Grand Theft Auto VI: Vice City's Glow-Up Can't Hide Rockstar's Old Habits

The Big One Finally Lands

Grand Theft Auto VI arrives with the kind of pressure almost no game can survive. A decade of GTA V dominance, endless leaks, trailer analysis sampai frame-by-frame, and expectations so high they became memes. Somehow, Rockstar mostly clears the bar.

Set in Leonida, Rockstar’s fictional Florida anchored by Vice City, GTA VI is a huge, loud, sweaty open-world crime epic about Lucia and Jason — two lovers, partners, and walking bad decisions caught in a modern Bonnie and Clyde spiral. The setup sounds familiar, but the execution has more bite than expected. This is not just “GTA but prettier.” It is Rockstar taking its strongest open-world muscles and pushing them into a setting that feels constantly watched, recorded, and judged.

Vice City Is The Real Star

The best thing about GTA VI is Leonida itself. Vice City looks absurd. Neon beaches, swamp towns, highways, convenience stores, social-media weirdos, muscle cars, police chases, tourist nonsense — everything feels curated but not sterile. Rockstar’s environmental storytelling is still on another level. You can walk into a gas station, watch a random argument escalate, steal a car, trigger a police response, and somehow end up in a swamp at sunset with an airboat screaming past. Gila detail.

The world feels denser than GTA V without becoming Ubisoft-map exhausting. It is not about icons everywhere. It is about interruption. Strange people, crimes, traffic chaos, viral moments, police pressure, wildlife, weather, and little side stories constantly pull you off your route. That is GTA at its best: you set a plan, then the city ruins it in the funniest way possible.

Lucia Carries More Than The Marketing

Lucia is not a gimmick protagonist. She is easily the most interesting lead Rockstar has written since Arthur Morgan, though in a very different lane. Her story has anger, ambition, and survival instincts without turning her into a superhero. Jason works best as her counterweight: softer, reckless, sometimes pathetic, but believable as someone who would follow her into disaster.

Their chemistry gives GTA VI a stronger emotional spine than GTA V’s three-protagonist chaos. The Bonnie and Clyde influence is obvious, but Rockstar uses it well. The relationship is messy, transactional, romantic, and doomed-feeling from early on. When the writing focuses on them, the game hits hard.

The weaker parts come when Rockstar falls back into broad satire. Some of it lands — influencer culture, Florida absurdity, livestream crime, fake patriot grifters — but some jokes feel like Rockstar aiming at easy targets from 2013 with better lighting. Still funny, yes. Always sharp? Not quite.

Gameplay: More Polished, Not Fully Rebuilt

Moment to moment, GTA VI feels heavier and more physical than GTA V. Driving has that nice Rockstar weight: cars slide, muscle cars bite back, bikes feel dangerous, and police chases are properly stressful again. Gunplay is cleaner, cover feels less clunky, and animation blending makes robberies and shootouts look ridiculously cinematic.

The best missions are multi-stage crimes where planning, improvisation, and escape routes all matter. Convenience store hold-ups, highway ambushes, beachside chaos, and rural hideouts give the campaign a strong rhythm. The wanted system is also more interesting, with police response feeling more location-aware and less like enemies spawning from the sky.

But Rockstar still has one old problem: mission rigidity. For a game this open, too many story missions still punish you for creativity. Park the wrong way, flank too early, leave the expected route, and the game quietly says, “bro, not like that.” It is less painful than older Rockstar games, but still noticeable. GTA VI gives you an incredible sandbox, then occasionally forces you through a very expensive hallway.

Presentation Is Ridiculous

On PS5 and Xbox Series X, GTA VI is a technical flex. Character faces, lighting, crowd density, reflections, water, weather, animation — semuanya nampak mahal. Vice City at night is the kind of thing you stop to screenshot even when you were supposed to be escaping cops. The radio stations, fake ads, NPC chatter, and licensed music selection do a lot of heavy lifting too. Rockstar still understands vibe better than almost anyone.

Performance is mostly solid, though the game clearly prioritises visual density over twitch responsiveness. This is not a 120fps competitive experience. It is a cinematic open-world monster, and the trade-off is obvious.

SEA / Malaysia Angle

For Malaysian players, the biggest issue is platform access. GTA VI launching on PS5 and Xbox means no PC version at launch, which hurts because a lot of SEA’s GTA community lives on PC cafes, Steam libraries, mods, and roleplay servers. Console pricing also bites: expect the standard edition to sit around RM299–RM349 depending on store and region, with deluxe versions likely higher. Online play depends on PS Plus or Game Pass Core, so factor that into the real cost. Ping should be fine for casual online modes if Rockstar supports decent regional matchmaking, but serious GTA Online-style communities in Malaysia will still be waiting for PC, mods, and private RP ecosystems before this becomes their forever game.

Multiplayer Still Feels Like The Question Mark

GTA VI’s campaign is the main event. The online side has potential, obviously, because GTA Online printed money for years. But at launch, multiplayer feels more like a platform waiting to become something huge than a fully convincing reason to buy the game by itself. The foundations are strong — the world, vehicles, social systems, and chaos are all there — but balance, economy, griefing, and monetisation will decide whether it becomes legendary or exhausting.

Verdict

Grand Theft Auto VI is massive, confident, and often jaw-dropping. It does not completely solve Rockstar’s old design habits, and its satire is not always as sharp as it thinks. But as a living crime sandbox, character-driven blockbuster, and pure open-world spectacle, this is the kind of game that makes the rest of the industry look underfunded. If you own a PS5 or Xbox, this is close to mandatory. If you are waiting on PC, I feel you bro — but yes, the hype is mostly real.