Fuck Vice City

[3dvisioner]

I've been playing Vice City and I keep thinking, why does everybody love this game so much? Because everyone else does maybe? While playing it, I realized how shitty this game is. Sure it's fun some times and you can do a lot of shit, but one very important thing destroys the game completely. That is the gameplay itself. This game is all about missions, but that's where the developers fucked it up bad. They threw together missions, made them hard as fuck, added in some elements designed to make the game frustrating, and called that the challenge of the game. Well, it all started when I got so far in the game and had it all saved up in my c:. Than I get this problem with my computer where I can't read the c: no more and I have to reformat. I installed the game in a different drive, but the save games automatically go to C, instead of the game directory itself which would have been way smarter. So it's bye bye months of progress and starting over from square 1. Now, as I'm rushing through these damn missions to get to where I was before, I make a mistake. During a mission I get killed once, go to a hospital, lose all my weapons, than complete a mission, and save. Now I realize I lost all the weapons I accumulated. So now I'm trying to do this mission called "Messing With The Man" which was cake when I had all my weapons, but now since I don't, I have only the shotgun and m16 to use with very limited bullets. Now this mission "messing with the man" is one retarded ass mission where you have to kill cops and blow their cars. A destruction meter fills up based on the amount of destruction you do. The problem is, the cops you kill and the cop cars you blow up only count some times. Like you kill one cop, and the bar fills, you kill another cop, and it doesn't count. So basically, you just gotta get lucky to fill this damage meter. Well, the secret is, all you do is get a large arsenal with an insane amount of bullets and stand in one place and pump the hellicopter full of bullets while it tries to pump you full of bullets but misses every shot because well, it's stupid. Since the chopper never blows up, u keep shooting it till your damage meter fills. However, what happens if you don't have enough bullets? Well, you just will never pass the mission. And guess what, Vice City is full of these retarded ass missions where you're rewarded, not for your skill and strategy, but for doing missions over and over a hundred times and then getting lucky. The problem is, the developers didn't think to put in an autosave feature when you accomplish certain tasks. So what you get is annoying, tedious fucking repitition in the missions. Now you'll love this game at one time, and than hate the shit out of it at another time. Unlike games like Mafia, which understand how to make a well balanced gameplay, and don't require you to repeat stupid ass missions a hundred times because of some dumb ass flaws, Vice City is full of stupid missions that are mostly passed by luck. You'll find yourself working your ass off repeating a mission 20 times, than you finally pass it, and when you try to drive back to your house to save the game after all the hard work, a freak accident happens as what frequently happens, and you get killed on the way home. Since there's no autosave feature, the game assumes you failed the mission, and it's time to start over. After this happening once, and than 20 times more after that, it gets a person pretty damn pissed off, so much so that I just don't play this game for another month. Sure this game is pretty fun, when you're driving around running over people and stealing cars. Than you realize the graphics in this game suck, the gameplay sucks, you waste lots of time and energy on this game, and all this equates to the fact that this game plain sucks. So for all of you who haven't bought this and are considering it, do yourself a favor and don't buy it. I got it for free and I even regret doing that.

[Yian]

3dvisioner, I think I know why you hate this game. Your post was long so let me sum it up:

1) You suck at missions.

2) You suck at driving.

3) You screwed up your PC and blamed the game for it.

You know what? I suck too!!!! :D :D :D I can't even shoot straight in that game and I've totally given up on driving. The graphics isn't bad but not superb and the missions are "threw together" and there is no story.

But I beat the game.... with a trainer! Why don't you do the same, go grab a trainer? There are all kinds of cheats there... no death in water, indestructable cars, garage editor, inf ammo, god mode, all guns, give tanks, pause timers, erase stars (wanted level), flying car... you name it! I bet you will start loving the game as soon as you geab the trainer. I had a lot of fun killing lots and lots of police and civilians while being shot at without dying. Just don't get into a car in front of a cop or you get busted and there is no cheat for that... you go to the police station.

BTW, this game really is kinda hard but 20 times a mission? Come on you really sucks.

[3dvisioner]

You're right, I do suck at this game. But like i said, the problem is not my skills, it's the annoying inconveniences this game has. I didn't exaggerate anything except for the repeating missions 20 times, that I said out of frusturation.

[WhoGivesARatsAss]

FUCK VICE CITY and stupid fuckin flying mission.. what were they smokin?

[Yian]

Yep. I think this game is really not for everyone. When I played GTA3 I thought it was decent but it wasn't anything like the hype would tell you. Not that much a big deal. The greatest part of the game is the freedom it gives you. You must think out side of the box to complete the m,issions in the easiest way.

