Released only a year after Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City brings back everything from you loved from III and introduces many new improvements of its own, including a more talkative protagonist, Tommy Vercetti. Join Tommy as he wreaks havoc in a 1980s Miami, Florida setting.
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Runs done on the PC version.
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Console 2:14:23 by Tim Symanczyk, done in 21 segments.
File details: 807 MB / 1.49 GB total size (normal / high quality), requires DivX codec.
Author's comments:
Part 1 - One really annoying thing you'll see throughout the game is a pink dot on the radar marking the hotel. Right at the start of the game it asks you to enter the pink marker at the hotel, which I don't bother doing so it never goes away. Also, Police Cars in this game SUCK. In GTA3 they were pretty good, but not here. They're still worth stealing because of the 5 Shotgun shells, but they handle terribly. Finally, you'll notice that I ignore my phone a lot - stopping the ringing by getting into and out of a car. Any phone call that I take is necessary to proceed in the game, the others are total wastes of time. Note that the game won't let you activate any new missions, buy property, or save the game while the phone is ringing.
Part 2 - When returning to Diaz's after "The Chase", there's usually a decent Motorcycle at a fixed location along the route that was not there this time. So I had to improvise a little and steal a fast car. That is easily the worst part of my entire run, I don't know if my controller was glitching, or the game was just being a pain - but for whatever reason it just wouldn't let me go from the Moped into the Sports car. Doesn't cost much time, it just looks really stupid. But "Phnom Penh '86" went exceptionally well, so I kept the segment anyways. One little Easter Egg to watch for is during the Helicopter ride before the actual gun battle, you can see a man in converalls jumping off the bridge.
Part 3 - Using the Helicopter for these two missions is just a phenomenal idea by NTG. Makes them so quick to do. Until doing this segment, I had never really used any Helicopters when playing Vice City before - so you'll notice my flying in this segment is a little shaky.
That was also pretty much the last segment where I do multiple missions. Up until now, it would be hard to figure out a way to do more saves without spending a significant amount of time reaching a save point. But from here on in, most every place you have to go anyways to activate a mission has a save point right there. I know doing one mission per segment makes for a much less "Cool" video - but it's the best way to get the fastest possible time.
Part 4 - Using grenades to blow out the windows for "Shakedown" saves a lot of time over a machine gun. Plus the four grenades that I'm left with aftwards come in very handy later on.
Part 5 - Activating the Strip club seems very simple - but this one segment took a lot of thought and experimentation to pull off. The simple strategy of continually re-entering the room cuts the amount of time down by about half. But the big problem was that I've already got so many phone calls saved up from skipping them that, given the chance, it'll ring almost non-stop! That's the reason I start the segment by shooting the cop. The phone will NEVER ring as long as you've got a wanted level. Without that little addition at the beginning, the phone ringing would've kept me from being able to activate the dancer-sequence in the back more than three or four times in a row.
Part 6 - Another great idea straight from NTG. By continually beating your own record at Cone Crazy, you can get all the money you need to finish the game in just a few minutes! Keep in mind that it's not enough to just do the course over and over again - you must always break your old record. Thats why I keep pausing before grabbing the last marker in the early runs.
Part 7 - Returning to the helicopter after "Bar Brawl" my driving is bit confused. This is because I was totally disoriented having killed the second biker so quickly, and having the Helicopter end up in front of me rather than behind. Again, this doesn't cost much time, it just looks stupid.
Part 8 - The reason I kill the first cop I see (rather than lead him into the garage) is because you need to lure in two cops. Having just one is worthless. The automatic 2-Star wanted level you get from killing the cop is much more valuable than just the single cop. The reason I stop to kill the one cop when leaving the Mall was to prevent him from pulling us out of the Helicopter during takeoff.
Part 9 - The call from Cortez is worthless per say since you never do that mission - but until you take it, you won't be able to take other phone calls that are necessary.
Parts 10 to 14 - The Rancher, LandStalker, Esparanto, and Blista Compact will all (eventually) spawn on the road directly in front of Sunshine Autos. The Idaho and Stallion, however, NEVER will (unless you leave the area first). So for those you need to venture out further away. In Part 14, you can see that if you have a long phone call you need to burn, you can take it overtop the "Asset Activated" animation sequence to save some time.
