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Headhunter: forget about amnesia

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When Headhunter came out on the Dreamcast, it was when the format was dying and games were being reduced to silly prices in HMV. This was good news for my collection and my wallet, with many £5 games filling up my shelves. It was not good for the games themselves, since I had such an abundance of choice that I would not commit more than an hour or so to anything in particular. Even the more expensive games, like Headhunter, which I bought through some misguided platform loyalty, saw little playtime. I remember playing Headhunter on the Dreamcast for a little while, but during one of the early riding sections I get my bike stuck in the scenery and lost a significant amount of progress, and after that I’m not sure I ever returned.

Until now. When I was in York a couple of years ago I found a copy of Headhunter on the PS2 for £3 in an excellent retro games shop, and this makes it a lot easier to play through my TV, given the backwards compatibility of my PS3. Of course, that got put on the shelf on my return, and has only just resurfaced.

It feels limited by modern standards, of course. The opening escape, and then the VR section, are well structured, but they are very linear. The story is very hackneyed, with the old staple plot of amnesia explaining why you, as one of the world’s top headhunters, need to be told how to crouch behind a crate. I obtained a motorbike, on loan, and was told I had to travel somewhere in order to get my licence. A licence for headhunting? Not sure, but I obtained my C licence after a few tries through the VR simulator, and then I took the opportunity to explore the city a little. You can’t go far, but there is some freedom, and in the days before GTA III this felt amazing.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: packages, police, and pootling

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Back in April, when I completed Vice City, I posited that I might try playing San Andreas in “a few months”. It has now been a few months, and I’m not playing it. I have a bit of a mental blocker on that game, partially around the setting, but also because I remember when it was released that there were countless reviews evangelising the detail they’d gone into, with you needing to regularly work out to keep fit, and eat healthily, and so on. It sounded too involved, and even if that’s not the case, it’s prevented me from playing it.

And so I went back to Vice City, to finish off side missions and collect stuff.

My first objective was to collect the hidden packages. Throughout playing the game, I’d found just over fifty of them, but the other forty were evidently too well hidden. I used a map guide to travel around the city and find them, and eventually I came to the end of the list … and still only had 95. I had to retrace my steps, eventually realising that I mist have failed to save at some point after collecting packages in the airport, because there were five of them still sitting there.

Collecting all the packages unlocked a military helicopter at the South end of the first island, so I spent some time flying around and blowing stuff up, including the annoying planes carrying banners over the city. I got a nice big wanted level, which I then got rid of by landing on the roof of my mansion and running in to change my clothes.

I then bought the car showroom, and found all the cars required by its clients, including the ice cream truck and pizza delivery bike. The biggest issue I had on this was with the games in Little Haiti, who all hate me for some reason and blew up two of their gang cars when I tried to steal them.

Sometimes it’s fun to just watch other people’s chaos. Security guards and gang members like to shoot at each other, and then when the ambulance turns up the paramedics can get caught in the crossfire.

And then I went to the Malibu Club and tried to complete the missions there. I got stuck here before – there’s a mission where you have to break someone out of the police station, and I was being shot to pieces as soon as I entered. It’s a lot easier if you go in without a gun in your hand, and then run straight into the locket room to get a police uniform on. Once you open the cells, they still try to kill you – but I had a fast car parked outside, and a route to a pay and spray planned, so I managed to finish that … only to get stuck on another mission where you have to race someone through the city, with the police trying to ram you (and not him) off the road.

I’m nearly done with this now.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: completed!

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It turns out that pootling around finishing up side missions was actually the right thing to do. I started by finishing up the taxi and ice cream van missions, unlocking the regular payments from them, then I headed for the golf club to see if there was anything more to do there. It turns out that there wasn’t, but I jumped in a boat and found myself on Prawn Island where there was a film studio in need of some tender care. Tender care through the production of tender movies, apparently, but fortunately Tommy Vercetti isn’t the sort of man to be directly involved in those – there’s no hot coffee here – and the missions associated with the film studio were altogether more entertaining and varied.

Two in particular stood out. First, I had to pilot a plane around the city, dropping leaflets advertising the new film along set routes. Second, I had to take a motorbike up in a lift and jump out an office block window in order to land on another building’s roof, and then follow a path of jumps and ramps around until I finally got to a spotlight – which I could again use to advertise. Why I couldn’t just fly there in a helicopter, I’ll never know, particularly because a later mission at the studio had me using one to follow someone to take blackmail photos.

