the game, but are oddly out of place, can ruin a game. The Vice City remake is right on the edge here. I can't call it a bad game, but there are just enough oddities to make it something less than good. Certainly something inferior to the game it was trying to improve upon.

I'll be exploring these oddities in the Vice City remake in roughly the order encountered. I'll also review some things it improved on and others things that didn't change but maybe should have. After that it's on to San Andreas.

Since we're already flying a helicopter around here's another fun one, sometimes they just explode. When I landed this one it didn't show the usual signs of damage like smoking. A couple seconds after disembarking it done blew up.

I didn't try to get all the hidden packages this time. The flaky helicopters made it not worth the hassle. I grabbed just enough for body armor and a few weapons. Then I tried the story missions. Early on I noticed taxi cabs randomly driving on the golf course.

I have a section later on about things that were improved in the remake. This next screenshot was originally for that section. In the Shakedown mission it's much easier to see which windows you have left to break. From this screenshot it's obvious I have many left to go.

I'm just noticing now that the clock also advanced and the windows were fully restored. I assume speedrunners must know something about this. It seems like there is some kind of mission skip exploit here.

This next one was really annoying. The car dealer mission, which isn't really a mission, is one of my favorites. Hunting around for different car models is a typical fetch quest but it's still fun to me at least.

In an early San Andreas mission, sorry but I'm blanking one the name, I ran into a similar thing. The goal of the mission was killing some dude who you're after for reasons. Same deal, I unloaded about 200 rounds into them and they were fine. Once I released the L2 button they fell over. So clearly wearing out a damage gauge isn't the trick. You have to understand how the buggy event system works.

The first time I tried this trick I wasn't smart enough to earn enough money to buy the cheapest house on the second island. So the previous two pictures are from my second attempt, this one is from my first. Just noting that to reinforce how easy and repeatable this is now.

The RC plane in the Bombs Away mission was even harder to control in the remake than the original. That takes effort because it was practically impossible before. Hey, even great games can have some bad parts.

This next one is something new to the remake. When it's raining your vehicle really drives like something on a very wet road. I noticed it off and on throughout the game and it wasn't a big deal until the Publicity Tour mission. If it rains during that mission you should just reload.

I did a lot of things wrong. It was my own fault for trying to finish the game without reading any FAQs. In the first part of the game I conquered all the territories and found all the hidden spray paint tags (which helps considerably with the former). That takes, I dunno, 60 hours? I didn't count but that seems about right. All that work was useless. I was burnt out maybe 1/3 into the story. Then I encountered a mission that required driving halfway across the map and restarting from scratch when I failed. I was done.

Going all the way back to the intro, I think this collection was a rushed project. I doubt that's even up for debate. When I started the San Andreas remake I think I figured it out. I'm convinced this started as a San Andreas remake project only. Then someone who doesn't have to do any real work decided to tack on the other two. Their logic would have gone like "the engine is already ported so how hard can it be?"

The difficulty all around was drastically reduced. I suppose that's a net bad. I think San Andreas needed some balancing, for lack of a better term, in a few missions. Instead they are all now cakewalks.

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