Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Criminal Rating, Media Attention & Money Maxing Faq
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- This faq -
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This faq contains a listing of the accurate criminal rating and
media attention levels and the point requirements to attain each
title. It also contains several methods for increasing your
criminal rating, media attention, and money.
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- Criminal Rating -
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Your criminal rating is the top center number on the Stats sub-
screen. Every time you kill someone, destroy a vehicle, complete
a mission, or make money your rating goes up. Your criminal
rating is essentially a measure of your cumulative criminal
exploits over the course of the game. It has no effect on
anything in the game itself. Getting to Godfather won’t get you
a health bonus or a hidden weapon or anything else. That being
said, there is something eminently more satisfying about being a
Godfather or Don than there is about being a Rat or Leece.
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- Ways to Increase Criminal Rating -
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Your criminal rating will slowly go up over the course of the
game. If you do a plain-vanilla play-through for 100% completion,
you will likely end up with a criminal rating of anywhere from
4000 to 10000 pts. Every pedestrian you kill gets you 1 pt of CR,
as does every vehicle you blow up. Note that these pts will
sometimes not get “credited” to your criminal rating until you
enter a pay-n-spray or save the game. Every helicopter or Dodo
you destroy is worth 30 pts. Money substantially contributes to
your criminal rating, as does your weapon accuracy, especially
if you get over 100% by exploiting the fact that bullets fired
by the built-in mini-gun in the Sparrow and Hunter don’t count
against your bullets fired, while bullets that are fired by them
that hit do count towards your bullets that hit category. The
obvious weakness with taking advantage of accuracy is that by
the end of a complete play-through you will have likely fired
10,000+ bullets, making an accuracy in the thousands of percent
and higher very hard to obtain and maintain.
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- Vigilante/Brown Thunder Missions -
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Your criminal rating increases as you make money. Vigilante
missions are a very good way to make a lot of money in a
reasonable length of time. In particular, if you get to around
level 400 of the vigilante missions, your money will be maxed
out at $999,999,999, and your criminal rating will rise to
around 210,000 pts--corresponding to being a Capo.
How does one get to level 400 on the vigilante missions? One way
is to use the Rhino. There are three problems with this method.
The first is that the Rhino is slow. You can aim the gun turret
backwards to increase your tank’s speed (just use R2 to aim the
turret backwards and keep firing-- Zoom!), but even with this
approach it will take you thirty seconds to a minute between
kills. There is also the risk of getting busted-- hence, you
must avoid slowing down or hitting obstacles and getting trapped
at slow speed. Additionally, every ten or fifteen minutes in the
tank, it will start to smoke by virtue of the cumulative damage
inflicted on your tank (it’s not indestructible, just extremely
resistant to damage). You’ll have to go to one of your garages
(preferably Hyman, since it’s well shielded in a small alley)
and heal every now and then.
The Hunter is much quicker for climbing up in Vigilante levels
via the Brown Thunder mission. However, the Hunter requires a
lot more skill on your part. Practice for twenty or thirty
minutes before you attempt to use the Hunter. Note especially
that the Hunter is capable of being over-pushed in any direction,
unlike the sparrow and other helicopters. You must be very
careful not to over-accelerate or push so far to the side or
down that the hunter goes out of control and crashes in the
water or whacks a bunch of many buildings. Unlike the Rhino, the
Hunter is very destructible, so much more finesse is required in
maneuvering it. Two things can make the Hunter missions easier.
First, if you’ve already gotten 100% game completion, your
Hunter will have twice as much armor, which reduces the skill
requirements in using it and surviving for extended periods of
time. Additionally, the Hunter heals damage every time you
advance in Brown Thunder level. By the time you’re up to level
15-20, the Hunter will heal about as much damage as gets
inflicted on it via crashing into buildings and getting fired on
per vigilante level.
For super-fast progress, make sure to do the missions at Escobar
International Airport. By level 12, the Vigilante missions will
consistently spawn exactly three cars, each filled with four
criminals. If you do the Vigilante missions around Escobar
International, two of the three cars will spawn, every time, at
Escobar Airport between the eastern and western gates just south
of the Main Terminal building. A third car will spawn somewhere
else, but 80% of the time, it will spawn in a lethal location
and blow-up within a couple of seconds. Thus, you can sit in
your Hunter just south of where the two cars spawn, strafe with
the mini-gun or missiles depending on your preference, destroy
the cars and their inhabitants, gain a vigilante level, and
repeat ad nauseam. Roughly every five levels you’ll actually
have to make a trip to hunt down the third car. This shouldn’t
take long though since the area around Escobar is free of tall
buildings and makes targeting other vehicles quite easy. Anyway,
after two to three hours of Hunter Brown Thunder, you will have
your cash maxed out at $999,999,999, a criminal rating of
~210,000, and the rank of Capo.
