Grand Theft Auto has left a dubious legacy on the industry - not for its violence or raunchy sexual humor, but for the fact that Vice City, the middle sibling between the half-finished III and the bloated ambition of San Andreas, is the high that the industry at large, let alone Rockstar themselves, have struggled to chase ever since. Vice City is the platonic ideal of the open-world crime simulator, a game that captured the imaginations of gamers, commentators, and the politicians who sought a scapegoat for the United State's unanswered epidemic of shooting deaths. Political extremism and gun culture were passed over in favor of pointing fingers at the media in general, a wave of moral panic that has in many ways irreparably damaged public discourse going forward.
By modern standards Vice City is nothing special, but to judge it by those standards is a reverse anachronism. Sitting down and becoming immersed in the visually primitive experience reveals an atmosphere of longing familiarity. It's fitting that a game with such nostalgic value for those in my generational cohort is itself a period piece set in the 80's, a decade of national optimism for some, where Vietnam was a distant memory and Afghanistan was the Soviet's problem. Where "trickle-down" might have felt like a promising paradigm shift, where the road we were going down must have looked a little longer from all the way back there. This isn't to say that Vice City is a secret masterpiece or has some hidden meaning under its Hollywood-inspired glitz and kitsch - but the meaning that is there is strangely enhanced by its datedness. It is by no means timeless: controls are clunky, graphics are bad even by standards of the time, a necessary concession to cram the detailed titular Vice City onto the day's hardware; but these traits in their way have become aesthetically valuable, the way scanlines and the roughness of tapes have come to be associated with warmth and better times. Low-poly characters stumble through mocapped cutscenes, shadows are hard-baked into geometry, and a slightly compressed halo of sun flickers at sunset.
Vice City is ugly and crude, sometimes even a little bigoted, but it's also strangely beautiful. I can't recommend it, but I will give it four stars, if only for posterity.
By modern standards Vice City is nothing special, but to judge it by those standards is a reverse anachronism. Sitting down and becoming immersed in the visually primitive experience reveals an atmosphere of longing familiarity. It's fitting that a game with such nostalgic value for those in my generational cohort is itself a period piece set in the 80's, a decade of national optimism for some, where Vietnam was a distant memory and Afghanistan was the Soviet's problem. Where "trickle-down" might have felt like a promising paradigm shift, where the road we were going down must have looked a little longer from all the way back there. This isn't to say that Vice City is a secret masterpiece or has some hidden meaning under its Hollywood-inspired glitz and kitsch - but the meaning that is there is strangely enhanced by its datedness. It is by no means timeless: controls are clunky, graphics are bad even by standards of the time, a necessary concession to cram the detailed titular Vice City onto the day's hardware; but these traits in their way have become aesthetically valuable, the way scanlines and the roughness of tapes have come to be associated with warmth and better times. Low-poly characters stumble through mocapped cutscenes, shadows are hard-baked into geometry, and a slightly compressed halo of sun flickers at sunset.
Vice City is ugly and crude, sometimes even a little bigoted, but it's also strangely beautiful. I can't recommend it, but I will give it four stars, if only for posterity.