Part 15 - Kaufman Cabs don't drive very well at all - and you don't need to be in one to do "Friendly Rivalry" anyhow. Getting into and out of the Kaufman Cab twice, though, is another amazing idea from NTG - doing so actually gives you 300 rounds of SMG ammo for free. Go ahead and check all the FAQs over at GameFAQs - NONE of them list that little tidbit. How he figured that one out, I'll never know. Awesome!
Part 16 - Nothing interesting to say.
Part 17 - I have absolutely no idea why the Ice Cream truck just "appears" at the start of this segment. When loading the game, it would never just "be there" - it would always materialize out of thin air a couple seconds later. Supposedly (according to some FAQs) you're never even supposed to save your game at the Ice Cream place anyways for fear of glitching your game. I didnt have a problem, but maybe that has something to do with it?
Part 18 - The only way I could get the boat to spawn for this mission is to briefly leave the Boatyard, just barely crossing the threshold onto the sidewalk. Also, it looks strange that the weather suddenly goes from stormy to calm when "Checkpoint Charlie" starts - but the weather is tied to the mission itself. There are four levels to "Checkpoint Charlie", each with a goal time of 5 seconds less than the previous, and each with specific weather conditions. It just so happens that the first one has clear weather, and it's the only one you need to do to activate the asset. During the phone call at the end, I have no idea why Tommy keeps craning his neck back.
Part 19 - My original plan was to use the Police Helicopter to do both Print Works missions - but turns out that it's actually faster to take the offered cab and then drive a car for the first one. Even so, it's still mildly useful to have. It probably didn't save more than a few seconds - but more importantly, it didnt cost any time.
Part 20 - After having all the FAQs say how hard this mission is, I was surprised to figure out this simple strategy. As long as you're fast enough, it's very repeatable. The key is to have a car waiting for you right there before you activate the mission.
Part 21 - This is easily the most complex mission in the game, and I'm proud of my strategy here. It's about as simple as it can possibly get. The only hard part is at the end when you're in a standoff with Sonny. Maybe two thirds of the time he'll pull off a miracle headshot with his Ruger and blow you away before you can get the first rocket off. Very annoying, and the main reason I chose to save between "Cap the Collectors" and "Keep your Friends Close".
That's all - hope you enjoyed the run!
- Tim "twoton" Symanczyk (twotontim АТ gmail DOT com)
PC 100% 9:00 by Daniel Burns, done in 23 segments.
File details: 822 MB / 2.30 GB / 6.66 GB total size (low / normal / high quality), requires DivX codec or VLC player.
Author's comments:
The bibliography isn't very big, working from first principles is far more fun. Still I can't not mention the site http://www.astonvilla.dk/GTAVC100 for Christian Jahnsen's extremely helpful maps. They got a hell of a lotta use...
I've always enjoyed Vice City more than GTAIII, nice sunny vibe etcetera, so I attacked the daunting 100% task with great enthusiasm and completed it only a little over a month after I did its predecessor. It has almost twice as many rampages and unique jumps and more extra challenges, so since I'm the sort of person who gains more enjoyment out of planning than actually attempting a run I was really pushed to my limits here, but I'm sure that my obsessive optimisations of both of these will be very apparent.
I tried to improve on my GTA running in every way, and with hindsight my previous run could be considered a warm-up to this. Being comfortable with the controls from the very beginning made a nice change (with the addition of bikes and the unwanted ability to jump out of moving cars leading to many hilarious situations...). The game has more stuff to do in a more compact area than no. III (mainly due to assets), so doing everything without jumping around too much was the main goal. Obviously not everything can be accounted for right from the start (and a practice run wouldn't help too much with the bulk of it) so the best I could do was chip away at it in a state of heightened common sense and make a million contingency plans for the countless times things didn't go my way. In the end it fit together more than I could have hoped for.
There's a lot of side-missiony stuff that can't be done during your run-of-the-mill missions, mostly rampages and rc races, and most unique jumps that require a speedier vehicle. So while I tried to do as much as I could when I was passing through anyway, there were occasions for systematically traversing the city and mopping up all the little things. I tried not to overdo this freedom; it would be tempting just to go out and do everything right at the start/end and not have to worry about tasks overlapping and such. Instead I planned it around instances when I'm left stranded in areas devoid of much else to do, preferably with a nice bike, and worked my way over to the next mission as efficiently as possible. This is harder to put into words than I thought it'd be, can I just say it's all rather complicated and leave it there? Good. Onto the segment comments!
Once again, percentages and stuff done in each segment is noted cumulatively so everything is accounted for and you can see how it comes together over time (if you want to). I wasn't sure how to categorise some stuff, almost everything appears to be piled into one value on the stats screen, so I've differentiated between certain things.
