If there is one game series that is known to the general populace it is the GTA series. Its controversial nature has sparked many arguments, law suits and allegedly even murders. Whatever the truth, it is apparent that the GTA games possess that “something” that makes them hard to put down, even at three o’clock in the morning. A year ago the franchise made its debut on the PSP and game critics agreed that while the game was good it many of the features which its “bigger” brothers had. Over a year later the prequel to Vice City is here – according to Rockstar the issues from Liberty City Stories are gone and none of the features from the PS2 versions are missing. Time to find out how much truth there is to these statements!

The City of Vice

Vice City was arguably the best GTA of the PS2 era. Because of that Vice City Stories has some big shoes to fill in. To even stand a chance the authors (Rockstar Leeds) decided to take the world of Vice City, make some minor adjustments to its layout and start building from there. The result is that the Vice City we know no longer exists. In its place is an almost identical yet strangely different version of the city, representing Vice City as it was 2 years earlier. I’d be exaggerating if I said that Vice City was completely changed, but stumbling upon a construction site where you would find a skyscraper can be a bit disorienting for fans of the original.

Another change is that you now start the game on the “second” island and must make your way up the food chain before you can access the “first” one. This is an interesting change of pace; Libery City Stories followed the same progression as the original GTA3 did, whereas here you start at the other end. Personally I think this change is welcome as it makes the game more interesting for those who already played the original.

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Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll

… guns, prostitution, extortion, demolition and worse are words that perfectly describe Vice City Stories. You start the game as a member of the army, but it doesn’t take long (15 minutes or so) before you are thrown on the street because of some stupid decisions you made. From here on you start working for various questionable characters and quite soon for yourself and your criminal empire.

Those of you familiar with the franchise won’t find anything revolutionary or even slightly evolutionary here. The missions follow the standard formula of: get mission, drive to mission location, shoot/drive and drive to final mission waypoint. Oh, wait! I’m not reviewing Libery City Stories, so the above only refers to some missions. Other missions have you sitting in the passenger’s seat shooting at the enemies, piloting helicopters and planes, protecting your hookers and driving a forklift inside a burning warehouse to mention just a few. The diversity of the tasks you perform is somewhere between that of Vice City and the one found in San Andreas. To make things even more interesting you soon become the head of one of the bands – you then have to take care of your would-be criminal empire by developing your assets and trying to “purchase” the assets of the opposing bands. As you can imagine the transfer of ownership is usually accompanied by gunfire and gallons of blood. To make things worse the opposition will often try to reacquire the lost buildings.

As the unwritten GTA mantra dictates there must be plenty of vehicles for the player to have fun with. Vice City Stories follows it to the letter and delivers a wide choice of transportation means, ranging from the regular cars over sports cars to bulldozers, forklifts and tanks. And that’s just counting the land vehicles. On water you can drive around in boats and the Vice City Stories exclusive jet-boats. Air travel is also represented this time around and no part of Vice City is off limits to the brave helicopter and plane pilots.

By now you probably realized that there is a whole lot to do in Vice City Stories even not counting all the side tasks like racing, token searching and the all time favorite killing sprees. It’s safe to say that the majority will get at least 40 hours out of the game and even 80 hours is not a stretch for those who like to get the most out of their purchase.

Like taking candy from a baby

The PSP is notorious for control issues and PS2 to PSP ports are the most susceptible to being ruined because of it. Luckily VCS controls well. I may be partially biased here as I spent considerable time with Liberty City Stories and am thus used to the control scheme, but I honestly can’t see anyone spending more than 10 minutes getting acquainted with it. This doesn’t mean that there are no problems however. Camera control is limited due to the lack of a second analog stick which results in the need to stop moving completely before you can turn the camera around. Murphy’s Law dictates that the need to change the camera angle will occur only when an angry group of policemen will be on your tail. Another problem with the controls is that the auto-aiming feature only works when the enemies are relatively far. When they get within arms reach the fighting becomes frantic and winning is a matter of luck instead of skill.

Some improvements were made to the controls however. The afore-mentioned auto-aiming seems to work better and it generally targets the person you actually intended to aim at. Hand to hand combat was also improved – fighting is no longer just button mashing and you can even block incoming blows.

Another small improvement (for which we are all very grateful) is the ability to bribe the police/hospital staff after dying or getting arrested. Paying the rather large sum of money gives you back all the weapons you had prior to your mishap. Now that I’ve been playing VCS for a while I can’t imagine playing any of the other GTA titles which lack this feature.