I raised a lot of money through these side missions, so I went to buy the Malibu Club, and completed the missions there as well. Finishing those, and unlocking the earning potential of the venue, suddenly gave me a new marker on the map, next to the Vercetti mansion. So, naturally, I didn’t go there.

It’s always fun to set cars on fire, and then set the fire engine on fire when it comes to help. Fire.

I went and did some other stuff instead. I searched around for hidden packages, to limited success. I delivered pizzas, I robbed some stores, I managed to complete a course over the rooftops using a dirtbike, I went to the shooting range. And then I decided to try to finish the game.

It took me many attempts. The last mission sees you being betrayed by a good friend and meeting the city’s main crime lord, with many enemies attacking and trying to ambush you. The shotgun came in very useful as I chased Lance up the corridors to the roof. The mafia were trying to steal cash from the safe every time I left it, so my foray up to the roof was kept as brief as possible, although I had to progress slowly to avoid being shot by a seemingly endless supply of enemies. At last I killed Lance, after sniping him from a higher platform, and then returned to meet Sonny and kill him as well. Mr Extravagant Lawyer found me sitting on the stairs, and we walked out the front door to the sounds of the 80s.

On to San Andreas next? Maybe. I’ve never played it; I own it for Xbox and PS2 and Xbox 360 and Xbox One and PS4 and PC, but the setting has always put me off a bit. I like the mafia setting of III, and I like the 80s Miami setting of Vice City, but 90s rap culture has never captured my imagination. Maybe I’ll try it in a few months.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: the second island

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I’ve never completed Vice City, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because some of the later missions have a huge difficulty spike, or maybe it’s because the mission structures aren’t quite as well defined as in GTA3. More than once I’ve found myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, with a main story missions appearing at first as a side quest. Maybe it’s because Vice City is such a fun place to drive around, watching people interacting with each other and the gangs, chasing people who are being pursued by the police and getting a “good citizen bonus” for knocking them down (and then more and more bonuses for kicking them again and again). There’s more to do here than in Liberty City, with businesses to buy and shops to rob and a golf course to tear around in a buggy.

But, similar to when I played GTA3, over the past couple of years I’ve been picking at missions from time to time, and I’m not at a position where I think the end of the game is nigh. Tommy Vercetti owns the mansion in the middle of the map, many of the gangs have been beaten down, and I am left with a single mission marker.

Yet when I go there, there is nothing to start.

I’ve been enjoying the variety of missions, but the instant death in water means I am overly anxious on a boat

I last did a mission in which I had to steal some police uniforms and a car, then go and plant a bomb in the shopping centre. I did that, then ran away very fast, with a five-star wanted level (which I knocked down to two-star by planning an escape route through some police bribe markers). That was all fine, but nothing else opened up. I did get a phone call, but it seemed unrelated to the story.

I am hoping that the game hasn’t bugged out. In the meantime I’m travelling around finishing some of the side missions I hadn’t done before – buying a couple of the properties (not the Malibu Club though, it’s far too expensive), carrying out an assassination contract, and racing around in a fire engine. It’s very pretty.

Just Cause: just about playable

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I have had Just Cause sitting in a variety of places for a while - in the PS2 games box in the loft, in my Steam library on my PC, and on my Xbox 360 shelves - but despite the fact that I've heard it to be great fun and the sequel is an amazing sandbox experience, I've never played it.  Until now.

I decided to play the PS2 version, since my PS3 (which is backwards-compatible) was set up and my 360 wasn't (due to the Wii being plugged in to the component inputs for Luigi's Mansion; yes, it's complicated).  The opening cinematics looked pretty awful, but once I got control of my character I was quite impressed by the scale of the game and its vision.  Parachuting down to the island was a pretty spectacular start, and once I transitioned into running along the beach and stealing a car, I could see that there were clear open-world GTA influences at play.

Unfortunately, the PS2 was a bit underpowered for such a grand vision.  The framerate was, at times, awful - to the extent that I actually had to run away and stand still for the console to catch up.  This was not helped by the controls which were not nearly customisable enough, and felt very imprecise.

That's not to say I didn't have fun.  After a while I was given a grappling hook, with which I could grab onto cars and paraglide behind them.  That was good fun for a while, and useful on a mission where I had to destroy a car and take the place of the now-dead dignitary.  The main issue with the game was a lack of a sense of urgency; you are going to kill a dictator and free the island, sure, but there was little spurring you on to do this, and the game was almost too non-linear with no clear sense of direction.

If I go back to it it would be on the 360, but I may skip to the sequel.