Crank it Up with Vice City Stories: Grand Theft Auto's Latest Installment

2006 has been a year of few gems for the PSP. Luckily, Vice City Stories delivers more classic Grand Theft Auto game play for gamers on the go. Following the very successful Liberty City Stories, the game starts you off in familiar GTA territory, on the vibrant streets of Vice City, a fictional Miami.

You take on the role of Vic Vance, just a moral Army soldier trying to earn some cash for his family. When offered to take some criminal "side work," things take a turn for Vic, and he finds himself in the high stakes world of drugs, guns, sex, and death. There is a main story arc, consisting of various missions for different employers on the map. At times, you have the option to do certain missions before others.

In all, the main story encompasses around 55 missions. Like all GTA games, the environments are very open ended and offer countless hours of gaming scenarios. You can take on vigilante missions as a police officer, put out fires, drive an ambulance, race, and take on many other side missions. If mission based fun bores you, you can always just wreak havoc on the game world and have a shootout with the police - maybe even the Army if you are "bad" enough.

Game play is similar to all other GTA titles. The PSP analog stick moves Vic around. The 4 main buttons serve various functions such as running, shooting, and jumping. Shooting is accompanied by a simple target system utilized by the top right button on the PSP. You can also control the crosshairs manually while in this mode - if you want to try for a more precise head shot on an enemy. The control scheme works pretty well, considering many PSP games suffer from the lack of good controls.

The graphics of Vice City Stories really shine. Bright, vibrant colors will adorn your PSP screen. Sometimes textures seem a little under mapped, and you can tell the PSP is struggling to pump out such intense visuals. Lighting effects blur as you drive fast at night, explosions look monstrous and fill the screen with flames, car chases take on movie like realism.

The sounds here also are top notch. It is amazing the developers have managed to fit so much audio on the tiny UMD disc. Part of GTA's legacy is its fantastic soundtrack, and Vice City Stories does not disappoint. Ratt, Motley Crue, Wang Chung, The Pretenders, Depeche Mode, and Rick James are just some of the big names that are played on Vice City's radio waves. You can also find various talk radio programs with very outrageous programming. You may also recognize some of the voice actors, such as Gary Busy playing the drunken redneck, Phil, and Miami Vice alumni Phillip Michael Thomas as Lance "Dance" Vance.

While It doesn't offer anything new to the mix, Vice City Stories still offers a lot of mindless fun and excitement. Further, its mission based game play and open ended world is perfect for the medium of a handheld. So, pick up a copy and start wreaking havoc on your PSP today!