Remakes can update a game in ways that make it feel more like it belongs in the current generation with completely updated graphics, improved gameplay, and a host of other things that breathe completely new life into a game. As such, with Rockstar’s ever-growing catalogue of great games that still hold up incredibly well on a conceptual level, the idea of some of these games getting a proper remake is very alluring. Games like Manhunt, Red Dead Revolver, and Bully would absolutely sell themselves while single-handedly reviving the franchises to which they belong. But today, the Rockstar classic that we want to call attention to is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – and why a remake of it would make all the sense in the world to everybody involved. While Rockstar has not announced any official plans to do this, nor are there any substantial rumors alluding to it, who knows, maybe if we talk about it enough we can help move the needle in the right direction.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a game like no other in its respective franchise. It’s got a stylized tone – heavily inspired by movies like Scarface and Goodfellas – that permeates every faucet of its design and really makes it stand out in the series, and for that alone it’s many GTA fans’ favorite entry. It’s also a big part of why Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an excellent candidate for the remake treatment.

Visually, the Miami 80’s aesthetic is just a timeless one to say the least. The Neon lights and loud pastel color palettes of characters’ clothes, decor, and vehicles is a look that will never get old, but even more importantly it’s kind of “in” right now and has been for a while. Today we’re seeing all sorts of movies, tv shows, and video games apply this aesthetic to great effect as it is appealing to just about everybody. Younger folks seem to like it for its brazen and audacious tone, while folks aged in their mid-thirties and up often have legitimate nostalgia for the era and just enjoy seeing many of its components honored today through replication. So long story short; it’s just a good look to have if you’re trying to move units. While San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto 3 and 4, all have their strong points, they don’t stand out thematically like Vice City does. It’s true that you could absolutely give any of the Grand Theft Auto games the remake treatment and expect it to sell well, given the general popularity of the series, but I think it’s fair to say that even a conservative remake of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would sell better than the others, if for nothing else the fact that it looks like what a lot of other modern games are attempting to. It would almost fit in with modern games in a way that a remake of other PS2-era GTA games would not.

Secondly, it’s also fair to say that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City still has one of the better stories of the entire series. This is a bit subjective admittedly, but the drug kingpin story arc with revenge and redemption thrown in is one that always works, especially with the old-school mafia twist. Even today it’s a setting that works well in movies and TV shows, and we also see evidence of it selling relatively well with the Mafia 1 remake and Mafia 2 remaster that were released not too long ago for modern consoles. Despite that remaster perhaps not being the best, the interest it received is undeniable, and thus, the power of that setting and genre is evident. Vice City’s story is certainly a bit on the predictable side, as most crime stories are, but it also does a great job of standing out with outstandingly well-written and extremely memorable characters like Ken Rosenburg, Sonny Forelli, and of course Tommy Vercetti, the twists and turns of the plot never cease to entertain despite being visible from miles away.

Especially in one in a series that didn’t even give its main character much of anything to say at all in the previous entry. It’s rudimentary by today’s standards, and there isn’t much a remake can do about that without making it feel too different, but the charm of its characters and surprisingly tight execution makes it stick with you just as well as anything else the genre has to offer. The fact that the voice cast is made up of absolute legends like Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo, and Dennis Hopper also helps with the appeal, as those actors are still totally revered today just as much – if not more so – than they were when the game was made.

The sun-kissed Miami-inspired setting of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the one that still retains the most of its appeal despite its age in my humble opinion. Maybe it’s the bright colors, maybe it’s the more welcoming, simplistic layout that avoids feeling overwhelming so much better than later entries, but whatever it is, Vice City is still GTA’s most enticing setting to date, and for that reason alone many long-time GTA fans still call it their favorite after 5, if not their all-time favorite overall.

So while it’s certainly true that, in a perfect world, Rockstar would just give their GTA series a similar treatment to what the Yakuza series got, by just remaking all of the games and celebrating the franchise’s history in a more full-throated way, but as it stands, with Rockstar showing no real interest in doing this at all, advocating for what is perhaps the franchise’s strongest PS2-era entry to get the remake treatment makes a lot of sense. Not only because it would sell well but because that is the game that deserves it the most. Despite having extremely dated visuals and a comparatively rudimentary set of controls compared to its successors, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is still the game that more than deserves a fundamental update because gamers today who might not be so inclined to play its current form deserve to experience it nonetheless.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

QTEs

Quick time events can be a great tool when executed properly. The Greek-era God of War games, for instance, used them to great effect to punctuate high octane action sequences in a great blend of cinematic and gameplay. The problem is, games that do that are very rare. QTEs more often than not feel unnecessary and arbitrary, and for every God of War, we have a dozen games that fall on the other end of the spectrum.

