36 Games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on Xbox that you should try

A tightly linear crime story set in a 1940s and 50s American city, more interested in Vito's decade than in filling a map with icons — the world is a backdrop for the narrative, not a checklist. The writing and period detail are why people still recommend it. This original SKU is the problem: it is a 32-bit build that crashes and stutters badly on current Windows, and the Definitive Edition exists.

A physics sandbox first and a shooter a distant second. The grapple and parachute let you chain traversal indefinitely, and most of the fun comes from improvising with them rather than from any mission. Expect repetition: the island is enormous but the objectives recycle a handful of templates, and the story is barely present.

The first outing for the grapple-and-parachute traversal the series became known for, though far cruder here — the hook is limited and stunt-jumping between vehicles is the main trick. The island is large and mostly empty, missions repeat a handful of templates, and the driving physics are loose enough that chases become guesswork.

The one that established the template: a 3D open city with radio stations, missions on call and free roaming between them. Historically it matters enormously. It has aged the hardest of the era — no mission checkpoints, no map markers for much of it, a silent protagonist, and shooting that amounts to auto-aim and hoping.

New Bordeaux and its period soundtrack are exceptional, and the story handles race and its era with more seriousness than the genre usually manages. Driving feels heavy and right. The structure undercuts all of it — the same racket-clearing loop repeats across every district, and the mission variety runs out long before the map does.

The entry most fans point to: an open city with genuine variety in activities, co-op through the entire campaign, and a tone that swings between crude comedy and surprisingly dark story beats. The PC port is the problem — it shipped badly and still needs community patches to run properly, which is a real barrier before you start.

Its destruction system is the reason to play it — buildings collapse structurally rather than in scripted pieces, and the sledgehammer makes demolition a genuine tactic. Mars is drab and repetitive as a setting, missions recycle a small set of objectives, and the story is barely there. The physics carry almost the entire game.

The most grounded entry: heavier driving, a euphoria physics system that makes collisions and stumbles feel physical, and a city built for density rather than scale. Combat is serviceable. It is also the slowest — long drives between missions, friends who phone constantly asking for activities, and a tone considerably more sombre than the games around it.

Superpowers replace most of the driving: you sprint faster than cars and glide over buildings, which makes the open world trivial to cross and much more fun to move through. Combat is chaotic rather than precise. It reuses the previous game's city wholesale, and once you have full powers almost nothing offers resistance.

A standalone expansion set in Hell, built around flight: you unlock wings early and the whole map is designed for vertical movement rather than driving. That traversal is the best part. It is very short — a few hours — and reuses the systems and much of the structure of Saints Row IV without adding a real campaign.