For example (from GTA3 since I beat it), there are many racing missions in GTA3, but I never won becaue they all have good cars and they drive like crazy and they don't die when they flip (but I do!) So I camp up with this idea "um...." I jacked 10 trucks and park them all at one block of the street where eveyone will go through, then I go to the race. The race started and everyone got stuck in that shit load of trucks. My car can't pass either, you must think. Right, but I can! I walked around the other way and grabbed another car and drive "casually" to the goal. 1sy place!

Now, can you do that in a real racing game? Hell no! In a scripted level of a FPS? No way! Realize how much fun this game could be now?

Another example (again from GTA3). There was a mission I have to drivea card with a dead dude in my trunk and two bad guys will drive their car and try to crash into me. My car was weak and can be easily turned into "fire" after a few bumps. So, at the start of the mission, I find out where the bad dudes are parking before they make their hit, then I drove a huge truck and flip them all. They started to burn and "boom." I then drive my weak car, now with no one to bump me, to the goal.

Nice, huh?:D

[3dvisioner]

Yea, i guess you could call that using the brain. I used to do that for as many missions as I could. Than, I started thinking it was more like cheating and I wanted to just try and beat missions the way they're supposed to be beat. But i'm starting to not give a shit anymore.

[WhoGivesARatsAss]

and what abt the flying missions?.. did u park a truck for them too.. and stupid ass controls! eh?

[Yian]

Yeah there was no excuse for that mission. I guess no matter how much brain a bad mission is a bad mission.

[3dvisioner]

which flying mission are you talking about. what did you have to do in the mission?

that parking a truck method won't always work in vice city either. whenever you turn your head, cars always do the disappearing act.

[WhoGivesARatsAss]

the seaplane and the flyers mission.. since i have no other mission to do except this one and i suck on this big time i just let go of the game and THANK YOU BLIZZARD FOR FROZEN THRONE.. i have been very busy and happy and now i have NWN SoU and i have completely forgotten abt crappy games that are still taking up my disk space.. ala vice city and enter the matrix!

i cannot run the seaplane like this.. it is completely unplayable.. the controls make no sense whatsoever.. default or customized.. why do i have to use 2 buttons to fly the damn thing.. it isnt like flight sim now is it! plus even when i got the hang of it.. the controls are so sluggish.. one nose dive and u are dead!

[future man]

I whooped the games ass easily.

[MrBored]

All I liked was the Radio Stations, Carmageddon 1 ownz this game ;p

[xenophage]

i totally agree.... the flyin missions were a bitch and thats when i uninstalled the game but over all the game is pretty entertaining and provides hours of gameplay except for a few fuck ups.........
at least vice city had bikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mR-D]

You can't just hate a game because you're shit at it. That game was one of the easiest games I played!! 2 days ago, I got a slight bit bored of just stuffing around on Vice, so I thought I'd finish the game again... So I restarted, and after playing it for about 4-5 hours, I was a bit past the Love Fist Missions. I played it last night for a bit, and now i have finished all the missions, apart from getting the cars for Sunshine Auto, and Buying the Ice Cream place...

[3dvisioner]

another annoying thing about vice city. While playing, every time i try to enter a car, the game pauses, waits for the cd to start spinning again and searches for the right track to play while I drive. This pause usually lasts about 3 seconds average and it does this for every car I enter. It also pauses for a couple seconds every time I try to switch radio stations. Sometimes it pauses when somebody on the street says something and it has to search the cd for the phrase that they are going to say. You add up all these pauses and it gets pretty damn annoying because it happens so frequently. Vice City is the only game I've seen that has this problem. I wonder if the PS2 version does this, if not, this is a lousy port.

So, does anyone know how I can stop this? My guess would be to copy the audio tracks from the cd to the game directory but where in the game directory? It also sux that I will have to use up the space on my hd to fit these audio tracks.

[3dvisioner]

another annoying thing about vice city. While playing, every time i try to enter a car, the game pauses, waits for the cd to start spinning again and searches for the right track to play while I drive. This pause usually lasts about 3 seconds average and it does this for every car I enter. It also pauses for a couple seconds every time I try to switch radio stations. Sometimes it pauses when somebody on the street says something and it has to search the cd for the phrase that they are going to say. You add up all these pauses and it gets pretty damn annoying because it happens so frequently. Vice City is the only game I've seen that has this problem. I wonder if the PS2 version does this, if not, this is a lousy port.

So, does anyone know how I can stop this? My guess would be to copy the audio tracks from the cd to the game directory but where in the game directory? It also sux that I will have to use up the space on my hd to fit these audio tracks.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
every time i try to enter a car, the game pauses, waits for the cd to start spinning again and searches for the right track to play while I drive.