BLADES OF HADES (GOD OF WAR)

As compared to God of War 2 and 3, the very first God of War game had a lot more sections that put emphasis on pure platforming (or something close to platforming anyway). One such section was the Blades of Hades, and as anyone who’s played the game would tell you, it was a nightmare. Walking over thin wooden logs while trying to avoid all manner of massive axe heads and saw blades was even worse in practice than it sounds, and countless players died more than just a few times trying to get through this part.

DONKEY KONG

Back in the early 80s, Nintendo was nowhere close to being the powerhouse it is today- so when the Japanese company was sued by Hollywood bigwig Universal for Donkey Kong’s perceived likeness to King Kong, they were certainly the underdogs. Nintendo’s attorney Jack Kirby, however, argued that Universal themselves had claimed before they remade King Kong a few years earlier that the property had become public domain, leading to a victory for Nintendo. The Big N were so enamoured by their lawyer’s work, they would go on to name a certain pink mascot of theirs in his honour.

Often, it’s the former. Being able to swim in video games, strangely enough, isn’t something that happens a lot. In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at fifteen unfortunate characters in games who’re terrible swimmers.

JOHN MARSTON (RED DEAD REDEMPTION)

The good old wild west isn’t a place where swimming is a life skill that you absolutely need to have- and John Marston takes that to heart. Put him in any body of water for even a second, and he’ll sink faster than a ton of bricks. The series is well aware of this, and takes every opportunity to poke fun at the outlaw’s inability to swim in Red Dead Redemption 2.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/15-heroes-who-shockingly-cant-swim/feed 0 400955 https://gamingbolt.com/the-50-biggest-maps-in-video-games-of-all-time https://gamingbolt.com/the-50-biggest-maps-in-video-games-of-all-time#respond Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:43:43 +0000 https://gamingbolt.com/?p=381761 As technology has evolved and allowed developers to do more impressive stuff in their games, video games in general have gotten larger and larger and expanded in scope. That’s not to say that we didn’t have large game worlds until recently, but we certainly have had a lot more of then in the last decade or so. In this feature, we’re going to talk about the biggest maps ever used in video games, and we’ll be counting down, beginning with #50, and ending with what is to this day the biggest video game map of all time.

Do keep in mind, that though it’s natural to assume that when we talk about big game maps, we might be talking about open world games only- but that’s not the case. Whether its an open world game, or an open ended game that’s not particularly open world, or a huge map that we’ve seen in multiplayer play- it’s all fair game for this list. Also, do keep in mind that randomly generated maps were not considered for this feature.

A final note before we begin- there’s every possibility that we might have missed out on some game you were expecting to see on this list, and if we did, it’s either because the exact sizes of their maps aren’t known to us, or because we simply forgot! If it’s the former, and you know what the sizes are, please tell us! If it’s the latter, please remind us.

So without further ado, let’s jump into it.

#50. ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY

The open world action by developers Ubisoft has its fair share of issues, sure, but its world is one aspect that can’t be faulted. It’s a joy to explore, and it’s also pretty big. At about 2.4 km2, there’s more than enough space in this virtual world to explore and lose yourself in.

This is not because of it’s fabulously successful and lucrative online mode though. While GTA Online has served as much more than just the cherry on top that most probably expected it to be, people generally hadn’t bought these games for online experiences. Gamers generally buy Grand Theft Auto to experience a massive, enthralling trip into organized crime with gritty, realistic characters and unparalleled freedom to unfold the story the way they see fit.

GTA 5 has arguably satisfied that particular need for gamers more than any other entry to the series and perhaps more than any other game, as evidenced by the massive, unprecedented profits that the game has raked in over the years since its release that are well into the billions. Out of all of the benchmarks that the fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series has broken, one of the more intriguing ones is the amount of online content that the game offers. Rockstar is no stranger to online modes that offer a fair amount of fun and longevity, but GTA 5’s online mode is an entirely different beast altogether.

In microtransactions, and microtransactions alone, GTA 5 has pulled in over 500 million dollars. The success of the ever-growing online mode for the game is not too surprising to those who have been playing it for a while, as they have seen the beefy list of options grow steadily with new content being added on a regular basis for a long time now. There’s no two ways about it; GTA Online is an incredibly successful endeavour in it’s own right, and due to this the amount of players engaging with it continue to fuel its expansion with their multiple purchases.

One question that seems to be inevitably barreling towards us, however, is whether or not Rockstar is losing sight of the essence of Grand Theft Auto at this point. It is a question that many are starting to ask, and understandably so. It’s true that the online modes are wildly popular and successful, and of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with Rockstar continuing to support it, but what is just as true is that many fans of the franchise are in fact single-player offline gamers, who have by now exhausted most if not all of what Los Santos has to offer, and are understandably starting to wonder about the next major entry.

