Before Rockstar released Liberty City Stories on the PSP, there was much doubt if the open-word mayhem could be converted, intact, on Sony’s portable.
The fact is, they did it. Liberty City Stories raised the bar of what was possible on the PSP, and is nothing short of a technical marvel. That game was not without fault, but offered superior value compared to the competition.
One year later, Vice City Stories is here, but the cat is out of the bag - we know what can be done. The only question now is can Rockstar wow us one more time.
The thing is, no one has been able to fell Grand Theft Auto, on any platform. Vice City Stories doesn’t have to do much more than show up. This lack of competition, especially on the portable, is the largest obstacle to this latest GTA story.
As the name suggests, Vice City Stories brings us back to Vice City, again telling a tale a couple years before the bigger console sibling.
You play as Vic Vance, brother to Lance Vance, someone you should be familiar with if you played Vice City. Vic is in a tough spot. He just joined the Army, and needs to earn money to help his family.
Little does he know exactly how he will be earning that money. Right from the get-go, Vic meets his coked-out commanding officer, and is sent to pick up some drugs, then sent to retrieve some money, and you can just see where this is heading.
It takes little time for the straight-laced Vic, who plays a fish out of water good guy, to be corrupted by the underworld of Vice City. It is a different take on the standard GTA story, but in the end, not much changes in the formula.
If the story is outlandish, so are the characters. Back are Ricardo Diaz, Phil Cassidy, and Umberto Robina, as well as Lance Vance of course. It is because of these colorful characters, and the pastel and neon-colored world of Vice City, that this is a richer experience than Liberty City Stories was.
The new venture, beyond your staple of story missions, side missions, etc, is the ability to take over rival businesses. You can even “upgrade” these businesses, all in the name of making your empire even stronger.
Controls from last year’s GTA romp return, mostly doing well even without a second analog stick. With the good from past GTA games comes the bad. This means that close-quarters melee and gun combat is horrible. Nothing has been done to correct this aging problem.
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