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Reviews (2)
10 November 2013
A stellar open-world action game for its time that goes highly recommended!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an excellent extension to the solid foundation of its predecessor; Grand Theft Auto III.
Vice City is an action-adventure game that has you completing missions and rising through the criminal ranks in an open city environment based on a mid-1980s take of Miami. You take control of a member of the Mafia named Tommy Vercetti, a man who survives a drug-deal gone wrong and has to find the one responsible for it. The game is full of references and spoofs on 80s culture and does a great job of creating a time-appropriate atmosphere and a highly enjoyable cast of characters and personalities.
From a technical perspective, Vice City offers a face-lift to the special effects and character detail, while also rendering a world filled with more colour and vibrancy compared to its predecessor. It looks prettier for certain, but not by a massive deal, mostly due to its use of the same underlying technology and some reused animations from the previous game. What this game does greatly improve upon, however, is the sheer scale of the game environment, both horizontally and vertically speaking.
The game's audio presents itself nicely with robust representations of urban ambiance, vehicular action, gunfire and explosions without considerably improving upon the aural fidelity of the preceding game. Vice City's soundtrack features a great mix of contemporary 80s music of many different genres and fictional radio channels featuring made-up talk shows, celebrity interviews and advertisements, many of them ranging from humorous to outrageous and are all exceptionally well-done.
In terms of gameplay and game-mechanics, Vice City delivers a whole slew of new features that breathes new air into the framework of its predecessor. The addition of helicopters and proper airplanes allows the player to explore and take advantage of very high grounds (like skyscraper rooftops) or otherwise inaccessible surfaces. Motorbikes make a comeback in Vice City since the very first game in the series and offer great flexibility in both navigation and vehicle action. A multitude of new firearms, explosives and melee weapons flesh out the arsenal and adds new ways to deal with threats or cause general destruction. With a new character comes a handful of new and very useful mechanics for dealing with opposition or just keeping yourself alive; crouching for the purpose of hiding behind cover or increasing weapon accuracy comes in very handy when engaging enemies, and the ability to jump out of a speeding vehicle can save you from burning inside its exploding wreck or driving into deep water. You can also change between different outfits for Tommy to either achieve a different look or to lose unwanted attention from the police.
Another notable addition is the ability to purchase several properties all over the city in which you may save your game progress and store almost any vehicle that you have found or stolen. Some properties open up more missions and unlocks assets which will generate money over time. On top of all these new features are a lot of other minor side activities and some perhaps meaningless but very amusing things to do in Vice City that you simply can't do in the older games.
In the end, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a game worthy of anyone's attention and it won't cost you much to try it out. If you can cope with the way the game controls compared to newer games, you will find a highly entertaining gem of a PS2 game.
02 August 2017
Pentium Pro: The mid-90s powerhouse
4 of 4 found this helpful For a processor of its age (late 1995 to early 1996) there is nothing quite like it. Debuting 1 and a half year before the Pentium II and about a year before the MMX-branded Pentiums, the Pentium Pro was able to flex its muscles unhindered by anything else on the x86 market in its heyday. It was fast, hot and with a high price to match it, largely purposed for heavy-duty server and scientific workloads. Even as a game machine it managed to make anything you tossed at it go much faster than anything before it. Was it a cost-effective processor for games? Perhaps not, but if it was top-of-the-line speed you needed it was speed that you received.
After having used it to run Windows 95 OSR 2.5 for a while now, the 200Mhz Pentium Pro with its integrated 256KB L2 cache makes the system fly even with some extra bells and whistles running on top of the operating system's layer. Navigation is a breeze, especially with ample amounts of random access memory and with a somewhat more up-to-date hard drive it becomes even more evident. Tomb Raider (1996) runs without any hiccups at standard resolution and in hi-res mode is almost good enough to enjoy properly, but keep in mind that no machine from the 1994 to 1996 range could feasibly run a game at hi-res and have its frame rate live to tell about it. A 3D accelerator card (like an ATI Rage or a 3DFX Voodoo) is a necessity to get the most out of any Pentium Pro system. Even Interstate '76 (1997) manages to perform at a respectable rate, but its usage of the highly demanding Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries (1996) technology with its high emphasis on large outdoor environments with full texture-mapping demonstrates just how badly a game like this needed a 3D card to fly with a good pixel count.
All in all, if you want the greatest killer machine for playing Quake (1996) in the day when it was brand new, the Pentium Pro will get you pretty far, and with a good 3D card installed will satisfy most of your demanding game needs for the remainder of the 20th century (and potentially a wee bit bit past that with a bit of luck).