Looking at the world through pink glasses

The biggest WOW factor of Liberty City Stories was the fact that it managed to present a 3d GTA title on a handheld. VCS manages to outdo this with a bigger city, more vehicles and pedestrians displayed on the screen, a further draw distance, a higher level of detail and by running better for the most part.

It is a bit hard to compare the graphics of VCS against those of Vice City because of the small screen VCS runs on, but from what I can tell there is little to no difference to be seen. VCS actually manages to look better in some areas – namely vehicle detail. The reflections on the cars are even better than the ones found in San Andreas and the fine details found on all of the vehicles are just astounding. All in all the looks of the game are superior to anything else found on the system – while some games might have a higher level of detail they get dwarfed by the scope of this behemoth.

There are some issues present nonetheless. The most noticeable one is that sometimes the game won’t manage to preload the part of town you just entered and you will see the low-detail version up close. This usually gets fixed in a matter of seconds, but it is still annoying. Other than that there are some smaller bugs that can cause problems (landing a plane on it’s roof prevents you from exiting), but none of them detract from the general enjoyment.

Turn the music up

GTA games were always praised for their soundtracks. Liberty City Stories was a slight disappointment in this aspect because, although the soundtrack was still great, it wasn’t as good as the rest of the series. VCS makes up for that and the roughly 100 songs long soundtrack is one of the best soundtracks ever. The classics from the 80s can be found on every single radio station found in the game and they include (amongst others): “Rock you like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions, “Gloria” by Laura Branigan and “In the air tonight” by Phil Collins (who even makes an appearance in the game playing himself!). If this isn’t enough to quench your thirst for good music you can always use Rockstars music tool to import your own mp3’s into the game.

The rest of the audio department is also top notch. Several of the game characters are voiced by high-profile movie actors and even the rest sound excellent. Sound effects abound and on the whole things in the game sound just like they would in real life. It is too bad that the soundtrack occasionally pauses as the game is trying to stream the next part of the city.

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Playing together

Liberty City Stories was the first GTA to have a multiplayer component and VCS continues the trend. The list of playmodes is quite long and with enough people all of them are amazingly fun. Though all of them are a variation of either deathmatch, capture the flag or racing it will take a lot of time for anyone to get tired of them. A big improvement over Liberty City Stories is that the streets are no longer empty save for the players. This time there is plenty of traffic everywhere and the pedestrians are also present in surprisingly big numbers.

The major problem with multiplayer is that it only works via Ad-Hoc, so it can be a problem if you don’t know other people who own both the PSP and the game. If on the other hand you do know such a group the hours of fun you’ll have with the multiplayer component are hard to match.

Conclusion

Sony naysayers are constantly reminding PSP owners about the lack of really great games on the system. It is becoming apparent that they are slowly losing their main argument, as great games have been coming to the PSP at a steady, albeit slow, rate. Vice City Stories is another nail in the coffin for anyone saying that the PSP doesn’t have good games. With its open ended nature, fun (and often complex and painstakingly difficult) missions, extremely high production values, great looks and possibly the best soundtrack on the planet there is no arguing that VCS is an excellent game. PSP owners looking for something to play on their high-tech black (or white) beauty should get their hands on VCS as soon as possible.

Gameplay	18/20	The GTA formula is proven to work so seeing it here is no surprise. Anyone looking for some sadistic fun will enjoy all the drive-byes and assassinations the game throws at the player. Managing a criminal empire is just the icing on the cake.
Graphics	18/20	Games on the go don’t get much prettier that this. The occasional display glitch and sometimes low framerate don’t ruin the otherwise flawless presentation.
Sound	20/20	Except if you can’t stand music from the 80s you’re going to love the music in this game. Escaping the police with a Kiss song playing in the background is the most fun I’ve had in a while.
Value	18/20	The long story and countless side tasks help make this game huge. It will take a while before you are done with the singleplayer mode, but the fun doesn’t end there. Multiplayer modes give new life to the game once the story is over.
Preference	16/20	This game is the 5th GTA of this generation. Those who have played the previous titles will be disappointed that the game doesn’t offer more. In the end they will still enjoy it though.
Overall	90/100	Being able to pimp on the go is better than only being able to pimp in your living room. Attract weird stares as you laugh sadistically while running down pedestrians in your bulldozer. Having fun was never so objectionable as it is with Vice City Stories.