M=Missions A=Assassination Contracts CC=Chopper Checkpoints SR=Street Races SA=Sunshine Autos Vehicles RC=Remote Control Races P=Packages R=Rampages UJ=Unique Jumps SH=Store Hold-ups Pr=Properties (not asset properties)
The armour next to the package is very useful, but just that little jog can cause your car to disappear. Ouch... At the hotel I get out rather than parking on the marker for a couple of reasons; the car doesn't disappear and it's faster than the nearby Oceanic (and it has it's door open and is facing the right way), and by running a certain way past the marker and through the hotel it skips two cinematics.
Chainsaw rampage is easy (speed is all down to chance though). Katana rampage 'looks' easy, but I got extremely lucky by having a policeman to stab. For some reason a wanted level stops me from getting shot to shreds at close range as happens all other times. Still the method for stabbing without wasting loads of time with pointless animations is tricky to do, but I got a lot of practice...
A few 'bike only' jumps then (I could barely make the first jump with a fast car and I've never made the third one). 'Cone Crazy' is fairly inconsequential. I'm so fortunate that police don't seem to interfere with the molotov rampage, sheesh. Everything else is obvious, except when changing clothes I park a little bit away so the car doesn't disappear. Ooo, almost crashed on the way to the docks too, I'm usually glued to the floor over that bump...
Since the unique jump was planned into this I had to restart until I found a fast car while on the moped. It's a good habit anyway. I got lucky this time (and there's still the paramedic nightmare coming up) so I let the slip-up outside ammunation slide. You can see how I always try to have something to do while the phone conversations are on.
I debated with myself for a while about when to do the Paramedic mission since nothing really forces you to go to the hospital for a while, so I just decided to do it as soon as reasonably possible for the infinite sprint reward. I won't say anything about the mission itself.
It took me quite a while to realise 'Jury Fury' could be done without injuring the juror just by shooting the car, and it gives me enough time to get back behind the wheel for a free 180 spin.
Cut to the robberies: having two stars is never much of a problem at any point so I treat robberies like any other collectable for the most part. However the police can get in the way so it's faster to just run round those buildings to the packages/rampages.
PCJ Playground! I recall it being much much harder, but there isn't that much to it really. Only one almost unavoidable crash which is brilliant, I avoided all the other unavoidable crashes. Then back to the roof of the mall for a rampage, since it's impossible to do it when I was last up there for the jumps. The jump off the roof was awesome... Other than that... coulda used the phonecall to get the package by the savepoint instead of getting squashed by stationary bikes, but I'd already gotten it because even I make mistakes with my planning!
I restarted until the car I grab was a sports car, just like a good speedy person. The pizza boy is killed pretty much as close to Cortez as he can get which was very nice. Another planning oversight is when I arrive at the apartment, chainsaw in hand, and completely miss the package! It costs about 10 seconds much later on, meh...
The drive-by rampage is done while I still have a car, hooray for having one left to go and suddenly getting mauled by cop cars. And hooray for pointlessly jumping out of moving cars, the ease with which you can do it accidentally is my biggest gripe about the game.
The 'Four Iron' thing is a bit obvious but a nice trick all the same. 'Demolition Man' is hard, but it went well so enjoy it! And firefighter is cake, though I think I got lost once... it's hard to tell...
I'm the master at shooting out the tire on the bike I try to ride after 'Mall Shootout', feel the power! 'Guardian Angels' can't really go faster, and the bike chase was incredibly good. Screwed up one of the unique jumps but it just means I take a different and very slightly slower route. The wall after the package hates me ='(
The prerogative on getting the Cheetah during 'The Chase' really pays off, and the closer you drive to the baddies (respectively) the faster they go, so the walls around the north-point mall can be used for cover.
Now's as good as any time to do some rc racing, it's easy to screw up due to lack of attention/boredom... and the following robberies entail slightly more risk... I really don't care for the pizza boy stuff, went well though (push them pizzas!). Then the three missions were tagged on the end because the only hard part is getting the package in the hole during 'Pling Plong '89'.
I start running through the status screen at the end from this segment on after it was suggested that it might help avoid missing something or having a repeat of my GTAIII 95% incident.
