Excellent port but why the silly update?
I played this game when it first came out in 2002 and I absolutley adored it. The story was intriguing and able to challenge the complexity of many Hollywood movies. The graphics were excellent for the times and I often had to reduce the resolution in order to be able to complete the more advanced missions. This, of course, is not a problem today as the computers are more advanced, however, it speaks more to the effort the developers put into making the game pretty and worth while. The theme, the 1980s, is also very interesting and the developers really did a great job making the theme fitting with the story line.
Now to the boring parts more specific to the Macintosh port. The port at first was almost flawless, creating support for HD graphics (such as my Macs 1920x1200 screen), and content. However, with the new update, 1.01, they removed a lot of the music because of what can only be described as copyright reasons. So by buying a legal copy of the game, you are not allowed to have all the music, which is a shame. I can only ask why? The other thing is that in the PC version, the developers allowed the player to use its own music in the game by copying the MP3s into a specific folder. Why could not this feature have been transferred and integrated with iTunes? It seems that would be a perfect way to incorporate the specifics of OS X into the game.
I really would like to give the game four stars as opposed to five because of the above stated problems. But since it does not really affect the gameplay as such, and because it would be unfair to the port, I feel the game deserves full score. I really recommend this game to anyone who appreciated the gameplay of the first two top-view games, and the 3D universe of GTA III.
cwolsson about
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City