Vice At a Price
Yeah, Vice City Stories has hit the PS2, but it's far from a perfect port.
Published: March 20, 2007
Unfortunately it also carries with it one of the biggest issues I had with the original Vice City: Lance Vance. Now, it would be nigh impossible to create a game that takes place in Vice City -- let alone one that takes place before the events of the PS2 game (how else are they going to explain how Lance ended up in town and how Vic gets iced at the start of GTA: VC?) -- without including Lance, but from his very first appearance, the game starts to slide into the same series of frustrating die-and-repeat missions that Vice City suffered from. Chances are, if Lance is involved in the mission, it will probably end up being one of your least favorite tasks -- they certainly were for me.
There is hope, however. The rest of the game is, largely, exactly what most are probably looking for -- a chance to revisit a slightly different version of Vice City with a new storyline, new missions (some of which are very, very nicely tweaked for the PSPs shorter play sessions), and tons of recurring characters in a world that continues to build itself into a living, breathing take on America throughout major historical periods.
Though it is "only" a PSP entry into the series, it's not only cannon, but actually introduces some seriously cool elements into the mix. A Godfather-like empire-building subset of missions is constantly available, and in true GTA fashion, you start it by simply missing up the car of the occupants inside the building you wish to take over. Torch the car or bike and they come swarming out. Gun these thugs down and you can jump into the building to finish the clean-up, offing the occupants and wrecking their merchandise.
This effectively resets the building, leaving it open for you to buy and convert to any number of seedy businesses, from loan sharking to drug running to prostitution -- yes, that means the hos you beat can now be your own. You can opt to throw just a few bucks or a whole bundle into the business to determine its initial size, but if you want to upgrade it later, you certainly can, earning you more money come pay day (which is, nicely enough every day at a pre-set time). You can also run a somewhat painfully repetitive sequence of missions to build rep for that business, helping it to make more money no matter the size.
Of course, the more businesses you have, the more targets for your rivals there will be, so later on in the game, a fair amount of time will have to be spent protecting your digs and repairing the ones you didn't get to in time. It's slightly annoying, but you can always recapture things again and the money you'll start earning early on will make repurchasing property fairly easy if you're on top of your empire from the start.
The other additions are a little less major, but certainly welcome. Vic can swim, something of a necessity given that he is in a clone of freakin' Miami, though unlike CJ, he can't swim forever; a stamina gauge slowly drains (and drops faster if you swim faster), but if you can find them, jet skis (along with ATVs on land) were also added to the vehicle stock to help travel between the islands which are, in classic fashion, slowly unlocked as you move through the story. Speaking of vehicles, once you start collecting for the now-infamous car lists (dubbed Civil Asset Forfeiture this time around), you actually told when you hop in that a car is needed.
Trip Skip, the ability to simply press up on the d-pad to warp long distances if you failed a mission, is back, but it doesn't show up every time, which is frustrating. If you die or get arrested while on a mission, though, you now have the option to buy back your full inventory before hopping in a cab to drive back to the start of a mission, which is anything but frustrating. The bribe to get your stuff back is high initially, but it's invaluable if you've stocked up on a lot of items and/or body armor.