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- Test Track/Trial By Dirt -
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Note that there are alternative ways to max out your cash: you
can do Test Track or Trial By Dirt repeatedly. The money you get
increases every time you beat your previous record, so you can
max out your money in a relatively short period of time. You
just need to time it so that you finish the first time with 5
minutes, the second with 4 minutes, 59 seconds, the third with 4
minutes, 58 seconds, etc until you reach maximum money.
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- Helicopter Demolition -
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Every time you blow up a helicopter, you get 30 pts toward your
CR. If you own the Hyman Condo, this provides an easy,
relatively quick way to increase your rating. The western-most
garage at Hyman has room for four vehicles. However, it is very
hard to squeeze more than one of most helicopters-- including
the Maverick and the Apache--into the garage. Luckily, this is
not true of the Sea Sparrow. If you maneuver at the right angle,
you can fly four Sparrows directly into the Hyman garage. If you
are having a hard time getting in more than 1, just land and
push in the helicopter. With four helicopters in the garage,
save your game, and go to Baxter Airforce Base and get a rhino.
Park it in the second or third garage at Hyman.
Next, you need to block off the street entrance so that
pedestrians can’t witness your demolition derby and lead to an
increase in your wanted level. The entrance to the alley is
quite big, so you’ll have to use a firetruck (or coach) plus
some other large vehicle to fully obstruct the alley entrance.
The fire station is south to the first intersection, then east
to the first intersection, then south about half way to the
first intersection. If you walk up to the station on foot, a
firetruck will basically always spawn. If you then park the
firetruck facing north south and abutting one wall, you can
block about 80% of the street entrance. Next, get an ambulance
from the hospital at the first intersection to the south, and
drive it in west-east to the gap between the wall and the fire
engine. Now, no pedestrians should be able to see what you’re
doing, and so your wanted rating will not go up. Note that a
pedestrian or car can occasionally still get past your
barricade; however, this happens very rarely, and you should be
able to kill him/her without an increase in criminal rating.
Next, simply take your tank and drive up to the garage with the
helicopters parked inside. Get out of the tank, and the garage
door will open. Re-enter the tank and drive into the garage a
little way: now, the door can’t close on you. Fire a shell or
two, which will blow up the four helicopters and net you 120 pts
of CR, and reverse back out until the garage door closes all the
way. The helicopters will be healed, and you can repeat this
drive-up, step-out, step-in, blow-up, drive-out routine every
four or five seconds for 120 pts of CR a pop. Note that
occasionally one of the helicopters will bounce forward and
partially out of the garage--you have to be careful to push it
back into the garage before you let the door close so that the
affected helicopter doesn’t get clipped by the garage door and
deleted. This method should get you ~1500 pts of CR per minute
of effort.
You can also do the trick with fewer than four helicopters;
however, the gains in CR will, obviously, be slower and you will
have to move the tank at about a 45 degree angle (and adjust the
turret via the R3 stick accordingly) so that you can get far
enough away to have the garage door close.
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- Helicopter Demolition : Cheating Form -
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This is a faster way to increase your criminal rating. However,
it requires the use of a cheat code, so you’re limited to the
basic method if you’re uncomfortable with using cheat codes.
Start off with the above trick and stick four sea sparrows in
the Hyman garage. Now, here’s the quickening step. You need to
have a maverick sitting on the Hyman roof. If it hasn’t spawned
on the helipad, run south along to the place you get the Love-
Fist missions and back to the condo. The Maverick should spawn
on the helipad. Now, get in the Maverick and fly it due south
until you reach the first tall building. Do a circle around it
and fly back to the Hyman rooftop. You’ll be pleased to see
another Maverick has spawned on the roof. Land the Maverick
you’re flying on the west edge of the Hyman roof, facing north-
south. Get in the new Maverick on the helipad and do the same
fly-south to the building, circle, and fly-back to the Hyman
roof routine. Guess what-- there's another Maverick on the
helipad, and the first one you landed should still be parked too.
Land your second Maverick on the western edge of the roof as
well. There should be plenty of room for both of them.
Now, you want to blow-up the three Mavericks on the roof, plus
the four Sea Sparrows in the garage below. If you listen
carefully, you should be able to hear when the Hyman garage
opens and when it closes. You’ll notice that if you walk on the
roof from the helipad due south, the garage will open (the
garage opens and closes based on your horizontal proximity to
the garage, but doesn’t consider how far above it you are). You
will notice that if you walk due west to the end of the Hyman
roof, the garage will close. Here’s the key. If you stay in a
the rectangular area from about 2/3 of the way along the east-
west line to the eastern edge of the west part of the roof, and
from about half way to the helipad to the southern border of the
north-south line, the Hyman garage will always be open. So, if
you keep yourself in this rectangle, there will be SEVEN
helicopters in the game’s memory. Here’s the part non-cheaters
won’t like. Enter in the blow-up-all cars code-- R2, L2, R1, L1,
L2, R2, Square, Triangle, Circle, Triangle, L2, L1. All seven
helicopters will blow-up, and you’ll have 210 pts added to your
CR. Now, here’s where the rapid increases come into play. You
can re-enter the code, and get another 210 pts. In fact, you can
keep entering the code over and over and over again, and get 210
pts every time. You just have to practice entering it enough
times so that you can enter it over and over again without
pausing or messing up. Also, you have to occasionally adjust
your direction so you stay in the rectangle that keeps the
garage door open. Once you do this effectively, you can pump
your criminal rating up about 6,000 pts per minute, which will
get you to Don in under an hour and Godfather in under 3 hours.
