Ah, GTA! Doing Golf Cart drive bys, strafing city streets with a Apache, the tank, the Delorean (Let’s see if you bastards can do 90!), Crockett and Tubbs, beating rich snobs with a golf club, chain saws, swords, running into a wall at 100mph, and MOTORCYCLES!!! i’ve got almost as much bike time as car time, and car time only goes up cuz i have to drive them for the missions.
i love it too and i also have two kids…but you know what? i played gta 3 for a year and never got sick of it…i bought vice city the day it came out, beat it ina week and became sick of it soon after…it wasn’t as good as the hype…the only thing i loved about it was the motorcycles, free flying and the music…
You know, I rented it and enjoyed, but wasn’t overwhelmed. But the more I think about it, the more I want to go and buy it.
I’ve got a question. How do you (if it’s even possible) get a hooker to restore your health. I have heard about it, but I couldn’t do it.
In GTA: 3, you got her in a car and drove to a secluded area and parked. Give it about fifteen seconds and the chassis starts shaking. In about another fifteen to twenty seconds, it stops, she gets out and you have more health in addition to a lighter wallet.
If you want your money back, just get out of the car and hit her in the back of the head with a baseball bat. 
(I’m assuming it’s the same in GTA: VC)
easy way to get the tank—when you steal it for Diaz, instead of going to his garage, go to your garage at the Hyman condo(assuming you have purchased it).
Park the tank inside, run out, and save the game.
The timer will run down, and the tank will blow, ending the mission, but when you reload, it will be repaired in your garage.
Once when we did this, we even managed to get an FBI suburban stuck in the garage with the tank.
I loved this game–my wife hated it. Too bloody for her. (We both found the porn studio missions disturbing, to be fair.) But we loved the music–the music brought us closer together. 
I should show you my tank collection sometime.
Heh. My favorite part of the game is hopping in a car, and pulling off random hit-and-runs and drive-bys, waiting for the cops to get on my ass. Then the REAL fun begins, as a 45-minute long chase through the streets of Vice City ensues, with hundreds of cop cars getting trashed, the Feds getting their weenie asses handed to them, and then the Military being shown as a bunch of incompetent fools.
Christ, it gets so fucking nuts, dodging tanks like they were the plague in my little Comet… after a while, though, they’ll get lucky and hit my car, killing me instantly…
My favorite part of the game? Watching my sweet ol’ Mom spend Christmas eve jacking cars and beating up hookers.
That, and spending New Years witnessing my boyfriend, holed up in the towers of the military base, picking off FBI agents and police helicopters.
Fun stuff.
Am I the only person that has a really hard time with aiming the guns? I’m still trying to save those guys from the cubans in the drug-deal-gone-wrong and I can never do it because I have terrible aim. I go up to the top of those stairs, but I can’t get the camera to actually turn down to look at them. When I use the “aim” function, it won’t allow me to shoot and only lasts for about 2 seconds.
Only thing I don’t like about the game - the controls are awkward for me.
interface2x: the easiest way I found to complete that part of that mission (there’s another part to it) was to jump down as soon as I could and switch to a regular auto-aim weapon. Make sure you keep an eye out in front and behind you.
You have to hold that button down and maneuver the reticle view with the right stick, and leave the left alone. I don’t care to count how long it took me to figure that out.
Sympathies; I just couldn’t get the hang of the aimable weapons at all beyond no time-pressure sniping situations–which made the mission that unlocks the western half of the island a particularly grueling thing for me.
I found shooting the easiest bit of it; driving was my weak spot. The road race in the Malibu Club missions and the timed Cuban boat course were among the hardest ones for me.
Here’s my Vice City Code Of Conduct.
I don’t hurt the prostitutes. They have enough problems and bring me sex and renewed health. After the girls get out of my car i drive off and take it out on one of the Bay Watch looking sluts or one of those roller skating chicks.
TyrC!
The health dynamics in Vice City always intrigued me. Hospitals are less healthy than prostitutes, but prostitutes are equally less healthy than completing a full day’s work delivering pizza.
What are other ways to make money? Besides missions and taxi driving? Mugging people is not so lucrative.
P.S., are Avery’s missions intregal to the game?
Is Avery the guy voiced by Burt Reynolds with the cowboy hat? If so, no. His missions do not get you further along the plot. (They are very difficult, though.) Just a sidetrip.
Vigilante Missions - Money adds up really quickly doing them. Just steal a cop car and you start vigilante mode, just like you start doing taxi missions.
Ambulance Missions- Lots of money here, as well. Same deal. Go to the hospital and find a ambulance to steal.
Pizza missions- not as much money. But, when you complete them all you get a nice reward.
I put them game away for awhile.I had finished all of the missions, and was just left with side stuff, like helicopter checkpoints and RC airplane races, and to get to level 12 in the dang Ambulance. I gotta get it back out, you guys reminded me of a lot of fun stuff.
pat
Same here. I still jump to Vice City (or even just good ol’ GTA3) when I want a good ol’ fashioned destructive police chase.
“Am I the only person that has a really hard time with aiming the guns?”
I did, but get the machine gun & when you push R1 it aims automatically for you onto whoever it thinks you should be shooting.
pricciar, there is also a nice firetruck you can get for more fun. You can also bring people ‘product’ aka drugs if you buy that ice cream place. You get a truck with what looks like two boobs of whipped cream on top.
Avery’s missions are only integral if you want 100%. Not sure if they prevent you from reaching later (waaay later) missions. But you do want to progress far enough through the Colonel’s missions to advance. There’s a mission you have to carry out that will introduce you to Ricardo Diaz. His missions are the ones to finish, if you want to gain access to the western half of the city. My advice: get lots o’practice with guns (like the sniper-rifle type guns). Well, practice in general. When I fail a mission, I keep going until I get it, and it gets easier.
You’ll do fine. It’s not that tough.