'Sir, Yes Sir!' is a good means of getting stuck into the Western island, it's surprisingly easy too. Egh, stupid shotgun. Hehe, he runs funny. From now on I only need to venture to the east to tie off loose ends which are mainly missions. For 'Two Bit Hit' I shoot the target from a distance to stop him driving away, then just throw myself into the middle of the bloodthirsty Haitians anyway. The Cheetah blows up if you try to get back in it, but the cornering on the Hearst is great, and it lasts just long enough.
For the drive-by rampage having a decent bike is useful, but I was very lucky not to get busted at one point. Waiting through phone-calls is no fun though, could've skipped it but it was a reflex!
Choppers! I use them whenever possible for obvious reasons, but they only speed up the collection of the more out of the way packages. Landing on the buildings is really hard (the second one is for the package I missed in segment 4), and so I wasn't too put off by Tommy's amusing trip/bath.
Lance just loves to die from the merest stray bullet during 'Death Row', but I only kill the absolutely necessary enemies. The hardest part of the segment is a toss up between landing the helicopter in the streets and doing 'Stunt Boat Challenge' with 2 stars; but the boating went extremely well and the police hardly bothered me. Oh, docking at the !!! jetty has its share of problems.
'Juju Scramble' is almost entirely on foot, and it's by far the fastest way to do it unless you're really lucky with the cops. Still got run over, no biggie. On the other hand, 'Bombs Away' brought me close to tears before I worked out how to fly the blasted plane (thankfully frustration is rewarded with an explosion for this mission), but that's the quickest I've ever done it. The van won't move afterwards though so I grab my Voodoo once more.
For 'Rub Out, Lance catches up when you enter the mansion so I kill a few guys to stop my partner getting his ass too shot up, while I get a package since I'm in the vicinity. Diaz died before he entered his office, hells yeah!
The car is faster than the helicopter here because it's more accessible and quicker to enter/exit, and I don't have far to go in an almost straight line. I'm happy with my 'Shakedown' route; note that there are certain windows I can't shoot before I've held-up the clerk or else he'll be cowering in fear and it won't work (did that rhyme? meh...).
Rocket rampage was EXCELLENT, plenty of gang members in multiple tightly knit groups pretty much all on the top floor. Not much to say about the rc race, it doesn't feel right if there isn't at least one incredibly flukey recovery in there. The rest of this northerly area can be done with little trouble as long as you hide behind a wall and laugh at the stupid a.i., desperately praying that enough gang members spawn amidst the police. The colt is so much better on the console versions...
I received a reasonable amount of 'negative feedback' (admittedly from one person) for buying a property then not saving, but there's a fast four-seater vehicle RIGHT THERE! and the following mission isn't hard. I swear I saved time by not saving then, and forgive me if I don't think the site should be called 'Seemingly-sensible Demos Archive' (sorry). 'Recruitment Drive' itself went very well, I've never managed to destroy the car at the first opportunity though, your own car gets in the way and if you park it elsewhere it disappears and even then there just isn't quite enough time.
A little run discrepancy here, but I hear it's hardly noticeable. I accidentally saved over my slot (walked over the save point during the fade-in and my fingers did the rest), and I was not in the mood for re-doing the last segment when it had gone so well. So I saved another 3 times to put the timer roughly where it was before. The only changes (besides the 10 or so seconds lost) are:
1) phonecall starts immediately after loading. This doesn't affect my time since if I hadn't messed up I could've run to the mission marker before the ringing started and taken the call elsewhere.
2) the Hyman Arena is in a different order (since the challenges change every 24 hours), which actually puts me at a disadvantage later on. So basically, I gained absolutely nothing from this and lost some time overall, it isn't any form of cheating.
After recording this attempt I tried again many times because it's a bit rough in places, but I couldn't get close to this one so it'll have to do. 'Dildo Dodo' never got boring at the start of the segment, the Skimmer is great! And I actually managed to fail 'Dirty Lickin's' a few times, how depressing (then there was that time I shot all the Haitians by mistake, oh dear). After getting the V.I.P. in 'V.I.P.' I could have gotten a faster car but I doubt the time it takes to switch vehicles would be worth it.
I found a Sunshine Autos' car before I'd even set off from the airport which is very nice. The following rampage has to be done in a certain way to stop the car going away (which I need for the next mission, decent 4-seaters tend to be rarer around the cafe). I then park it where I do to stop it disappearing while I initiate the mission. My shooting isn't that great in 'Cannon Fodder', but passable. I thin the crowd around the van because I had about a 90% chance of being thrown out of it if I didn't. Even then if too many tires are popped there's not a hope in hell of driving back to the cafe in one piece.