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- Criminal Rating Ranks -
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Total Liar ? -6001
Cheater -6000 -4001
Hacker -4000 -2001
Embarrassment -2000 -501
Untrustworthy -500 -1
Upstanding Citizen 0 19
Nobody Special 20 49
Litterer 50 74
Shoplifter 75 99
Vandal 100 119
Do Boy 120 149
Pickpocket 150 199
Clepto 200 240
Snitch 241 269
Rat 270 299
Leece 300 334
Scam Artist 335 369
Trickster 370 399
Numbers Runner 400 449
Hustler 450 499
Bully 500 549
Riff-Raff 550 599
Scalawag 600 609
Ruffian 610 649
Outlaw 650 699
Thug 700 849
Drop Man 850 999
SA Goon 1000 1004
Goon 1005 1299
Ex-Con 1300 1499
Felon 1500 1699
Bag Man 1700 1999
Wiseguy 2000 2099
Wheelman 2100 2299
Hired Muscle 2300 2499
Hatchetman 2500 2749
Headhunter 2750 2999
Enforcer 3000 3499
Ronin 3500 3999
Fixer 4000 4999
Hitman 5000 7499
Associate 7500 9999
Butcher 10000 19999
Cleaner 20000 29999
Assassin 30000 39999
Consigliere 40000 49999
Made Man 50000 64999
Right-Hand Man 65000 79999
Executioner 80000 99999
Lieutenant 100000 149999
Underboss 150000 199999
Capo 200000 299999
Boss 300000 499999
Don 500000 999999
Godfather 1000000 ?
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- Media Attention -
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Media attention is a measure of the greatest concentration of
devastation you have caused during one cop-evading criminal
escapade. Your highest media attention number and rating is the
last statistic on the Vice City Stats page. Media attention
starts at 0 and will only increase when you have at least one
wanted star. From this point until you go to a pay-and-spray,
pick up enough police bribes to get down to zero stars, or save
and quit playing, your media attention will be tracked. As you
kill people and destroy vehicles, your media attention will
gradually rise. However, the rate of increase is highly
proportional to not just the amount of damage, but the intensity
of damage you inflict (ie: you must inflict a lot of damage in a
little time), especially as you approach the Stuff of Legends
neighborhood. Basically, it stops being enough to just kill a
person every five or six seconds or a few cars per minute: you
have to blow up everything that moves and hit every pedestrian
and cop who is on the side of the road.
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- Ways to Increase Media Attention -
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- Rhino -
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This isn’t exactly a sophisticated strategy--just get in the
tank, pick a route you like and are familiar with, and drive it.
Practice weaving in and out of the roadway so that you can
destroy all oncoming traffic, plus vehicles in your lane, plus
pedestrians, without slowing down and risking getting busted.
Also, have the gun turret facing backwards (use the R3 stick to
adjust the turret). If you ever get stuck behind an obstacle
(like a telephone pole), use it to get out of the jam more
quickly. Your media attention may seem to get “stuck” when you
reach the International Crisis/Stuff of Legends neighborhood.
This generally means you aren’t inflicting destruction quickly
enough. Speed up your strategy--weave more effectively; make
sure you’re hitting every vehicle and person you see.
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- Hyman Strategy Revisited -
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You can use any of the Hyman helicopter demolition strategies to
get a high Media Attention. Just blow-up the helicopters while
you have at least one wanted star (preferably two, so your
wanted level won’t accidentally fall to zero, forcing you to
start a new media attention rampage). You can get a criminal
rating in the tens of thousands in just ten to fifteen minutes.
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- Media Attention Ranks -
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Ignored 0 19
Boring 20 49
Vaguely Interesting 50 74
Local paper Page 7 75 99
Front page of local paper 100 149
Vice Courier Page 2 150 199
Vice Courier Front page 200 249
Local TV 3 AM 250 299
Local TV news 300 349
Local TV Live coverage 350 399
UFA Today page 12 400 499
UFA Today page 4 500 599
Picture in UFA Today 600 699
National TV 4 am 700 799
National TV news 800 899
National TV live coverage 900 999
International news 1000 1199
National crisis 1200 1399
International crisis 1400 1599
World event 1600 1799
Stuff of legends 1800 ?
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- E-mail -
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Please send suggestions or comments to Zarathustra,
[email protected]. Note that I do not answer general gameplay
questions.
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- Acknowledgements -
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EdGreen, tocis2bsharp, and Birdy have made contributions to this
faq.