After all, GTA 5 did come out in 2013, which is over a whopping 5 years ago. Granted, this is also roughly the same amount of time we had to wait between GTA 4 and 5, but even then, by 2011 we at least knew that GTA 5 was coming. Which was just 3 years after the launch of 4, so if Rockstar had any interest in sticking to that timeline, we would have had at least some sort of official word on Grand Theft Auto 6 by 2016 or so.

But here we are in 2019 without so much as a peep about another game. You could say that Rockstar is just focusing on Red Dead Online right now, but that doesn’t really explain the absence of 6 being on the way. Remember, Rockstar put Red Dead Redemption out in 2010, between GTA 4 and 5, and surely was working on both for a fair amount of time, so either Rockstar has lost the ability to multitask since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, which is stupefyingly unlikely, or they are purposefully holding off on a new game in the franchise. This is counter to what GTA players have grown to expect from the series up to this point, and does add some fuel to the suspicion that perhaps Rockstar is indeed more interested in squeezing more money out of the current iteration for several more years.

Another noteworthy about-face for the attitude that Rockstar seems to have about it’s flagship series is the lack of offline DLC expansions to the main game. For a game that has been out for this long and seen this much success to not have gotten any major offline expansion to the stories of the characters is pretty weird. In fact, Rockstar has gone so far as to officially clarify that they are intentionally focusing on GTA Online because of how well it has exceeded their expectations, and that single-player DLC for the game was neither “possible nor necessary”.

Great news for fans of the online mode, not so great for everyone else. There are many possible reasons for this, and to be fair the fact that the console generation changed right after the initial launch of the game, forcing Rockstar to devote a fair amount of resources to immediately get next-gen versions of the game running, potentially setting other plans back, is worth considering. But at the end of the day what we are seeing here is a focus on microtransactions and online content, which until recent years would never be associated with Grand Theft Auto games this heavily.

Is Rockstar truly changing how they view GTA? Are they no longer interested in supporting single-player experiences with that particular franchise? The suspicions that GTA is headed for an online future don’t seem to be as concrete as some may think, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have merit. It’s hard to imagine any developer turning away all of the money that can be made with microtransactions, which basically have no overhead compared to what they bring in when comparing that to the cost and benefit of adding stories and offline content.

To be sure, we’ll have to wait and see how Grand Theft Auto 6 turns out. Surely some clues as to where Rockstar is headed was in Red Dead Redemption 2, but to be totally sure where Rockstar wants to take GTA, we’ll have to see what they do with it. GTA 6 is coming, it’s just a question of when. If they choose to focus on online content with the next game primarily, surely the essence of what makes those games great will be gone to some degree.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Rockstar, the studio that only ever lives up to its name and seemingly never falls short of busting our expectations has decided to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of GTA: San Andreas with a 10th Anniversary Sale.

So what kind of sale are we looking at? Basically, a shed load of goodies that you probably already own on other platforms, but lets not look a gift horse in the mouth. If you fancy taking a bike ride through the streets of GTA: San Andreas, you can find it on Android, iOS and Amazon supported mobile devices for $3.99, that’s 43 percent off! Vice City will only set you back $2.99 to enjoy its funky neon vibes and GTA III is going for the same $2.99 price tag.

This sale comes hot on the coat tails of the news that Rockstar are releasing an upgraded version of San Andreas on Xbox 360, there are also some upcoming special multiplayer events being hosted on GTA Online.

Grand Theft Auto has been one of gaming’s most recognized franchises. Started way back in 1997, it spawned a series  of controversies, issues, and not to mention a huge profit that was made with these games. For those of us who played any of the GTA games, will have some fond memories, be it certain missions, side quests, trying out a new vehicle, or just causing random chaos.

All of these things carries with them a sense of nostalgia and it does make us want to go back and relive those moments again and again. We take a look at some of the very best moments in the GTA timeline from the original through Grand Theft Auto V.

Note: This list is in random order.

100. 5 stars police chase (GTA 5)

It is something that every player must attempt at least once through their gameplay experience. There is something awesome about the entire police force trying to take you down by any means necessary. After causing considerable chaos and destruction, the Los Santos police department goes all Rambo on you and what ensues is a very high speed, high risk police chase. The video is quite awesome so do watch it all the way.

Rockstar Games have released the 10th anniversary trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and in case you don’t know, this was one of the best games ever released last decade.

I have a special place for it in my heart because it’s the first GTA game I had played and I still remember being blown away by finding out that you can actually drive cars in the game.

The game comes out on mobile devices soon, and considering GTA 3 ran perfectly well on latest handsets, I don’t see why this won’t. It’s also amazing how such games are now available on phones and it kind of shows how far tech has evolved.

The game will be released on iOS and Android devices on December 6. GTA 5 will be released next year, and when you compare its second trailer to the Vice City one, the leap in graphics truly seems astounding.

Check out the trailer below.