by Debased » Wed Oct 15, 2014 2:51 pm
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
I liked this game. A lot.
Well, I guess that's not enough for a proper review, is it? Sorry, it's been a while since I've done this. The... um... music was good and, um, the eighties... stuff? I liked the driving parts well enough, I guess. I wish losing a mission didn't require starting over all the way back at your safehouse. Don't know if anyone else noticed that?
This... this isn't going well, is it. Okay, I'll level with you, I kind of got a little carried away with this game. It started off innocuous enough, stole some cars killed some pedestrians, met some crime people. And then... The suit. I realize it's probably been a while since you've played this game, but in one of the early missions, you're tasked with visiting a yacht party and are told to find some nicer clothes. So you drive out to this shop and step onto the mission icon and suddenly you're wearing... I don't know what the technical term is. Is it a leisure suit? I don't know. I'll just call it a Miami Vice Suit since that's what everyone is supposed to recognize it from.
I'm not sure what it is about the Miami Vice Suit but, Tommy Carcetti, standing there in the fauxe-eighties neon lit night... Something just clicked for me. Part of it is that I maybe kind of look like Tommy. Or like Tommy is what I'd look like if I was in better shape and could keep a perpetual 5'oclock shadow without it growing into an ungainly beard. And was being rendered with early aughts 3D technology on a midrange computer. I guess.
But in that moment I didn't think of Tommy Carcetti as a video game avatar. I was Tommy Carcetti, and he was me. But better. Stronger. Faster. More confident. A me that had decided to stop living by societies conventions and truly embrace my Will to Power. Needless to say I was hooked.
I played Vice City every available moment. I lost sleep. My work suffered, but fortunately I was temping at the time and it was easy enough to keep my problems under the radar. I beat the main game in less than a week, and had completed most of the optional content a couple days later. You'd think that would be enough, at the time I certainly thought it would be. I even set the game aside for a few days, convinced that I'd pick it back up that weekend, hit 100% completion and move on to bigger and better things. But the. It happened: In some distant corner of the map I discovered the final hidde package. As soon as I collected it, I pulled up the stats screen and there it was listed in black and purple. "Completion Percentage: 100%". I woke up in the hospital -6 hours later.
They called it a panic attack and chalked it up to sleep deprivation. They gave me some pills and sent me home. I think I took maybe three before chucking the bottle in the trash. The meds didn't help; I knew only one thi g would. With trembling hands, I booted up my computer. I clicked the big V on my desktop. I deleted my savegame. A few moments later, Flock of Seagulls was playing from my desktop speakers and I was, for the moment, at peace.
Things got better there, for a while. I played every day, but rarely for more than an hour at a time. I made a point of maintaining my "normal life". It became, for a while, just this weird ritual. I'd play just a little every night before going to bed, without fail. Whenever I got near 100% completion, I'd kill my save and start over.
I was managing my life, more or less, but I couldn't deny my ever growing dissatisfaction. There was Tommy, striding his city like a pastel clad colossus, triumphing over his enemies over and over every night for years. And here was me, stuck in a series of menial jobs, going nowhere, respected by no one. Slowly but surely my Vice City sessions expanded in scope, until they were once again my only pastime. I swear there were months when I didn't sleep at all. I realize that's impossible. I'd be dead. But that's what it felt like. I remember very little from that time. I woke up in the hospital again. It was 2006.
The facility they housed me in was nice enough, and I even had regular internet access. The doctors suggested it might help my recovery to connect with old friends, but I didn't really have any. I'd never been a social butterfly and everytime I did try to get in contact with someone from before, they'd relay some horror story about my past behavior that I just couldn't remember. Like the time I'd shown up at my former best friends house, clearly fucked up, Devo blaring from my car speakers as a drove up onto his front lawn at 70 miles per hour. Needless to say, he didn't want anything to do with me.
I hit upon the idea of connecting with folks I knew on the internet. Embarassed to tell the real story, I concocted an elaborate fiction. I'd met a girl; I'd bought a place. I felt bad about lying but decided these more prosaic markers of success might supplant my Tommy Carcetti fantasies. I was wrong. The insurance stopped covering my treatment and I was discharged. It was a week without support when i began dreaming of the Miami Vice Suit again. I wasn't allowed to play on the computer at the halfway house, but my roomate suggested something even better. Pulling down a battered Beverely Hills Cop poster, he reached into a hole i. The drywall and extracted his treasure. As I saw the sandwich bag filled with white powder, some voice in my head suggested that this was what I had been missing, the subtext of the game had been obvious: Tommy was energetic, and aggressive in a way that suggested without ever making explicit. And weren't thise the very qualities I'd admired in him? Somehow, I knew that this would at last be the ticket to my best possible self.
I won't say what happened from there, but I guess I should be grateful the DA was willing to plea me down to only 7 years. I think maybe he felt sorry for me; and I must have been a pathetic site. Drawn out, haggard, clad in ill-fitting polyester. I've had some time to reflect since then, and I'm beginning to realize the truth.
What had been missing in my life wasn't some garish power fantasy. It wasn't even the markers of middle class respectability that I'd briefly pretended to. The truth was that I'd just never been able to finish anything I started. College, relationships, my creative endeavors; I always set out with admirable ambitions but could never quite make it to 100% completion. I new that for me to ever be happy, this would have to change. And, as I stepped into the sunlight this afternoon, a free man for the first time, I knew the perfect place to start.
So in conclusion, Vice City was a pretty solid game, overall.
Total Playing Time: 97,944 hours
Up Next: Deus Ex: Invisible War
[b]Grand Theft Auto: Vice City[/b]
I liked this game. A lot.
