Tars Tarkas:
I only recently figured out how to fly the dodo.
Go straight down the runway for about 8-10 secs, then press forward on the stick for a second so the nose touches the runway. When it starts sparking, immediately let go of the stick and pull back a little. Piece of cake! Just don’t try flying too high or you’ll come back to earth with a thud. It takes a little while to get the hang of it.
Stop…tempting…me…must…conserve…money…
Yes. One interior, the Mall, is apparently the size of the Red Light District and Chinatown put together. And being a mall, it has interiors within interiors. 10: GOTO “THE GAP”.
If you’ve played GTA3, where the only buildings you could enter were Ammunation and Salvatore’s house, this is brilliant news.
A hell of a lot easier way to get the tank…On the second Island no less:
On the mission where you help out the guy at the army surplus store. Instead, ignore him…Or just kill him(you can do the mission over and he come back). Then push the tank back to your hideout. Just that easy. You can only push it while your running, so it takes a bit, but just push it all the way back to your hideout(dont use a vehicle, they tend to blow up). Let the door close on it, save, and when you go into your garage you will now be able to get in it and drive it.
The pushing principle (which I’ve never found ** easy** , * per se *) can also be applied to the bullet-proof, flame-proof, bomb-proof (but sadly not crash-proof) Lamborghinis in the El Burro mission “Turismo”. But to heck with GTA3, let’s all party on in Vice City.
I’ve only played it for about a half-hour so far. Like AudreyK I’m borrowing it from the actual owner, so…
My intital impressions: I like the motorcycles, though they’re not particularly durable, and you risk being thrown when you drive into something/one. There seems to be more of a varation in the durablity of cars as well- one I tested only could handle six head on collisions before catching on fire, and another took nine before reaching that point. I’m happy that there are buses randomly placed around the city, because getting them in GTA3 wasn’t a lot of fun since it’d always take me forever to find the bus station. It seems harder to find guns, maybe it isn’t, but I didn’t get any from my victims while playing. I like the real soundtrack, but I’m sad that Lazlow is a DJ in this game rather than a talk-radio guy- though it’s nice that they included Fernando again. Lazlow’s station was my favorite in GTA3, which is unsual since I hate real talk radio 
Well, the radio isn’t as funny, and for that matter, the game isn’t as funny overall. I don’t know if that’s due to high expectations, or the shock factor wearing off, or what. But, the game is very good, and the story is actually pretty interesting. I’m not much for stories in games (I usually skip through the cutscenes in most games) but this story is actually somewhat interesting. Ray Liotta plays the main character, Tom Sizemore is the mafia boss, Luiz Guzman’s in it… A bunch of good actors in all. I won’t give them all away, some are pretty recognizable.
The music and the 80’s references can be pretty funny though. I kind of forgot about that. A radio commercial advertises where you can get oversized replica automobile insignias, complete with gold chain to wear as a necklace. I’d forgotten all about that trend, they had me going.
The gameplay is great, mostly unchanged from the original. The addition of motorcycles is a big deal, they’re used a lot. One of the good things about them is that you can fire forwards from a motorcycle, so you can actually see where you’re going. Nice. The missions seem better thought out too. So far, after about 15 hours of play, I’m giving it a 5 out of 5.
Oh, I noticed something after playing this game (and GTA3 too). When I drive immediately after this game, I have this urge to drive wrong. I’m all set to cut corners over curbs, swerve around people or pass by crossing the double yellow. It’s funny in a 3rd-party-observational kind of way. Anyone else notice this?
Hell, I have that problem twofold; in the game I spent a lot of time having to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Then, when actually driving my car I had to do the same thing. Twas scary, especially when I accidentally went the wrong way down a street. Fortunatly it was 3 in the morning and I had 2 screaming girls in the car to set me straight :).
That’s pretty funny. How did you explain that one?
At the start, your hideout is in a hotel with no garage, but you can buy new hideouts all over the map. So far, I have a condo (with 3 garages and a helipad) and a mansion (with one garage, two respawning cars, an armory, and a helipad).
In addition to motorcycles and helicopters, you can also drive boats. They handle very differently from cars, which made the boat race mission difficult. You can kill other boaters and steal their boats. You can get your boat stuck on land and have to push it back in. You can capsize and become stranded on top of an upside-down boat.
Yes. On motorcycles even.
I got my copy the day it came out, and haven’t had a chance to play it more than a couple minutes. This will need to be remedied soon.
Slight Hijack…
Have any of you compared GTA3 on the PC vs PS2? I have the PC version, and while fun, it gets shaky and bogs down every once in a while. My computer should have enough guts to handle it, according to the box anyway. Does this happen on the PS2?
The game is fun enough (when it works) that I would consider getting a PS2 for it (along with some other games).
Anyway, does it really run smoothly on a PS2?
I’ve compared it. It was night and day in my comparision, and I was running it on a very fast pc. Dual processor Xeon, .5G of RAM. And it ran MUCH faster on the PS2
I’ve never encountered slowdown on GTA3 or Vice City for the PS2. The tradeoff is that PS2 graphics aren’t as nice as PC graphics, at least without a lot more programming effort… and you can tell there wasn’t as much graphical fine-tuning put into GTA as into Metal Gear Solid 2 or Final Fantasy X.
I got it now. Goodbye sleep! Hello running down people on motorcycles while callers question Laslow’s hardcoreness!
How much did the mansion cost? And did it come with the respawning cars and the armory?
It’s on Starfish Island, and it’s labeled “The Coke Baron’s Mansion” on the printed map. After you perform a few errands for the owner, there’s a mission where you kill him and take over his mansion, earning $50,000 in the process.
The armory (with health, armor, shotgun, and machine gun) is available whenever you go in the mansion, on the bottom floor. The cars (Infernus and Stretch) are there from the beginning of the game, even before you own the mansion.
The condo is located in an alley near the stadium, and it costs $14,000. I’ve also found another save point near the lawyer’s office ($3000, no garage) and one near a spray shop north of the hotel ($6000, one garage).
True story, appropirate to the Vice City theme.
Last weekend, I went shopping for VC. Visited three places, all sold out. So, I gave up. I decided to visit a strip club on the other side of town. As I was headed there, I passed a Target, and thought I might as well drop in and see if they had VC. They had some, kind of hidded in their case, and I asked for one. The guy said “well, we aren’t supposed to these 'till tomorrow (it was about 9:30PM) and they’ll be $5 off if you come back.” I said “they’ll be gone before I get back - I’ll take one!” He sold it to me. So, instead of visiting the strip club, I went home and got into Vice City.
So, now I’m about 35% through the game. This game blows me away.
The thing that frustrates me, though, is the control during close-in fights. This game can’t compare to a standard FPS as far as controlling your character.
And I can’t tell you how many time’s I’ve wanted to kick in the screen when I get through some knock-down fight with three or four cops, then I get into a car, and some beat cop walks up from out of nowhere and busts me!
Two words (well, one hyphenated word): MINI-GUN. :eek:
Best. Rampage. Ever.