Vice At a Price
Yeah, Vice City Stories has hit the PS2, but it's far from a perfect port.
Published: March 20, 2007
The multiplayer, something that was surprisingly solid in Liberty City Stories, returns, with up to six players and 10 different modes, most of which are different takes on the whole "Liberty City Survivor" types found in LCS. There are some cool other diversions, though; races, scavenger hunts, an almost Risk-style empire building competition, a race to get to a chopper (and then to shoot it down if you don't get it), and even a mass carjacking competition. All of these are extremely well thought out, but since they use the whole city, they absolutely scream for online play, of which of course there is none. Guess Rockstar wants to save some major stuff for the next-gen versions of the series.
In fact, there a number of things that seem to have been held off on, and it seems like they were only avoided because it would make the next proper entry into the series that much more improved; the auto-targeting system is still broken as hell, targeting far-off enemies or people behind you when you just want to lay into that guy charging you with a bat. Should he close the distance and start beating you, there's really nothing you can do but run, because swapping back to melee attacks (which have been beefed up with actual punk/kick combos now) takes far too long and there's really no such thing as a point-blank weapon attack in VCS unless you get really lucky and get a shot off between animations.
It's more of an issue with the UMD format's painful seek times, but the same geometry pop-up issue that plagued the PS2 version of Vice City is here. If you get going fast enough, it's not uncommon to take a turn that seems clear only to slam into an invisible wall only to see the full building fade in seconds later. If you're you're riding a bike, it's even more annoying because you get hurt when it happens. Still, it's a little more forgivable on the PSP than it was on the PS2 given the limitations of the system. The framerate in multiplayer is also something of an issue; it's fairly consistently choppy in a lot of the modes, which is a shame.
But those are really the only complaints I can level at the visuals. The rest of the single-player game is absolutely gorgeous; solid framerate, the full Vice City layout streamed off the disc and with a draw distance even better than Liberty City Stories', which is saying something. The vehicle models look fantastic, the time of day changes even more drastic (and beautiful) than before, and little touches like the water being slightly see-through while still sparkling away happily just make the game... well, breathtaking to be honest. It's games like this that show why the PSP offers experiences that just aren't possible on any other handheld.
Once again, the audio here is superlative. I still can't believe the amount of dialogue, ped chatter and radio station content that was crammed onto the UMD, but it is great stuff. Perhaps not quite as amazing as Vice City's soundtrack, it's still an 80s music fan's wet dream, and there are some major artists (like Phil Collins, who also appears in the game), who are thrown into the game's radio stations (rock, hip-hop, Top 40, easy listening, romance, new wave and more are still represented here).
It's in the dialogue -- both on the radio (and its commercials) and in the cutscenes -- that Vice City Stories really shines. You may not like all the characters in the game -- hell you probably won't like most -- but you won't like the character, not the voice actor that gave them a voice, and that's important in a game that's so story-driven. About the only real gripe I have with the audio is that there are some minor hitches and that damn bug that will reset your radio station if you're thrown off or out of a vehicle.
Nearly everything about the last PSP outing has been improved here. Like I said at the beginning of the review, I was never really a fan of the original Vice City as a setting, and some of the biggest issues of that game -- crap aiming, uneven mission difficulty, friggiin' Lance Vance -- are still here, and somewhat amplified at times, but the positives are more than enough to make this one of the PSPs best games, and definitely worth buying a PSP for if you don't have one. I chuckled a little less, partly because the game does have a little more of a bite to it (the change in political climate probably has something to do with it), but I still enjoyed the portable version of Vice City every bit as much as the PS2 version.