Well, I guess that's not enough for a proper review, is it? Sorry, it's been a while since I've done this. The... um... music was good and, um, the eighties... stuff? I liked the driving parts well enough, I guess. I wish losing a mission didn't require starting over all the way back at your safehouse. Don't know if anyone else noticed that?
This... this isn't going well, is it. Okay, I'll level with you, I kind of got a little carried away with this game. It started off innocuous enough, stole some cars killed some pedestrians, met some crime people. And then... The suit. I realize it's probably been a while since you've played this game, but in one of the early missions, you're tasked with visiting a yacht party and are told to find some nicer clothes. So you drive out to this shop and step onto the mission icon and suddenly you're wearing... I don't know what the technical term is. Is it a leisure suit? I don't know. I'll just call it a Miami Vice Suit since that's what everyone is supposed to recognize it from.
I'm not sure what it is about the Miami Vice Suit but, Tommy Carcetti, standing there in the fauxe-eighties neon lit night... Something just clicked for me. Part of it is that I maybe kind of look like Tommy. Or like Tommy is what I'd look like if I was in better shape and could keep a perpetual 5'oclock shadow without it growing into an ungainly beard. And was being rendered with early aughts 3D technology on a midrange computer. I guess.
But in that moment I didn't think of Tommy Carcetti as a video game avatar. I was Tommy Carcetti, and he was me. But better. Stronger. Faster. More confident. A me that had decided to stop living by societies conventions and truly embrace my Will to Power. Needless to say I was hooked.
I played Vice City every available moment. I lost sleep. My work suffered, but fortunately I was temping at the time and it was easy enough to keep my problems under the radar. I beat the main game in less than a week, and had completed most of the optional content a couple days later. You'd think that would be enough, at the time I certainly thought it would be. I even set the game aside for a few days, convinced that I'd pick it back up that weekend, hit 100% completion and move on to bigger and better things. But the. It happened: In some distant corner of the map I discovered the final hidde package. As soon as I collected it, I pulled up the stats screen and there it was listed in black and purple. "Completion Percentage: 100%". I woke up in the hospital -6 hours later.
They called it a panic attack and chalked it up to sleep deprivation. They gave me some pills and sent me home. I think I took maybe three before chucking the bottle in the trash. The meds didn't help; I knew only one thi g would. With trembling hands, I booted up my computer. I clicked the big V on my desktop. I deleted my savegame. A few moments later, Flock of Seagulls was playing from my desktop speakers and I was, for the moment, at peace.
Things got better there, for a while. I played every day, but rarely for more than an hour at a time. I made a point of maintaining my "normal life". It became, for a while, just this weird ritual. I'd play just a little every night before going to bed, without fail. Whenever I got near 100% completion, I'd kill my save and start over.
I was managing my life, more or less, but I couldn't deny my ever growing dissatisfaction. There was Tommy, striding his city like a pastel clad colossus, triumphing over his enemies over and over every night for years. And here was me, stuck in a series of menial jobs, going nowhere, respected by no one. Slowly but surely my Vice City sessions expanded in scope, until they were once again my only pastime. I swear there were months when I didn't sleep at all. I realize that's impossible. I'd be dead. But that's what it felt like. I remember very little from that time. I woke up in the hospital again. It was 2006.
The facility they housed me in was nice enough, and I even had regular internet access. The doctors suggested it might help my recovery to connect with old friends, but I didn't really have any. I'd never been a social butterfly and everytime I did try to get in contact with someone from before, they'd relay some horror story about my past behavior that I just couldn't remember. Like the time I'd shown up at my former best friends house, clearly fucked up, Devo blaring from my car speakers as a drove up onto his front lawn at 70 miles per hour. Needless to say, he didn't want anything to do with me.
I hit upon the idea of connecting with folks I knew on the internet. Embarassed to tell the real story, I concocted an elaborate fiction. I'd met a girl; I'd bought a place. I felt bad about lying but decided these more prosaic markers of success might supplant my Tommy Carcetti fantasies. I was wrong. The insurance stopped covering my treatment and I was discharged. It was a week without support when i began dreaming of the Miami Vice Suit again. I wasn't allowed to play on the computer at the halfway house, but my roomate suggested something even better. Pulling down a battered Beverely Hills Cop poster, he reached into a hole i. The drywall and extracted his treasure. As I saw the sandwich bag filled with white powder, some voice in my head suggested that this was what I had been missing, the subtext of the game had been obvious: Tommy was energetic, and aggressive in a way that suggested without ever making explicit. And weren't thise the very qualities I'd admired in him? Somehow, I knew that this would at last be the ticket to my best possible self.
I won't say what happened from there, but I guess I should be grateful the DA was willing to plea me down to only 7 years. I think maybe he felt sorry for me; and I must have been a pathetic site. Drawn out, haggard, clad in ill-fitting polyester. I've had some time to reflect since then, and I'm beginning to realize the truth.
What had been missing in my life wasn't some garish power fantasy. It wasn't even the markers of middle class respectability that I'd briefly pretended to. The truth was that I'd just never been able to finish anything I started. College, relationships, my creative endeavors; I always set out with admirable ambitions but could never quite make it to 100% completion. I new that for me to ever be happy, this would have to change. And, as I stepped into the sunlight this afternoon, a free man for the first time, I knew the perfect place to start.
So in conclusion, Vice City was a pretty solid game, overall.
Total Playing Time: 97,944 hours
Up Next: [b]Deus Ex: Invisible War[/b]