Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Criminal Rating, Media Attention & Money Maxing Faq ------------ - This faq - ------------ 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. ------------------- - Criminal Rating - ------------------- 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. ------------------------------------ - Ways to Increase Criminal Rating - ------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------ - Vigilante/Brown Thunder Missions - ------------------------------------ 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. ---------------------------- - Test Track/Trial By Dirt - ---------------------------- 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. ------------------------- - Helicopter Demolition - ------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------- - Helicopter Demolition : Cheating Form - ----------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------- - Criminal Rating Ranks - ------------------------- 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 12499 Cleaner 12500 14999 Assassin 15000 19999 Consigliere 20000 24999 Made Man 25000 49999 Right-Hand Man 50000 74999 Executioner 75000 99999 Lieutenant 100000 149999 Underboss 150000 199999 Capo 200000 299999 Boss 300000 499999 Don 500000 999999 Godfather 1000000 ? ------------------- - Media Attention - ------------------- 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. ------------------------------------ - Ways to Increase Media Attention - ------------------------------------ --------- - Rhino - --------- 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. ---------------------------- - Hyman Strategy Revisited - ---------------------------- 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. ------------------------- - Media Attention Ranks - ------------------------- 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 ? ---------- - E-mail - ---------- Please send suggestions or comments to Zarathustra, nosaert@yahoo.com. Note that I do not answer general gameplay questions. -------------------- - Acknowledgements - -------------------- EdGreen and tocis2bsharp made contributions to the criminal rating advancement ideas.