I just finished Vice City’s main storyline and the businesses were basically mission unlocks. It’s like paying to do a series of related and scripted side quests in Oblivion. Once the missions were done and that asset started generating revenue, you were done. I liked the idea, but the implementation could have used some tinkering.
San Andreas had a similar asset system, but most of them you had to earned them by doing missions (or side-missions) first (like the turf war assets, or the trucking assets, courier missions, etc).
There were some you bought in San Andreas as well, like Zero’s shop (think that’s his name) and Wang cars.
There’s so much stuff in San Andreas, it’s kind of mind boggling. I spent 46 hours playing San Andreas so far (went through all the story missions). I’ve only got a few assets of those possible unlocked. I’ve only done one of the collection (packages) missions. I’m still discovering stuff (like you can use the airports to warp between towns). In many ways, there’s more variety than other open world games like Oblivion.
From Tom’s review, it seems like they’ve accomplished something similar with GTAIV, but just condensed it into the social game and Liberty City. I’d love them to build on that and open up a state like they did in San Andreas and bring back a lot of the side missions and deepen the asset system. I think the key would be to give the player the option to get more involved (like business mini-games and choices) if they want, but don’t require them to beyond what’s required for the story.
Edit: Oh and anyone who liked Vice City, should check out a documentary called Cocaine Cowboys. It’s all about that era in Miami. The presentation of the documentary isn’t all that slick, but the story is interesting enough to warrant a watch.
Perhaps I don’t have the right mindset, but to me being rich is interesting because of the power it gives you to accomplish things. In Vice City, once you’ve finished an asset’s missions, it’s a few mild perks and a regenerating source of something useless.
A much better simulation of the rise to riches (set in basically the same setting as Vice City) can be found in the Scarface game. There, essentially the entire game revolves around amassing greater and greater wealth. Your money lets you:
-buy any of several dozen customized, armored vehicles, as well as a limo (and a seaplane, later) that offers instant transportation.
-hire henchmen, most prominently including a driver that will bring those customized vehicles to you at a moment’s notice, then stick around to help shoot people, but also including an enforcer, an assassin, a weapons dealer, and so on. Some of these henchmen can be switched to to do dirty work you don’t want to do yourself (hey, you’re rich, you shouldn’t have to).
-buy and upgrade an arsenal of weaponry that can be purchased by phone and accessed from the trunk of any of your fleet of cars.
-buy a variety of status items and decorations that can be placed in your mansion and also contribute to your reputation, which latter is one of the primary tracks of your progress in the game (everything else you buy also does this).
-buy assets that give global bonuses for huge sums of money. Things like record companies and law firms.
-And, of course, buy drugs, drug distribution fronts, security at the fronts, and other similarly nuts-and-bolts tools of the primary gameplay.
I might be leaving something out, even. There is a constant incentive to earn earn earn, and you keep feeling more and more rich and powerful. The game has issues in other areas, mind you.
Scarface did do it incredible well, particularly in that as you advance your business, your role in the business changes dramatically, from seller, to distributor to importer.
I get the impression that a sizeable chunk of gamers looked at it like a cheap knock-off. Damn shame.
I just avoided it because Crackdown and others hadn’t yet convinced me that I could enjoy the sandbox style game again. What’s the definitive version of Scarface? I’d rather get it for the Wii that I just bought simply because I hate my wireless PS2 controller for anything other than RPGs, but Okami revealed what a dangerous proposition the wii port can be, although I guess if it works on the 360 that’d be just as good.
Totally understandable, and with that sort of marketing in mind their perception as a cheap knock-off was probably justified.
And while it does have some cheesy pandering elements, I’d say that the overall game was more mature than Saint’s Row. The ‘balls meter’ actually works well in the game, as an action modifier.
Lizard_King, Scarface is actually one of the games I reference (with Godfather) when talking about mechanically successful games on the Wii. I haven’t played the other versions, but I was very happy with the Wii version, so I’d recommend it. It’s also available on PC.
Now, don’t expect a serious economic simulator out of it, or anything, but as malkav opined it has the best economics of all the sandbox games I’ve played. Even when you get up to the height of your empire, you’ll never have a ton of money with nothing to buy.
Well, I was going to wait for SR2 to get another one of these types of games, but that empire building has me intrigued. I probably wrote this off and Godfather based on the movie tie in thing as well. How would you compare the control quality to RE4, which is my gold standard for Wii ports?
I CAN vouch for Godfather, I thought it was generally great, like Mafia in some ways but way mroe sandboxy. I should finish it one day. Very visceral hand to hand.
I tried The Godfather, but my character was beaten to death before he could get out of the starting doorway. The keyboard just doesn’t work for melee combat, especially if you don’t get any sort of tutorial beforehand.
RE4:Wii is probably the best game I’ll play this year on that platform, just as RE4:ps2 was among my top games for that platform. Thanks for the recommendation, and I might even look into Godfather (thanks Moore) even though Mafia gave me a pretty good idea of what can go wrong with such a period piece for me.
Taking over businesses in Godfather is a blast, and there’s plenty available, though you don’t have to take every single one to beat the game. I just happen to enjoy territorialism in sandboxes. It, too, does pretty well with the economic incentives, and it also allows for purchasing extra muscle.
Also, I’d nearly forgotten, but it had a pretty good RPG system for a sandbox. Nothing like San Andreas, mind you, you just added points to get special attacks and improve your skills - not like you were gimped from the start. You could go down a more aggressive Sonny path, or a more business-oriented Tom Hagen approach.
It also paid pretty respectful service to the material. Doing a smash and grab with Sonny is memorable.
I have a small complaint on completely different topic within GTA4. Didn’t it bother anyone else that you could play darts, pool, and bowl, but there was all this real estate devoted to a theme park, go carts, and an enclosed entire golf course that you couldn’t really do much at all with? I want an add-on that adds the rest of the mini games… =)
Whats another 10 people on staff for this stuff at this point? =)
So I’m doing the mission early in where you chase the biker boyfriend down on a bike. I’m shooting the crap out of him and he sneezes off every bullet(seemingly). Is this one of those missions where you just have to follow him to whatever rendevouz point the mission scripts? I’ve failed so many times because I can’t get a grasp of this dirt bike handling and spin out/crash/suck at keeping pace. First real mission I’ve been really annoyed by, mostly because of the long drive to restart the chase…and then fail ten seconds after it begins.
I suggest just focusing on driving and then, when on a straight away, fire into him. Otherwise, just follow him to his buddies and kill all of them. Driving is priority 1 for most missions like that, unless you can get a lucky shot.
