GTA: Vice City Legacy Review – The PS2-Era Classic Remains Irresistible, Essential, and Sonically Unmistakable in 2026

Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to take these broken wings and learn to fly again in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is emblematic of a long-extinct era. I’m not actually talking about its famous 1980s setting, though; I’m talking about the games industry at large. While we’ve had to patiently wait more than 12 years between GTA V and GTA VI, 2002’s Vice City arrived first on PlayStation 2 a mere 12 months after the genre-defining GTA III. Nothing as good as Vice City happens this rapidly anymore. And make no mistake – it is very, very good.

Vice City introduces a pile of new vehicle types and weapons, and its missions are immediately more imaginative and varied than its predecessor. It also embraces a noticeably different approach to its storytelling, benching the mute protagonist concept for a fully voiced lead character, giving him the ability to have far more entertaining interactions with a considerably more memorable supporting cast of allies and antagonists. Above everything, however, it oozes unrivalled personality and style thanks to its ’80s backdrop, and is elevated to untouchable heights by its sonically unmistakable soundtrack. I love this game. It grabs me by the crotch and shakes me around until I am not sure if I am a man or a woman. Then I remember I am Luke Reilly – Mister Luke Reilly – and this is Rockstar North with GTA: Vice City.

Realistically, Vice City could have been little more than another serving of the formula that had just completely revolutionised open-world games and it still would’ve sold truckloads. Indeed, for a brief spell, it began life as exactly that. After finalising GTA III on PC, the first thing the team behind it did was begin thinking about what vehicles, weapons, and missions could potentially go into a mission pack for their blockbuster crime sandbox. However, after realising there was too much content to squeeze into an expansion, the next chapter in the GTA saga became a fully fledged sequel instead.

I guess, strictly speaking, the decision to brush aside the present day and place Vice City’s action in 1986 actually makes it a prequel. Whatever you want to call it, it was astounding – and it remains so today.

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

While GTA III changed the trajectory of the GTA series forever – and set the stage for an entire ecosystem of open world action games to follow – Vice City is notable as the GTA that properly introduced the broader spectrum of vehicle variety we expect from the series today. Motorcycles made their first reappearance since the top-down era, and we could now effectively pilot aircraft – including choppers, and a seaplane with a complete set of wings. It also brought in outfit changes, property purchases, and even an in-game map (although it still came with a paper one, too).

Importantly, however, Vice City also introduced a protagonist with a voice of his own. In GTA III, dialogue typically consists of one-sided monologues – or characters simply barking a batch of mission instructions at you. Vice City is completely different. Thanks to leading man Tommy Vercetti having a voice of his own – provided by iconic Goodfellas star Ray Liotta himself – Vice City is far closer in tone and spirit to the classic crime movies and TV that inspired it in the first place. It’s funnier, snappier, and packed with so much more personality thanks to Tommy’s ability to bite back, express emotion, and give voice to his ambitions. Tommy’s ambition is actually a really important part of the equation, too, and something that further distinguishes Vice City from GTA III. That is, while GTA III is about survival as a little fish in a big pond, Tommy Vercetti is here to become Vice City’s great white shark. Vice City is not about scraping by; Tommy is here to take over this whole town.

Vice City is nothing if not hilariously unapologetic about its reverence for classic Miami crime dramas like Miami Vice and Scarface.“

Rockstar has since largely pivoted away from casting GTA characters with high-profile film actors, but during Vice City the practice was just about at its peak. Alongside Ray Liotta, Vice City features Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, William Fichtner, Robert Davi, Luis Guzmán, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Danny Dyer, and even Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. Yes, Miami Vice’s legendary Ricardo Tubbs was tapped for a key role in Vice City. Vice City is nothing if not hilariously unapologetic about its reverence for classic Miami crime dramas like Miami Vice and Scarface. It’s certainly no accident that Diaz’s mansion practically still has Al Pacino’s butt print in the office chair, or – if you get your wanted level up to three stars – you’ll be set upon by plain clothes Vice Squad detectives who show up in Cheetah sports cars.

Cum On Feel the Noize

In 2002, Vice City absorbed me immediately. I was obsessed and could not stop playing it. In 2026, I’m hooked all over again. I’d honestly forgotten how great it was to look at, certainly by PS2 standards. I actually don’t know what looks better: the evenings, or the sunrises. I also love all the little flourishes embedded in it – from the glinting ocean chop to the subtle way Tommy’s clothes flap as he whips through the air on a motorcycle. Bikes are such an excellent addition and feel great to ride, and I really dig the way they’re tuned to let you slide them aggressively into corners without abruptly gripping up and high-siding Tommy over the top of them. Cars handle more sharply than GTA III, too, and have a better sense of weight, which is such a crucial part of open-world action games for me.

The combat? Well, I’m still in a love/hate relationship with the general blasting. Yes, the auto targeting is effective in locking on and cutting down your opposition, but only when it’s locking onto your actual opposition – and not your literal allies who you drove to the shootout personally. I just wish it knew the cops directly in front of me are a bigger threat than the distant motorcyclist trying to flee the scene, and it remains an annoying idiosyncrasy of this era of GTA, particularly when it causes me to fail a mission. There are still no mid-mission checkpoints in Vice City, but it does introduce helpful, automated taxi rides back to the start of missions you were just wasted on. By cutting down on repetitive travel, Vice City is not only more respectful of our time, I also think it reduces the risk of players growing to resent particular stretches of the map they otherwise might’ve been forced to drive to and fro across one too many times.

