I don’t know about all of you, but I’m pretty excited. In just under five days, we will see the release of one of the most highly anticipated “remakes” to ever hit the iOS gaming platform. I’ve been waiting anxiously ever since I heard about Vice City making its way to iDevices, and I’ve been clambering to get my hands on any information regarding Rockstar’s 10th anniversary project.
It has special meaning to me, because Grand Theft Auto Vice City is one of the games I grew up on. I can’t tell you how much time I put into the original version, and I was playing it well after it was released back in 2002. In fact, the only reason I stopped playing it is because I moved from the Playstation platform to an Xbox 360.
I can’t help but be a little apprehensive, though. Rockstar has promised a better experience than the original, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that some things are better left unchanged. The first Vice City captured the hearts of a lot of gamers, myself included, and I am a little afraid that developers will become over-ambitious in releasing it to the “modern crowd.” There have been a lot of highly anticipated games lately that developers downright ruined because they tried to add too much, or they changed too much of the original design.
I’m also greatly concerned about the control scheme. The GTA series has always had complex controls with specific button combinations for driving, shooting, and movement outside of a vehicle. Is it going to be too difficult for developers to convey all of these controls accurately on an iDevice? Or will they end up cutting out some of the more detailed button operations to cut down on the complexity of the control schemes?
The veteran developer released a trailer today, just days before the release of Grand Theft Auto Vice City 10th Anniversary edition, and I was hoping to get some more solid insight into what to expect with the game. Unfortunately though, all the trailer does is give us small cinematic glimpses of the story line, much like we saw with the original trailer for Vice City back in 2002.
The trailer hasn’t really shown what we can expect in terms of a control scheme. I suppose you could always use a Bluetooth controller in this situation and would definitely recommend it. This game was meant to be played with a physical controller, not a touchscreen one. Still, it will be interesting to see how intuitive the controls on the iDevice version are once the title releases this Wednesday (December 5th).
Photo Credit: Rockstar Games
