Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

Rating ESRB: Mature Genre action Publisher Rockstar Games External Links Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

Welcome to Vice City. Like any other major metropolis, we possess a wide variety of opportunities for the entrepreneur looking to make it big in the world. Free transportation is available upon every street, and our friendly female population is always ready to help offer relief from another stressful work day. Yes friends, from small time thug to big time crime lord all dreams are possible within the sunny locale of Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is a prequel to the Playstation 2 title Vice City and tells the tale of Vic Vance, brother to Lance Vance from the Playstation 2 story line. Vic Vance is in desperate need for money; not for himself, but to support his mother, his family, and especially his sick brother. With an apparent strong moral center and no desire to turn to a life of crime, Vic chooses to join the Military and serve his country with honor and integrity.

Upon arriving for active duty, Vic is sent to retrieve a package for his superior officer, Jerry Martinez. What follows is a downward spiral of drug trafficking, murder, and eventual discharge from the armed forces. With no other options available, you must now climb your way to the top of the criminal ladder and secure your place in Vice City History. How does a person so strongly apposed to illegal activities become sucked into a world of drugs, deaths, and hookers you ask? Apparently, with a poorly conceived story line.

Based on the personality that Vic portrays throughout the game, he should have turned his superior officer in within the first five minutes of the game and be done with it. Of course, that would have been a boring experience. Still, this obviously weak attempt at a story brings to question Rockstar's ability to keep the Grand Theft Auto series alive. Perhaps Grand Theft Auto 4 will be called Milky Way and feature E.T. ripping Predators out of saucers and completing spice deals in order to pay for that expensive ticket back home.

Graphically, Vice City Stories easily surpasses its PSP predecessor Liberty City Stories, although it does not completely eliminate all of the issues the first game had. Textures still disappear from the environments around you at unexpected intervals, leaving drab blocks that were once buildings on your screen. Lighting effects still need to be refined, as solar glare can often obscure the entire screen, and low light tends to leave areas of nearly complete darkness in its wake. One of the big attractions to the Grand Theft Auto series, the uninhibited driving, can often come to a sudden halt as vehicles and walls suddenly materialize in your path due to slips in the number of frames being processed by the game engine.

Not that this is a major concern, as the controls for Vice City Stories will keep you from being able to move very fast in the first place. Exaggerated physics cause even the slightest move of the analog stick to send your vehicle in an undesired direction. Don't bother trying to keep your vehicle in perfect working order, as the most minor impact will cause heavy damage to anything you're traveling in. These effects seem quite intentional however, as they make it even easier to perform outrageous stunts throughout the city. But then again, this isn't Burnout, and more attention needed to be given to actually controlling the vehicle with more conventional applications.

Combat exploits the weakness in the controls even more, making the targeting system practically useless in all cases. More often than naught you will find yourself frantically trying to attack anyone other than a civilian while being quickly killed by the people you're suppose to be killing. Still, not all is lost. Vice City Stories provides plenty of wonderful 80's music to listen too as you stumble, crash, and drag your way through the unimaginably overly populated streets.

In an attempt to offset the obvious weakness in the game, an Empire System exists as a back up to your cash making possibilities. Simply kill all the owners of the original business, buy the property, and you can set up any illegal operation you want. Each business option comes with several, highly repetitive quest chains to improve their capabilities and profit earning. Woefully uninspired missions make this aspect of Vice City Stories more of a hassle than the potential earning of an upgraded business. This can be easily skipped with the more straightforward approach of opening several enterprising ventures.

A Multiplayer mode is available using the PSP Ad Hoc system, with a total of ten different gaming types to tantalize your need to destroy your friends. Surprisingly, this is one of the more enjoyable aspects of Vice City Stories, providing a unique spin on many of the classic multiplying gaming types. In a vehicular style juggernaut match, you and your friends will frantically try to claim control of a helicopter, which you will then use to slaughter your friends as they attempt to bring you out of the sky. Amazingly enough, the Multiplayer functions suffer from the use of enormous maps, requiring a large number of players to get any real enjoyment out of the system.

Great music and enjoyable multiplayer functionality cannot save Vice City Stories from its overall failure as a video game. With a poor storyline, horrible controls, and dismal game play, it has become clear that the Grand Theft Auto series is being kept alive purely on name recognition alone. But much like Bomberman before it, a name does not a good game make. Frankly, I'm going to go back to playing Scooby-Doo. At least it made me laugh.