Another showroom car, yay blind luck! The latter stage of 'Naval Engagement' is one problem with the segment; I got to the cafe with 4 stars in a Landstalker for the love of exasperation, and then it goes and disappears! (I need it for the showroom by the way). 'Trojan Voodoo' had some wholly unnecessary shooting, another significant infraction in my book... all in all, not my best work.
The segment starts at the Hyman Condo since the time is just right for the arena (set in-game times and speedruns do not mix! But I think I did alright organising my arena visits). Now this bit is H A R D - and I spent more time on this than anything else. Simply put, I think this is the best 'Dirt Ring' anyone has ever done; no bails, and only screwed up two obstacles once each. Still at some points I panicked and forgot what to do, I'd love to do a sub-3 minute but I'm more than happy with my 3:03, considering my initial attempts were around the 15 minute mark.
Obviously after that I don't want to put myself in too much risk, but 'Martha's Mug Shot' is extremely easy with a little graphical exploitation. Candy moves at a fixed pace so I don't lose time getting a package, and I can't go and do anything else when following the limo because flying too far away fails the mission.
The bike makes getting the package and jump much easier so I left them till now. 'G-spotlight', here we go! It simply isn't a speedrun unless it's done with no crashes, and there are lots of little nuances with lots of the jumps to prevent falling off (and all the while the bike takes damage, joy). It required a lot of practice so enjoy this great mission!
Doing that unlocks the Sparrow for the 'chopper checkpoint' so I may as well get it over with. Some tricky navigation but I basically learnt where every pole / lamppost / invisible bit of building were so it was virtually flawless. I run to the rampage because I found that flying straight there somehow made the phonecall start earlier, so I would've been left standing around otherwise. Then I lucked out with a reasonably fast car, which helps a lot with 'Love Juice'. The imba seal actually crashed the bike himself, hehehe. The long drive on 2 wheels with 2 stars is really not easy, I'm astounded that I didn't crash.
Didn't mean to shoot the car at the end of 'Psycho Killer', but it isn't too bad (I didn't die), especially since I found one of the harder to find cars for the showroom on my way south. And why am I going south you ask? I don't have the firepower to do (Mitch's) biker gang's second mission, so instead I decided to start the Malibu missions as I'll be forced back to the north-west during 'The Shootist'. And the most efficient way there? Boatyard! Namely 'Checkpoint Charley', which many consider to be one of the hardest missions in the game. It takes a complete idiot to do it in the latter stages of a pretty hard segment, to which I have no excuse, but it isn't that hard if you take it slowly over those jumps (but not too slowly...).
The second chopper charley checkpoint challenge is much easier than the other one, nuff said. I don't do anything else yet because otherwise I wouldn't have enough money to buy The Malibu Club in the next segment (a 100% run with money issues, jesus...)
Wow! I've never found a decent car that quickly before. It really helped with 'Waste The Wife' (by the way, she ONLY takes damage by you ramming her (and guns aren't allowed)). My poor Sabre had just enough juice to make that jump, usually I'd have to find another car before doing that so I'm really happy with how much things worked in my favour here.
'No Escape?'; it's more than possible to do it without getting the cop uniform, but I always had health issues later on if I let myself get shot, and I found it lessens the number of police outside which means I probably won't get busted (as opposed to almost definitely ending up busted). Cam Jones has a horrible habit of getting stuck on the way out so I need to slow down a bit to manoeuvre him around the building.
After that I drop by the Vercetti estate, now with a minigun waiting for me from having 60 packages, which is what I need for the biker mission I mentioned. 'Bar Brawl' is simple, but I can't help complicating it with a fairly dodgy unique jump, hilarious stuff. Getting the two bike riders can be tricky but they both landed infront of my wheels so it's no problem. Don't know what the weather thinks it's doing though, does Tommy ever get the feeling that the entire world revolves around him?
Some of the following unique jumps have some frustrating issues with registering it; the third one for example, if you're lucky enough to hit the stairs without crashing into a car stopped at the lights or the stairs themselves, you need to aim slightly left so as not to hit a tree and screw it all up. They're just a speedrunning nightmare (he should so have been decapitated on one of them too...).
My bike lasted all the way to the shooting range though (I fully expected it to explode after the construction site) so I'm not complaining about that! 'The Shootist' is incredibly easy with a little tactic (the furthest target is worth more points so I go for that obviously). Playing with a mouse helps a bit too. The rounds end when your bullets run out so I fire constantly. I have to re-do it for the fast reload ability, and I get exactly the right score.