What GPU are you running??? What resolution are you running the game at??? How much MB of RAM have you got???
Please state your computer's stats.


And maybe you should use a no-cd crack. That's what I use, and my game doesnt freeze at all. I'm running the game with a Ge-Force 4 TI 4200 128MB @ 1280x1024x32. It works sweet with mie...

[3dvisioner]

amd athlon xp 1800
512mb ram
gigabyte 7vtxh
all in wonder radeon 9700 pro
sound blaster audigy gamer
lite on dvdrom
blah blah blah... is this really necessary?

well the nocd crack would obviously solve the problem, but would take away all my music wouldn't it? cuz' isn't the music all on the 2nd cd?

[3dvisioner]

with my system specs, i would expect the game to run at very smooth framerates. I mean above 60 constantly, but it doesn't. How many fps does yours go at?

[mR-D]

Well, with your setup, it should be running fine...
I'm running a:

AMD athlon xp 1800+
GF4 TI 4200 128MB agp 8x with VIVO
1024MB DDR RAM
and I'm running the game on 1280x1024x32.
I know that the game runs over 60FPS on my comp. When I get home I'll run Fraps with the game, and check what FPS it's running at.

What speed is your CD drive?
Have you got the XP Hotfix Q306676? It usually fixes some dillemas with games.

Also, when I put in the no-cd crack, I didn't need to copy over the Audio folder from the second CD. All I did was put the crack into the directory folder, and run the game off that. No copying Audio was required.

[3dvisioner]

crap, i'm having concerns that something is up with my comp. hm..., could you like give me a vid clip of your game play if that's possible. i really wanna sort this out cuz' i may have gotten a defective vid card. i bought it oem, refurbished and i need to quickly send it to ati before the warranty runs out. Let's see, do you have rallisport challenge? how does that run? it runs good for me, but there are always stutters here and there and the speed is not on par with the xbox version.

also, do you leave the frame limiter option on or off? I leave it on and the game runs a little slower. When i turn it off i get much better framerates but corrupted graphics. I wonder why this is, do you get this? it may have something to do with ati cards cuz' when i had a geforce 2 mx400 i could leave frame limiter off and get normal graphics but just a lot of stuttering.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
crap, i'm having concerns that something is up with my comp. hm..., could you like give me a vid clip of your game play if that's possible. i really wanna sort this out cuz' i may have gotten a defective vid card. i bought it oem, refurbished and i need to quickly send it to ati before the warranty runs out. Let's see, do you have rallisport challenge? how does that run? it runs good for me, but there are always stutters here and there and the speed is not on par with the xbox version.

also, do you leave the frame limiter option on or off? I leave it on and the game runs a little slower. When i turn it off i get much better framerates but corrupted graphics. I wonder why this is, do you get this? it may have something to do with ati cards cuz' when i had a geforce 2 mx400 i could leave frame limiter off and get normal graphics but just a lot of stuttering.

Ok dude....

1- If I make a vid clip of gameplay from the game, i can only properly record it in 640x480x16, so I can't run it at what i usually have it at (1280x1024).

2- You say that every time you hop into a car, or whenever someone says something on the street, the comp shits itself for a few seconds. that most likely has nothing to do with your GPU. Whats happening, is that whenever the game needs to use the CD, It probably can't read off the CD quick enough. There's no absolute reason that it's your GPU. Your GPU isn't shit.
Get a no-cd patch, and after that tell me what happens.

3- I havn't got Rallisport Challenge. Sorry.

4- Keep your Frame Limiter ON. Even though it's a bit slower when it's on, it makes the games frame rate stay around the same number, rather than turning it off having it go from 10FPS to 60FPS every second. If you turn it off, it may make the game crash. Actually, it most likely will. Even on my comp, if I turn the frame limiter off, it makes the graphics REALLY good when I'm sitting in the same spot, but, as soon as I get into a fast car, and start going fast, it stutters.


Also... what AGP speed are you running the GPU at?

[3dvisioner]

got the no-cd crack and it works great. Thanks for the tip. I'm running at 8x agp. If I could run the game with the frame limiter off it would be awesome cuz' the framerate is so good with it off, I just get too much graphic corruption. I may need better cooling in my computer. My room is fucking hot right now, I can't even stay in here that long without running out to cool down, my computer must be going through hell. maybe my vice city is running at optimal performance, but i was just hoping it would run better with my system specs.

