Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories - Finale!

Song of the Day

In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins

Progress Report XI

Story Missions Complete: 59/59

FINALLY.

Mission 55; Domo Arigato Domestoboto: We see a very drunk Lance and Diaz having a discussion, it seems Lance has borrowed money from Diaz and will pay him back "with 25% interest or we'll work for you". Lance has a plan to ruin the Mendez Brothers, but before he can tell Vic about it he passes out on the sofa. Vic heads outside and bumps into a man who says that the high-tech gear is ready outside the Mendez Mansion. So, we drive over there and get into the van.

This is one of the more unique mission in VCS, here we get to control the Mendez Brother's own Domestobot (a robot servant that's been mentioned repeatedly during the series, but it makes it's first proper appearance here). It kinda looks like a R.O.B. 

Except a lot more useful.

Our goal is to find the vault where Diego and Armando keep their bonds and destroy it. The Domestobot has five "arm-settings", by pressing the shoulder buttons you can scroll between them. They are: Grabber (for grabbing), Lighter (for FIRE!), Sweeper (for cleaning), a radar detector (for finding the vault) and a dildo (for...err...you know...). The catch to this mission is that Armando will shout orders to you and you have two minutes to complete them. They range from cleaning a specific room's floor, to grabbing him a drink or lighting his cigar. Once you perform a task for him you have a bit of breathing space to try and find the vault. It's rather easy to find, go downstairs, find the store room towards the back of the Mansion, go to the basement and you'll see the vault. After that you have to crack the code, it's the usual "code-breaking mini-game" we've seen in many video games. The code is always the same, 8423, but you have 18 attempts to get it right so it's easy enough. Once you open the vault, change to the lighter and set the bonds on fire. Armando will destroy our robo-buddy, but it's still mission completed!

Pictured: The moment Armando became a true villain. Rest in peace Robo-Buddy.

Mission 55; In The Air Tonight: We return to the hospital where we see Barry, Phil Collins and the transformed Reni. The three have a discussion (which includes Reni suggesting Barry get implants of his own...) before Phil and Barry head off to the arena. We'll be joining them soon, but first we have to drop Reni off at the airport. She fears Diego will always seek to kill her, so she's going back to Europe. Right enough, we do get chased by Mendez's goons. Just drive fast and you should get to the airport unless you're driving a car made of paper. Before she leaves she decides that she no longer wants to film advertisements, she's getting into the adult movie industry....

Until Liberty City Stories, Reni!

Now for the second half of the mission, we gotta drive to the arena where Barry is panicking. It seems the Forelli's are not going to give up trying to kill Phil. Our job this time then is to keep an eye out. Cutscene Vic notices a man on the lighting rig, cutting a cable. The rest of the mission is to prevent them from succeeding from cutting enough cables, or else Phil Collins dies. This is simple though, although you don't have any weapons they die in two punches. While this is happening, the intro to a live version of 'In The Air Tonight' is playing.After a certain amount of goons are killed, we get transported to cutscene-land where we see Phil make his entrance, walking slowing onto the stage whilst singing. After a little while we're back punching Italian gangsters in the face until we see Phil reach his drums and we get treated the rest of the performance.

Afterwards. after some more banter between Phil and Barry, we see the last of our two favourite Englishmen in Vice City. Barry has decided he's going to have to pay Giorgio back, and has lined up a series of gigs for Phil in order to pay it back (much to the chagrin of Phil, who was looking forward to a holiday). After this mission we are able to pay $6,000 to see an uninterrupted version of Phil's concert...but you don't have to pay six thousand bucks. Here it is:

Enjoy.

Mission 57; Light My Pyre - After the awesomeness of Phil Collins' gig, this mission is a bit of a downer. It can also be incredibly frustrating. Louise pages us saying she'll meet us at Lance's place in order to have a "real date" but when we get there only Lance is around. Lance tells us to forget about her, but then Mary-Jo bursts in and says that the Mendez Brothers have kidnapped Louise. Man, girl can't catch a break can she? Lance originally refuses to help, but after some tough words from Vic he reluctantly comes along. When they get outside they are greeted by a car of Mendez's men with an ultimatum, get out of Vice City and Louise will live. To hammer home the point they shoot a rocket at Lance's car, which sends him in a violent rage and he gets on the Biker's Angel to give chase. This leaves us with no vehicle, though there is a PCJ-600 nearby, which I would suggest for this mission.

The idea is that Lance is so pissed off over his car getting blown up that he refuses to acknowledge all the people shooting at him, so it's up to us to protect Lance. The motorcycle is the way to go, just for the ability to shoot forwards while driving it. However, Lance is a stupid idiot and WILL drive into you and WILL drive into your bullets. You have to be careful. He will not help you in anyway.

Pictured: The rare moment when Lance isn't getting in your way...

Just destroy the red dots as they appear on the radar and stay close to Lance. After the third car of goons, it seem they only spawn if Lance reaches a certain amount of distance away from you. If you're unlucky with the police they can really screw you over if you're on the bike. If Lance reaches Prawn Island alive then you've completed the first half of the mission. After the cutscene showing Lance driving right up to the Mendez Mansion, head to the film lot and pick up the armour from behind the building before heading up to the mansion. Don't bother with killing the guards, they can respawn right behind you and take you down with ease. Use Lance's tactic, drive right into the mansion and head to the back door. A normal car would be better for this, just to offer more shelter.