It all goes a bit choppy towards the end, but it's only during the phonecall thankfully. After saving my computer crashed so no stats screen for you!
I can't do the arena at this time, so now's a perfect opportunity to blitz through the entire island and get all those pesky unique jumps (and packages and rampages besides). I got quite sick of 'Japanese Boy' I must say. But the chopper checkpoint doesn't fit in anywhere else so I do it now, it's only 2 seconds off my best ever time.
The unique jump just after that... it's just godly. I'd say I managed to stay on my bike after it roughly 2% of the time, and then half the time I couldn't find my bike afterwards or it'd get stuck on a roof while I got thrown to the ground. But it worked for my successful attempt, yayness! After the decent rampage and jump I land next to a pay 'n' spray. I don't use it 'just in case'; it's entirely necessary as you'll see at the end of the segment.
The last two store hold-ups can be done at almost any time, but a bike is easier to get on and off so I do it now. I can't afford the wanted levels though so I shoot them (only works if it's a one-hit kill).
Isn't much to say until the roof of the airport, the bike almost falls off! Which would've sucked... I go where I do for the rocket rampage to get a constant stream of vehicles at the crossroads, which I've found is the only way to do it without jumping off the roof (which cannot happen, not only because the Haitians will horribly rape me if I do). I'm quite conservative firing off the ledge, I'm sure you can imagine attempts which failed because I blew me and my bike off the roof and onto the road (hehe, once the bike landed on a Haitian...).
I'd originally planned to pick-up the package on the plane when I'm here later with a 'copter, but you can't land them on planes!! You can't drive bikes on planes either consistently which leads to my interesting strategy (yes, I've run off with my bike a few times, he really needs to learn how to climb ladders, though it would spoil half the fun). All the jumps went well, the last one is just too cool.
There's something about that rc helicopter, it's just a bitch to control, I tried not to be overly careful though. The rest is just, yeah.
The first of several sheer luck manipulation segments, they were agony to make but if it's faster it needs to be put up with. Cars seem to be loaded into the game from the start and only change when re-loaded or by leaving and returning to the area (which wasn't an option), so getting several ones that I need in the same loading and within a reasonably short space of time of each other just takes patience patience patience you get the picture.
Only put one car in the garage but got most of the sports cars and an Admiral. There's a lengthy period of running around but it really pays off, I didn't come close to this level of luck in any other attempts.
In all of these I only allow myself one run up and down the road before I restart. Obviously they get shorter as they go along since I run out of cars to collect and it requires more luck to find one I need. Landstalkers... they're so stupidly rare! But I found two needed cars in the same place which is lovely. Though it wouldn't have been nice if the Washington had turned out to be a Sentinel or Admiral, I can hardly tell the difference, especially from the front.
Hehe, Landstalker right from the off, that's the game mocking me that is. Get in the freaking comet!... thank you...
If there's no other indication that I'm insane, let this be it. I needed a Sabre and a Virgo, and it took about 50 attempts before I'd ever see either. On top of that I decided to do a full-fledged 20 minuteish segment because I was fed up with the mini-segments, so I simply threw away most of the rare cars by screwing up later on. Turned out okay in the end though!! The crazy people always come out on top!!!
Anyway, I've got a few more errands to run in the eastern island, and just enough street races to give me an excuse to go there. They aren't particularly hard and the Sabre Turbo is quite nice while I wait for my Hotring Racer. The first one didn't go too well though (remember the Virgo, remember the Virgo).
'Cop Land' can be quite messy; firstly I shoot Lance because it knocks him over so he won't follow me inside and get stuck. Luring the two cops into the garage would've been very quick if they hadn't blocked the door. It's quite painful, and eventually I gave in and drove it out myself, avoiding being busted by a hair's breadth. Then they got a bit too close to the heli while I was escaping, so I tried to recover as fast as I could, not much I could do to help that.
Phone was a bit niggly when retrieving the Limo, but then I go out for a race and find the last showroom car! Awesomeness. Shoving all those cars into the garage one after another is quite satisfying. The second race went fine, but then I go and mess it up right at the end by parking too close to the club entrance and end up answering the phone. But the big-time luck parts are over with now, the rest don't allow for such mistakes.
