Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)

*Played the PS2 version through PCSX2.

This is probably the hardest GTA game I've played. It has some of the most memorable, and at the same time, frustrating missions in the series. Enemy drive-bys were the most annoying, it felt like they were shooting a minigun. Also the traffic speed is so slow, barely faster than my sprint.

The rest of the stuff is pretty great though: memorable characters, decent story, superb soundtrack (although it doesn't quite have the magic of VC) + a wealth of side content and vehicles which makes this game a step up from his "cousin", Liberty City Stories.

Still, you're probably wondering why I'm rating this a 5/5. 2 words: Phil Collins. He's in the effing game, and I'm not talking about the radio. You meet him in a few missions and you can even see him perform "In The Air Tonight" in a concert.

That being said, I'm glad I'm finally done with the 3D era games. Still have to 100% GTA 4 and 5 before I'll be able to return to bask in the sun of present day Vice City.

The last (and only) GTAs I played were 4 and 5 a long time ago so I don't remember if I had any difficulty with the missions, but man VCS can be HARD sometimes. I've read someone say it's the Dark Souls of GTAs and I couldn't agree more.

And the horrible controls don't help at all - camera's all over the place and aiming's shit (killed so many innocent people because of it).

I had the impression that basically everybody drives like a damn maniac in this game, I've never seen such crazy AI. Cars zig-zagging through traffic almost all the time, hitting me out nowhere, running over random people on sidewalks... It's BIZARRE.

Also we get way too many gang attacks on our empire, I got really annoyed by the frequency of it. And even after conquering all gang properties I still got shot at out of the blue. It made driving around the city less fun than it could be.

Despite all of that I had a great time playing VCS, I really missed the absurdity of the plot and dialogue of GTA games. And as someone who never owned a PSP and didn't get the games for GBA/DS, I just found playing it on the go the most awesome thing ever.

It's been way too long since I laughed this hard playing a game, it was a hell of an experience even with all its flaws.

Can't forget about the soundtrack, I felt like just driving around the city with the radio on because the songs were great (gang attacks aside). Even though I listened to lots of tracks more than one time I never got tired of it.

Just glad I still have Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars to scratch my GTA itch before GTA VI comes out!

The game is good overall and was fun, but you can feel the limitations of the PSP in the gameplay. Accordingly, some missions were unfair and without save states it would be really exhausting to have to restart them every time. The attacks on the empire buildings you conquered were annoying (I didn't realize you had to save and reload the game to make it stop) and the empire missions were unfortunately too repetitive.

Story-wise, the game is okay, the protagonist is quite likeable and most of the other characters are also okay and not annoying, but you can usually predict their development. The story itself is not particularly exciting and you can always guess what will happen next, but there was still enough variety and different locations.