After we head inside we're greeted by Armando Mendez, who claims it is futile to try and save Louise and Lance, they're already dead. And now it's our turn. Armando wields a flamethrower, you get hit just a little and it will wreck your health. There is armour and health pick-ups on the floor, but you also have to deal with Armando's goons. If you have full armour and health, and you have the Equilizer, just stand there shooting him until he dies. It's a bit of a cheaty way out, but it works. Otherwise try to avoid his flamethrower and take a shot or two when he pauses.

 After he dies we go up to the room where Louise and Lance is. Louise says that her and Vic could have had something special, asks us to make sure Mary-Jo looks after her baby before passing away. Lance tells Vic that she wasn't right for him anyway, it is family that matters. Never invite Lance to a funeral.

Mission 58; Over The Top - We visit Ricardo Diaz at his mansion where he informs us that Diego is hiding in a compound in Downtown. To go in from the ground would be suicide, so he suggests the much safer, sane way...go in to Fort Baxter (the Army Base) and steal an attack helicopter. Of course! We'll need help on this on, Diaz suggests Quentin (aka, Lance), but Vic has someone else in mind...Phil Cassidy. We visit Phil at his warehouse, drunk and distraught over the death of Louise. Phil agrees to help, saying Vic will need a decoy in order to get into the base. 

We drive Phil's truck (full of his 'boomshine') to Fort Baxter. There, Phil's plan is to drive the truck into the base (jumping out of the car so he doesn't explode with it), which should act as enough of a distraction to allow Vic to sneak into the base. Once we jump into the base we have to Solid Snake our way to the control building, avoiding guards and spotlights. Luckily this is rather simple to manage, just stay out of eyesight and you should be okay. Once you get to the building you'll have to kill a few hard working soldiers to get to the gate control. After this you have a time limit of three minutes to reach the attack helicopter before they take off with it. Again, simple enough, the soldiers don't give you much hassle. Get to da choppa and fly it over to Diaz's mansion to win.

We get one final pager message from Jerry telling us that it's time to settle things. Thus begins...the final mission.

Mission 59; Last Stand - On Diaz's roof, Vic and Diaz have a discussion, Vic reminds Diaz that this will erase all of his debts, and that he's not doing this for anyone but himself. Diaz is happy enough, he'll basically run the drug game in Vice City once Diego is dead. It's time to finally end this. We fly the attack chopper towards the compound, that seems to only have two floors with glass windows...hmm. We have to kill all the guards on the floors, luckily we have infinite rockets. They die pretty easily...

Once all the guards are dead, a cutscene will play showing a couple of new guards successfully shooting down the Hunter. Vic manages to land on the roof, that has a handy stockpile of AK-47, Rockets and Armour. We're asked to head downstairs, where he have to kill two floors worth of armoured guards. Use the AK/Assault Rifle for this one to keep your distance, though there is more armour pick-ups after each wave. Once the second floor is taken care of, we'll see Diego and he'll run away. A cutscene will also show Martinez arrive on the roof of the building, order the people on the helicopter to take down Vic. This part can be annoying, however I found a good way to kinda cheese it. You have to kill two guards, hide from the helicopter and then attack the helicopter. I've found using the Spas-12 (a fast-firing shotgun) works wonders, on both the guards and the helicopter if you can free aim it right. Once the helicopter is destroyed it's time to head to the roof to end this.

Jerry gets the drop on us, but like all good villains he's gotta taunt Vic first. However, then Diego shows up, also pointing a gun at us. We now have to kill them both. However, GTA has one slight problem with "boss fights"...they really are no different to regular fights except the people you shoot have more health. It's rather anti-climatic to just shoot both Jerry and Diego as they both go down easily enough. After they are dead, Lance will arrive in a helicopter to "help", but it's already over, we've beaten Vice City Stories.

The Vance Brothers rejoice in their victory and agree they need to get out of town and lie low for a while. Lance reveals he's bought 20 kilo's of cocaine to sit on while they lie low, so they can sell it when they need to, but Vic refuses to be brought back into the drugs game. He's going to send money to their sick brother Pete and the two brothers fly off, presumably to lie low (though you can continue to play the game afterwards without the distraction of missions). 

The whole 20 kilo's of coke thing? Well...that's what starts the original Vice City, with Vic dying over it. But that's in two years time, for now we celebrate!

For winning we now get a Hunter attack helicopter to use whenever we want, as well as the "Winner" outfit...

Frankie would be proud...

So...that's it...almost. I still have more empire building to talk about, but that will come in a couple of weeks. Vice City Stories is probably my least favourite of the GTA III era of games, but it's far from terrible. If you have a PSP, or a PS2, and you're a fan of GTA then you could do a lot worse than Vice City Stories.

I'll leave you with a few final GTA stats...

Final Money Amount: $757121

Mission Attempts: 92 (that's 33 failures, for those who hate maths)

Total Playing Time: 14:49

Days Passed In-Game: 54

Empire Sites Owned: 21/30 (will be 30/30 when I write up the final Empire Building part)

People Wasted: 1497 (...yikes)

Cars Exploded: 169

Total Wanted Stars Obtained: 200

Times Arrested: 2

Times Killed: 10

Bullets Fired: 11310

Total Distance Travelled (miles); 337.78

That's it for Vice City Stories for now, next up on the list...SUPER MARIO 64!