It's seems Rockstar Studio's jumping in on the 2000s nostalgia bandwagon with its decision to remaster one of its most novel GTA titles, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In many ways, it's a refinement to the innovation brought about by Grand Theft Auto 3 except instead of damp and cold New York weather, you get basked in the warm sunlight of fake Miami with neon more ubiquitous than traffic lights.
Like Grand Theft Auto 3 before it, Vice City is more difficult compared to its contemporary brethren. Nobody said being bad was easy and there's also the fact that gaming was a different landscape back then. So it's high time to heed these tips so that the local criminals of this bootleg Miami don't ruin Tommy Vercetti's sun-tan and Cuban shirts.
10 Avoid The Water At All Costs
Sadly, GTA: Vice City didn't make the cut when Rockstar decided to add some safety and exploration features to its protagonists since Tommy Vercetti can't swim. It makes sense from several perspectives - Tommy's from the Liberty City, GTA's dollar store version of New York, and you don't really get many opportunities for swimming there.
There's also the fact that the technology at the time likely didn't permit the dynamics of swimming characters. As such, it's best to simply think that Tommy's allergic to water. It doesn't even take a couple of seconds for him to initiate the drowning animation as soon as the water gets too deep.
9 Play With A Controller For Driving, Mouse & Keyboard For Shooting
This option is sadly only available for PC users since they get the luxury of trying out different control schemes. However, even the newest GTA or Red Dead titles seem to favor this setup. Driving is just smoother and offers more precision when using the controller.
Meanwhile, the mouse offers pinpoint levels of accuracy and mark our words, you'll need that in GTA: Vice City, especially in one mission involving Lance Vance and a time limit. It's an old game and thus has clunky AI, shooting mechanics, and general combat. Meanwhile, some of the toughest missions in Vice City involve flying and driving and it's best to train with a controller for that endeavor.
8 Practice Driving Slow Cars Fast & Flying Helicopters & Planes
Speaking of the most difficult missions in Vice City, two come to mind. Those would be the flyer distribution mission where you have to use a plane (the easier of the two) and the RC helicopter mission where you have to use a toy chopper to bomb a building. It's GTA, don't question the mission design.
The latter mission is sometimes compared to GTA: San Andreas' train mission which is the unanimously crowned "hardest mission ever" in all of GTA titles. To prepare for this, grab a helicopter or a plane when you can and practice with the controls. Additionally, you'll also want to practice driving slow cars in a fast way, like a limousine for example. The skill will come in handy later.
7 Don't Ignore Those Hidden Packages
Hidden Packages is an old mechanic for GTA games where the developers hid around a hundred or so collectibles around the map. Each of them grants money or some other reward when found and obtained. There are a hundred of them all over Vice City but don't be discouraged by the amount. You don't have to find them all.
Finding around ten packages will reward you with a perpetually re-stocked item (like a bulletproof vest) in Tommy's hotel or house room. Finding more will yield other restocking items which are always useful. They're great side activities too as you get to explore and familiarize yourself with Vice City's layout.
6 Play Vigilante Missions With A Tank To Get Rich
Now the big question in every GTA game: how to make paper? In other titles, the exploits aren't as easy but in Vice City, there are actually many of them that allow you to get rich quick in maybe less than an hour of fun activity. The most enjoyable out of all these get-rich-quick jobs is the Vigilante Mission stint. It's where you steal a police vehicle and press the indicated button to start the vigilante sequence. You'll then have to kill some fleeing fugitives in their getaway vehicles.
Now, the hard part is that the vehicle will still get totaled and you can still accrue wanted levels. But if you're willing to bend the rules a bit, you can type in a cheat called "panzer" to spawn a tank. The tank is invulnerable and has a cannon. So it doesn't matter how many wanted levels you get through vehicular manslaughter, you'll remain safe. Just keep chaining Vigilante Missions this way and you'll be rich in no time.
5 Street Races Also Make Good Money
With that said, some of you might prefer not to cheat in an outdatedly difficult game even just once because it might hurt your shot at going to heaven or something. That's alright. There's a slower but still viable way to get rich in Vice City and that would be through racing.
Street Racing is a literally fast way to make some bucks. Of course, you have to win every time or it's all for naught. So best pick a safe and quick race. We recommend the Ocean Drive race for this. It only rewards $2,000 per win but you can finish it in a minute or less. Other races to try would be Border Run and Capital Cruise.
4 Deliver Pizza To Boost Your Health
Despite being a Mafia soldier, Tommy has no qualms about working a relatively low-paying job as a pizza boy. Why would you want to do this? Because there's a substantial reward after reaching the highest level (ten) of the mission.
Apart from several thousand dollars in cash, Tommy's health also increases to 150. That's 50 percent and it's enough to make some shootout or violent missions more tolerable or even easier. Delivering pizzas is also easy enough and it shouldn't take long to max out the level.
3 Eat Out To Heal Tommy
Tommy's quite fragile for a Mafia soldier now, isn't he? Better get used to that in old GTA games. Vice City does give you some ways to circumvent this woe.
You can opt to heal Tommy with fast food. Each meal will restore Tommy's health back up to a hundred. As an added bonus, you can choose to keep feeding Tommy with fast food even when he's full or at full health and he'll eventually put on some weight. It figures.
2 Don't Splurge On Top Weapons, You Can Get Them At Phil's Later On
Apart from houses, fast cars, and businesses, other stuff you'll be spending money on would be guns, lots of guns. You might be tempted to arm Tommy to the teeth with some of Ammu-Nation's beefiest boom-booms but if you're stingy about your in-game cash, just buy the usual SMG or pistol.
You get to unlock a more exciting arsenal anyway later on in the game. That would be through Phil Cassidy. He sets up a crude weapon shop later and sells only a remote grenade, a rocket launcher, an M60 machine gun, and a minigun. The last three weapons are what you'll want and the minigun alone is enough to mow down everything that comes at you in Vice City.
1 Prioritize The Malibu Club Property Missions
As for property in Vice City, you'll want the Malibu Club first. When picking which properties to purchase, you'll want this one first even if you're more interested in others. That's because the Malibu Club will later serve as Tommy's front for escalating his organized crime activities.
Thus, buying it and playing its missions will trigger other more important missions and introduce characters that you'll want to associate with as a rising syndicate. After that, it's up to you to purchase whatever else you want and live a quiet and peaceful Florida man life.