vice city is still the gold standard for open worlds and gamesradar just made me want gta 6 even more

Saw that GamesRadar piece about Vice City still being a role model for open world games over 20 years later. It's one of those takes that feels obvious but still hits different when you read it now, especially with GTA 6 right around the corner and Leonida basically being a modern Vice City.

I remember playing Vice City on PS2 back in the day and it just had this vibe nothing else touched. The neon, the music, the way the map felt alive even though it was tiny by today's standards. You could cruise Ocean Drive at sunset with some 80s synth blasting and it didn't matter that the draw distance was garbage. It was the mood that sold it.

The article talks about how open world games still look to Vice City for that sense of place, and I get it. A lot of modern maps are technically huge but feel like a checklist of icons. Vice City made you want to just exist in it. Drive around, find a random mansion, jump a ramp into the water. No collectible pressure, just freedom.

With GTA 6 going back to Leonida, Rockstar has to nail that same energy but on a much bigger scale. The Extended Look already showed some of that neon soaked Vice City atmosphere, and I'm hoping they lean into it hard. Not just recreate the map but recapture why we loved it.

This piece is a good reminder that bigger isn't always better. If GTA 6 gives me that same feeling of cruising through Vice City with the radio up and no particular place to go, they've won. I'm not worried though. Rockstar knows what made that game special, and they've had 20 years to think about it.

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Source: GamesRadar+ · Curated content.