'The Driver', the biggest indication that speedrunning has made me much better at GTA games. I'm sure everyone who's played Vice City has had plenty of trouble with this, and I'm no exception, but when I actually came to speedrunning it (which I'd been dreading to be honest) it was remarkably easier than I'd expected. No special strategies such as ramming the back so he spins, just plain old driving quickly. Just missed 2 minutes though, ah well.
'The Job' is much more fun however! I need to be extra fast or I'll have to sit in the car while Phil yaps on about something. You can run past the guards in the bank but I spend a reasonable amount of time in each place so it isn't too practical. Got spun around by the crazy camera at one point, but I think I offset it slightly by not needing to pick up the health. When the SWAT storm the place they are invulnerable until they're on the ground, and trying to shoot any more than the closest two is a waste of time and health. Apart from that I cross over the road when driving past the bank after being sprayed since the SWAT guys still shoot at me, and a popped tire isn't too nice.
I'm sure there's a more interesting word than 'Distribution' that could've been used for selling drugs, whatever. I drive around the docks because there seem to be far fewer police around there than anywhere else, and I avoided two stars unless I was right next to a pay 'n' spray and thought it'd be faster. For the most part my judgements on when the stars would disappear were good, so it was quick.
Street race? What street race? Eh, stupid Baggage Handler... Yay, 99 Red Balloons. Oh dear, I'm making even less sense than usual.
'Autocide'! was...... good! Apart from my car disappearing and crashing my bike in a completely random way, but I doubt either of those are avoidable. The final target was wonderfully quickly disposed of. Cortez's final mission puts me all the way over in the north so I finish off everything left to do in this area of the city. That basically includes a chopper checkpoint (the easiest), a few jumps, a property, and the godforsaken strip club... online resources had some conflicting views, luckily I did some tests or I might have sat there for twice as long. Just skip ahead exactly five minutes please, if you watch any part of it then your role in humanity is officially forfeit.
That second jump was quite close. 'All Hands On Deck' is rendered irrelevant with a minigun in hand. Thumb twiddlingly good. Then I can really go for my last visit to this island, the Caddies were not in season it seems. At least I threw in a bizarre crashlette to compensate.
While assassinerating, I can't fire until they've spoken. I did a damn good job of driving without all my tires too. As for the missions; race went well. 'Messing With The Man' is just a case of waiting for a heli to come and shooting it till it's done. More tirelessness! Any slow down and I won't make the final unique jump so the segment hangs on that mission.
I get the final property but once again don't save, since I have a bike waiting for me. 'Test Track' was great apart from a rather prolonged tippage, as was the Sanchez equivalent. Then my favourite rampage to finish off.
Some time manipulation is necessary here for the arena, but I should mention that for some reason I sometimes lose control of the mouse after loading. Add that to the fact I have to load multiple times... much frustration. I got to the doors just before they opened which is very rare and a great indication of speed.
The 'Hotring' requires far more luck than it would appear to have, just hoping that as many of the near-crashes as possible don't become actual crashes. Some dramatic moments are ensured, fun to watch as it unfolds even if you're the one playing it...
I had a route all planned out for 'Publicity Tour', then some sodding Taxi pulls up in the middle of my junction and I'm forced into a detour. So it was made up on the fly from there on. As long as I don't lose time getting to the end spot I'm happy! Grabbing the bike at the end was a remarkable stroke of luck, about time!
Some more saving at the start. Then 'Bloodring', which wasn't received too well, but I'd initially let myself continue with the attempt if I made it in 5 markers (about a 10% chance), but here the 6th is immediately after the 5th so I thought it was good enough to continue with. It's impossible to be in complete control during it so I'm sorry if it looks a bit messy.
Stopping for the following package is tricky, I had to basically learn to skid by feel to stop myself careering off the side. For 'Gun Runner', firstly my bike always disappears unfortunately. I take out the first two before they have a chance to respond, then I'm infront of the other two so I can take them out at a safe distance. The 'back-up' aren't much of a threat unless you give them time to get off their bikes, in which case they'll shoot the crap outta you. I take a moped (Faggio) because it's quicker to get on/off and I don't have far to go, plus the Patriot is facing the wrong way and it has a fairly wide turning circle.
'Boomshine Saignon' has the interesting gimmick of delaying all of your button presses by a couple of seconds, so it isn't too hard to compensate for it. If my driving through the rest of the segment isn't that good it's because this mission really messes with my head; takes me ages to snap out of it. The longest race is still to go so while I'm in the area I finish off the Sunshine Autos' vehicles. The Voodoos cause some trouble, it takes some time for the game to catch up with the area you're in and start spawning Voodoos rather than Cuban Hermeses. Lamppost... blegh.