Can you hear Mister Mister’s Broken Wings without thinking of Fernando Martinez?“

That said, it’s hard for me to grow tired of being in a vehicle in Vice City thanks to the soundtrack, which weaponised licensed music so successfully it single handedly reinvented the etymology of many of these songs in my brain. Can you hear Mister Mister’s Broken Wings without thinking of Fernando Martinez? I can’t. Perhaps the most impressive side effect of having a soundtrack this vast, memorable, and expertly curated is the way it flavours the missions in different ways for different playthroughs. Almost a quarter of a century after playing it for the first time, I found myself in a dirtbike chase through the back alleys of Washington Beach to the pop strains of 99 Luftballons. Not a song I would’ve considered for a frantic, high-speed chase – and yet the uptempo pop jam worked a treat. The fact that you can Baby Driver yourself to an unexpectedly brilliant bit of backing music is one of the GTA series’ greatest strengths, and Vice City is arguably the absolute acme. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not just the best soundtrack of the GTA series – edging out San Andreas and Vice City Stories – it’s one of the best soundtracks in video games full stop.

Never Too Much

Vice City occupies a special spot in the history of the series as the first game out of its then-newly rechristened development team, Rockstar North – although it should be noted the studio did have somewhat of a running start. The operation had initially been established as the Edinburgh arm of original GTA creators DMA Design, but DMA’s original Dundee branch had been shuttered shortly after. In other words, the prehistory of Rockstar North stretches back to the founding of DMA in the ’80s – so it’s coincidentally quite fitting its first official project became gaming's most quintessential tribute to that decade.

To be fair to some of the GTA series’ most memorable genre peers, Vice City wasn’t the first open-world action and driving game to use the past as a backdrop. The funkadelic Driver and Driver 2, set in an undefined moment at some point in the late ’70s or early ’80s, rolled back their own clocks some years before Vice City. On top of that, the original Mafia took us on a journey back to the 1930s, during the closing chapter of the United States’ Prohibition era. However, there’s just something richer and more special about the way Vice City transports you back to the beachside, neon-drenched excess of 1986.

There are a combination of elements all working in concert with each other to crank up the atmosphere to irresistible heights. The large fleet of angular exotic supercars and boxy American land whales on the roads, glinting as the beaming sun catches their windscreens. The pedestrians strutting the sidewalks in leather jumpsuits that look like they’ve been peeled directly off Michael Jackson. A bright, sun-kissed cityscape that’s so different to the dense, grimy greys of Liberty City, and which sits atop a seedy underbelly of chainsaw carnage, cartel chaos, cocaine, and cheap porn. The pastel pants, the palm-lined streets, the pulsating soundtrack – all of this in unison made Vice City a magically immersive time capsule like no other game at the time, and like few others since.

I’ve seen it argued that the incredibly successful Vice City served as the primary catalyst for the tidal wave of ’80s nostalgia that followed – ground zero for an exploding obsession with this pastel-powered decade – but I’m not entirely sold on that theory. Don’t get me wrong, Vice City was a genuine cultural juggernaut – but I think it’s better viewed as one significant part of a much broader picture. After all, the back stretch of 1997’s Boogie Nights leaned heavily into the early ‘80s, and The Wedding Singer very famously and successfully transported us back to 1985 when it was released in 1998. 1999’s 200 Cigarettes, 2000’s American Psycho, and 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer also all wound things back to the ’80s prior to the arrival of Vice City. Nostalgia has been powerful and bankable for a long time. Back in the ’90s and 2000s, if we weren’t being whisked back to the ’80s, it was the ’70s, via The Wonder Years, Dazed and Confused, 54, That ‘70s Show, and Detroit Rock City.

No: Rockstar didn’t discover the retro lens with Vice City, nor did it invent ’80s nostalgia. However, all those examples above are movies or TV shows. Vice City is neither. Vice City is a video game, and I probably don’t need to explain to you why that sets it apart. Vice City wasn’t just a window into the past we were restricted to passively peering through for a predefined running time. Rather, it became a living, breathing portal to the past that let us actually explore, experience, and inhabit a long-ended era.

Verdict

To this day, the opening moments of GTA: Vice City remain one of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. After getting into your first car, you’ll immediately hear the unmistakable bass line of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. It’s a small but meaningful moment that instantly plunges you into the past and feels like a happy accident, but it wasn’t – it was engineered to always be Billie Jean. Everyone heard it. Or, at least, they did until later re-issues and remasters of the game unfortunately trimmed it from the soundtrack. Either way, I was completely enchanted by Vice City from that moment. In 2026? I still can’t get enough of it. With its wide variety of vehicles, weapons, and missions, its stacked cast of recognisable voices, and its unmatched atmosphere, Vice City may have gone backwards in time – but it was a huge stride forward for the series and one of my all-time favourites.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, and Grand Theft Auto III, with more to follow over the coming months.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.