A free Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mod

GTA Vice City Definitive Edition Classic Mod alters the appearance of GTA Vice City using x8 AI-enhanced textures. It also contains an atmosphere package, new effects, and particle re-shades. The mod comes with a set of 80s-style cars.

Some of the atmosphere adjusters can be instantly disabled with the keyboard keypad. This mod offers HD texturing for Grand Theft Auto Vice City, just like GTA San Andreas HD does for San Andreas. It adds vehicles and reskins like the GTA 5 Real Life mod.

Keeping a classic character alive

The protagonist of GTA Vice City is well-loved, and this mod helps keep the character alive for newer players. It doesn’t smooth out the rough edges, but it certainly makes the visuals look better overall. The cars now look like part of the city rather than looking like modeled assets riding along a path.

Lighting and atmosphere has been improved

They improved it with HD textures, but their use of light is where the game really shines. Instead of blanket light and isolated light, the light from bright and dark spots blends more naturally. On its own, this creates far more atmosphere than the base game was able to offer.

Clever tricks and additions

The real strength of this GTA mod comes from the developer’s understanding of lighting, textures, and blending. You can see the difference between a shiny sparkle on a car’s bonnet to the shiny twinkle of glass on the lit lamp posts. New reflection and refraction techniques have been added to this old game.

The best they could do

The textures in this Vice City mod are very well done and applied. Still, they are applied to old models with low polygon counts. As a result, it will never match the quality of modern triple-A games. This is probably the best the game will ever look without a full HD remaster.