The Vice City Endurance race went well, there are a few moments where slowing down is necessary to stop from bouncing all over the road. As long as it's a sub-4 minute I'm happy. 'Loose Ends' is fun!
After my package spree I grab the Sea Sparrow because I just can't do the rocket rampage from that little wooden structure consistently. It's still a struggle with the mounted-minigun but far easier. However, it disappearing when I went to get the package/rampage was not in the plan. It doesn't take much longer to do it all on foot but walking around those Haitians practically defenceless is scary.
The ice-cream van disappears when it's reloaded, typical. First is, of course, the second machete rampage! I got lots of them walking away from me so it was extremely fast. I dread to think what would've happened if I'd had to cut up the hostile Haitians...
At the start of 'Spilling The Beans' I can usually grab the Cabbie that just dropped me off, not this time though. The heli portion of the mission went brilliantly though; I'm so glad I found a good place to land it without anything getting in the way of the propellers. The alternative I had planned was to bail out onto the North side of the boat and hope that it landed on the ground and the right way up. This way I didn't even lose any armour!
I then save just for the health restoration, I'm not about to throw away my Sea Sparrow. I only have time to get the one package on my way there. I land the heli just up the road from the compound entrance; I had a few practice attempts where it got destroyed and I realised it was because I was standing in front of it while I was getting shot at. Sometimes I get shredded trying to get in, but this went well until I was just about to leave (see how fast my health goes down...). Oh, and I can't go any closer to the courier's Maverick before she gets off or they'll fly away.
I could've gotten package 100 when I was flying around here in segment 21, but I thought I could've gotten it during 'Cabmaggedon' until it turned out to be faster to do 'Vigilante' before that (and I needed all the packages in order to get the Hunter in order to do Vigilante...). Seriously, I changed my plans for the last part of the game about 10 times before I settled on this. Either way I essentially have to fly over the package twice so I don't lose much time if any, just thought I should mention it!
I don't have much choice other than waiting for the phonecall. 'Cap The Collector' goes very well though with two bikes bursting into flame before they reach Sunshine Autos, a delightful rarity. The second one in particular, just wow. Why oh why did the Hunter have to be put in a military base?? I got the damn packages! At least the phonecall gives me time to get in position, it's a fine line between getting away safely and being blown to smithereenos along with MY Hunter. 'Vigilante' went well, some brilliant crashes, that thing can be chucked at anything and it just does a bouncy-ball impression. There's apparently a glitch to do with sticking around the airport (so the criminals are out in the open and drive into the water half the time), but it's never worked for me. I really couldn't have finished it in a less advantageous place though.
The final rampage sometimes doesn't yield enough gang members (possibly because of the 3 stars), which is just annoying after the exhaustive flying. I saved it till now anyway because it gets rid of those stars so landing it on the ground is slightly safer. The last bit of flying encompassed in 'Friendly Rivalry' is usually very easy, but I almost lost it on that first Taxi. It drove up a convenient alley though saving a lot of grief.
Almost there, not much left to do (on paper). 'Cabmaggendon' is fun! CrashCrashcrash. The end went well, getting scraped along the ground is just a bonus.
It didn't make sense to do 'Taxi Driver' any other time. The Zebra Cab is stronger, faster, sturdier and better looking than the others, so enjoy it. What a way to end the game... I got dragged out by Haitians a few times, got my wheels shot or ran over a cop and had to respray a few times too. But I had a decent game plan and tried to avoid driving clear across the city by restarting, but I can't just restart until a passenger wants a location very close by because the time it takes to do that is usually more than the time it takes to drive the extra distance. Went through most of the radio stations too... Ah, you probably don't care. Skip to about 1:30:25 *wink* *wink*
Can you blame me for jumping around a bit? I hadn't actually thought about its practical uses, glad it worked out, heh. 'Keep Your Friends Close'; so easy for the last mission, provided you have a minigun anyway. And that's it! Erm... Happy Easter!
Thanks very much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it, and I hope my comments gave many a valuable insight into the sort of mind that would actually attempt something like this (I think these are my longest ever run comments too). I'm working on San Andreas at the moment (no, not 100%, it's just not going to happen), so look forward to that whenever I get round to it.
If you have anything to ask, my email is ddaburns AT gmail DOT com - please don't make me regret putting it here!
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