[3dvisioner]

sorry, not 8x agp, 4x agp.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
got the no-cd crack and it works great. Thanks for the tip. I'm running at 8x agp. If I could run the game with the frame limiter off it would be awesome cuz' the framerate is so good with it off, I just get too much graphic corruption. I may need better cooling in my computer. My room is fucking hot right now, I can't even stay in here that long without running out to cool down, my computer must be going through hell. maybe my vice city is running at optimal performance, but i was just hoping it would run better with my system specs.

So it's running good? Great to hear that! :p
Also dude... I wouldn't run your computer for long periods in the heat because you might fry your CPU, or even worse.... fry your mobo.

[3dvisioner]

yea, my vice city runs at only 30 fps. wat the heck is going on??

[3dvisioner]

Hey mor3, can you post an attachment of the winxp hot fix Q306676 cuz' i can't seem to find it on the microsoft site, or maybe i did but I'm not sure if it's the right one because the one I found on the microsoft website relates to screensavers and I'm not sure if that's the one you're referring to.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
Hey mor3, can you post an attachment of the winxp hot fix Q306676 cuz' i can't seem to find it on the microsoft site, or maybe i did but I'm not sure if it's the right one because the one I found on the microsoft website relates to screensavers and I'm not sure if that's the one you're referring to.

Yes. That is the one I am refering to. It may be for screensavers, but, somehow it fixes problems with some games.
Don't be dependent on it, because even if you install it, it still may not solve this issue. But, it is still a good thing to install because it may solve future problems.

Maybe an option that is possible is to get new display drivers, or if you have a VIA Northbridge chip, then make sure you install your VIA 4-in-1 driver set.

Are you sure that you are running you GPU at 4x AGP??? Because if you're not, then that may be one of the reasons that you have a low FPS issue. I'm running mine at 4x AGP. (My GPU is 8x compatible, but, my mobo only lets me use 4x.)

[3dvisioner]

Do you guys who own a all in wonder radeon 9700 pro or a normal 9700 pro leave v-sync on in the ati options? I've noticed it makes my games smoother by a little. It helps.

If I turn off frame limiter in vice city, i get such beautiful framerates. I mean Tommy Vercetti moves with such grace and I can see every single frame of his movements. This how fast games should be played on pc. Unfortunately I get a shitload of graphical corruption when I turn off frame limiter. Why is this? Contrary to wat others are experiencing, I don't experience varying frame rates. I get a constant high framerate, just fucked up graphics. Dammit! Have to make a tradeoff, what a bitch!

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
Unfortunately I get a shitload of graphical corruption when I turn off frame limiter. Why is this?

This is because when the frame limiter is off, say you are just walking around and shooting people. You will get spectacular frame rates. But, if you get into a fast car, and start to go fast, there would be too much information going to your graphics card, and the frames would get un-even. As a result to that, you get very choppy graphics, and/or corrupted graphics.

If you keep the frame limiter on, the game makes sure that even frame rates are going to your graphics card. And as a result to that, the game revolves around the same frame rate.

Do you get it?

[Kain]

in this i have to agree with Yian, you suck and dont blame the game for your mistakes..

[mR-D]

Originally posted by Kain
in this i have to agree with Yian, you suck and dont blame the game for your mistakes..

Who sucks?

[3dvisioner]

Vice City does.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by 3dvisioner
Vice City does.

No, it doesn't.

[WhoGivesARatsAss]

yes it does

[3dvisioner]

yes it does again

[mR-D]

No, it doesn't....

[Kain]

And so the war continues [dont you love it how players blame the game for there own crap performance?]

[3dvisioner]

I love it when people assume the player is at fault and not the game.

[mR-D]

don't you love it how after you take a piss, you always have those 2 or 3 drops come out after you take a piss...

[Drifter]

hmmmm

[Drifter]

I have GTA1, 2, 3 an VC an they all work fine for me, both the PS2 Version of VC and the PC version run fine, im only using an athlon 1700+ 256ddr an GF2 32mb but i dont have n e problems on 1024x768.
If you finish the game on the PS2 an then come an play it on the PC youll find its way easier the second time round, the PS2 controls are alot more difficult (apart from the auto target) the main 'storyline' mission(not really much of a story) should take 4 hours or so its immpossible to get all of them first time everytime an i dare call any one who says they can a liar.
3d i recommend checking your system, coz the game should run fine, has any one got the full 100% of the game though without a trainer? coz theres more to do than just the missions even though its kinda boring after that.

[mR-D]

Originally posted by Drifter
has any one got the full 100% of the game though without a trainer? coz theres more to do than just the missions even though its kinda boring after that.

A friend of mine got up to 98% on the PC version. He spent quite a while doing that though.