GTA Vice City a jewel that never goes out of style

GTA III revolutionized the market and forced many who criticized its ways and violence to drop their pan... I mean ... to recognize that it was a great video game and a great company. However, the end would come a year later, in 2002, with GTA Vice City, or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City if you prefer. With an eye on Scarface: The Price of Power and the legendary series Miami V.I.C.E., the people of Rockstar knew how to make us live the American dream in its most Corleone tradition.

But let's go in parts, GTA Vice City put us in the shoes of what for many is the best character in the saga: Tommy Vercetti, a version of Ray Liotta, gangster and retired, who is caught in a trap set by 'one of the ours' in collaboration with the FBI and DEA. Fleeing the bofia and wanting revenge, Tommy will have the help of a partner with whom to relive the best of the Miami V.I.C.E series. while he sets up his own criminal emporium.

GTA Vice City knew how to revolutionize the series with a new and charismatic character and a city based on Miami in which to push the possibilities of the game to the maximum. Luxury vehicles, motorcycles, super-speedboats, yacht parties, discos and a whole underworld of vanity, luxury, crime and drugs were the basis of a very complete story in which we could not stop connecting with the protagonist.

As if this were not enough, Vice City included the possibility of changing our clothes to merge with the environment, buying safe houses in which to store our cars and control the city, and carry out new activities that helped us to merge with the city in anticipation of everything that would come later with GTA San Andreas, GTA IV and GTA V. To all this was added a soundtrack from the eighties and moved, disrespectful, great, of which many of you will still remember Lazlow, Fernando and RJ Pepe

Vice City was shown as a kind of Miami 'a la Rockstar' in which there was no lack of bands, different parts and areas to explore. We would work for bikers, Cubans, Haitians and the mafia itself on our stopover through the criminal world while we were organizing our own affairs. Special mention, a moment taken from the film by Bryan de Palma and Oliver Stone in which, like Al Pacino as Tonny Montana, we took over our own drug dealer mansion and started our empire by deciding missions, attacking rival gangs and buying businesses.

It was in this last point, the purchase of businesses, where much of the magic of GTA Vice City lay and that makes it different from San Andreas and subsequent deliveries. Beyond buying businesses and making minimisations to maintain their profitability, in Vice City each business acted as a mafia boss by entrusting us with a good handful of missions, first to access their purchase, and second to increase their profitability. Businesses to launder our income went hand in hand with others involved in parcel delivery, drug dealing, arms trafficking, and even making a porn movie.

GTA Vice City was and is, without a doubt, one of the best GTAs. Its light-hearted humor, the grotesqueness of the situations it includes, and the powerful business engine add up to one of the most devilishly fun games in the auto theft franchise. If you didn't play it at the time, you have it available on Xbox, PS2, PS3, PS4, Steam, iOS and Android. A full-fledged must play for those of you who consider yourselves fans of the company.