GRAND THEFT AUTO VICE CITY STORIES PSP PC
GRAND THEFT AUTO VICE CITY STORIES PSP PSP

But where GTA used to be over-the-top-funny, this time it's just a bit over the top, the humour dulled. We can even live with some of the series' latent awkwardness - the gun combat, with its lock-on system that has the habit of targeting innocent civilians when you have a specific target in mind. We can put up with the PSP's quirks - the slightly-too-difficult drive-by shootings, where you have to hold L and use the analogue nub to look left or right, and then fire, unable to steer while you're doing any of this. Even more proper than Liberty City Stories - and we were surprised how proper that was, remember.īut with that said, Vice City Stories is also probably the weakest game in the series. The team-based ones are the best, and although some of them draw attention to the PSP's lack of a second analogue nub or stick, they are still worth investigating if your social set ever allows. Fighting over helicopters with rocket launchers, chasing down drug bundles in fast cars, protecting a bomb at an enemy base long enough for it to blow up, escorting a VIP player around to collect things. I've not been able to test them since I was sent the UMD, but I did pop around to Rockstar last month to play for a couple of hours in a group of six, and I had lots of fun with that.

GRAND THEFT AUTO VICE CITY STORIES PSP PSP

Like its PSP predecessor, Vice City Stories also expands on the GTA formula with multiplayer modes. He doesn't like drug dealing and crime in general, but still kills hundreds of people, pimps, extorts and generally mocks the police when he's not preening. What's more, even though the original Vice City used up a lot of the real '80s classics, the rest of the radio channels manage to hold their own with licensed content. It starts repeating eventually, but takes longer than you'd imagine, despite the UMD format's limits. As you go, there's the range of radio stations to enjoy - the talk radio bit, presumably written by that Lazlow chap again, still the highlight. Even if you've grown tired of the usual zero-to-criminal-hero storylines and the fetch-quest nature of the missions, the journey's still the worthier part - and there's lots of journeying to be done, with numerous ramps to launch yourself from and secrets to uncover. There's a unique thrill to cruising down Ocean Drive listening to Marvin Gaye, handbrake-turning into a side street as you make for the next objective. Very few companies have found as much blood in the stones that pockmark the wasteland of PSP development.įor me though, GTA's biggest draw is the driving - the slidey Hollywood handling with which we're all now intimately familiar. You can now swoop over the city taking in huge vistas, land on rooftops and enjoy almost as much freedom as any 'proper' GTA game has ever offered. The entire city is here, the draw distance is miles better than Liberty City Stories', the frame rate rarely drops into dangerous territory, and Rockstar Leeds' greater exposure to the hardware has given birth to greater feats: realistic water physics, for one, but most notably helicopters. The DS may have a bigger share (and the public heart) of the handheld market, but GTA is something it simply cannot do.

Obviously then GTA is a very important game for PSP.

GRAND THEFT AUTO VICE CITY STORIES PSP PC

It was the interminable wait for the second PC game that drove me to write about other stuff. It's also responsible for me! I didn't decide to be a games journalist I decided to make a Grand Theft Auto fansite. A cult game at a time when gamers themselves were a cult, the PC original spawned numerous spin-offs, expansions and clones, and has given birth to enormous, perhaps even deciding influence in two separate console generations. Few games can claim as much trickle-down impact as Grand Theft Auto.

Grand theft auto vice city stories psp