Grand Theft Auto: Loose ends

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A look back at the unfinished stories the juggernaut series left in its wake

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
2002 | PS2, Xbox, PC

Liberty City’s most notorious spree killer Tommy Vercetti is released after a fifteen-year stretch. The Forelli Mafia chuck a Hawaiian shirt over Tommy’s head and dispatch him to the Miami-like Vice City to oversee a drug deal. The drug deal goes sour, as drug deals are wont to do, and the rest of the game follows Vercetti, with cowardly lawyer Rosenberg in tow, as he slowly builds up a criminal empire in the city of Vice while simultaneously tracking the goons who set him up. This he achieves under the constant shadow of Sonny Forelli, who keeps threatening to come down to Vice City and whack him unless he finds the drug money - and he’s true to his word. Vice City is generally considered to be the pinnacle of the series by connoisseurs, greedily smacking their lips and licking the blood of dead hookers off their fingers as they wax lyrical about its wonderfully camp '80s soundtrack and brutally tough mission structure. We preferred GTA III, as some of VC’s missions are tougher than lighting a match on a bar of soap, but Vice City is definitely up there with the best.