Price: £34.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes Online: No Multiplayer between PSPs: Yes Miami Vice was one of the defining TV shows of the mid-to-late '80s "yuppie" era, and provided perfect escapism as the cops went round fantastic locations, the cars were sleek and fast, the girls were gorgeous, they always sorted out the bad guys and then usually ended up bedding the aforementioned girls by the end of the show. Of course, real life isn't like that, but who didn't want to jump into a Ferrari Testarossa and roar off down Sunset Strip? I was a child of the '80s and loved the time, but Miami Vice: The Game treads on ground already the road taken by 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City which recreated the Miami Vice feel perfectly and makes for a hard act to follow. As you begin, you get to play as either Sonny Crockett or Rico Tubbs, but the first thing you notice is that it's clearly not Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx doing the voices, which flies in the face of the majority of movie tie-ins these days as all the big films tend to get the major actors in to record a number of lines of dialogue for the game, sometimes including motion-capture work, so that's the first in a long line of disappointments provided by this game. There are some positive things I can say about it. The backdrops are nicely done and the music, albeit not from the Jan Hammer catalogue, helps set the '80s-style scene but it's one that's ruined by the gameplay.

The first thing you notice as you start the initial level, running forward to track down the bad guys in this third-person shooter, is that the aiming mechanism is terrible because there's no auto lock-on, so you aim, wave your aiming 'sight' around like a laser target sight and then fire, and at first, if you're lucky, you might just hit something. Eventually, you twig that the aim isn't exactly pixel-perfect either: you can just just slightly within the vicinity of where a bad guy in the distance is standing and still get him. Only when you get to the later speedboat levels will you get the chance to lock-on to a target. There's also the appalling third-person camera view to contend with, so when you're looking round the corner in 'cover' mode, trying to aim a shot, your great big mullet is in full view in front of where you're meant to be aiming the gun(!) In fact, sometimes as you enter 'cover' mode, this begins to infuriate if your character hugs the wrong wall as you hurriedly try to dodge the bullets and end up taking a round in the shoulder before you can move and also means you lose a perfect opportunity to cap a bad guy. In addition, it becomes clear before long that you can't reload without aiming, so in 'cover' mode you have to aim which makes you stand up again, thus putting yourself back in the damn firing line. Oh dear! It's also very predicable as the bad guys run into your line of sight briefly, then run away for a moment to reload, then come back again - and repeat. So easy to know when they're coming and to be ready for them. At other times, the enemy AI is so week, often they'll just stand there waiting for you to unload both barrels into their chest; and bad camera angles make things worse when you're up close to a baddie as you end up spinning round trying to find him and blasting away in the hope you hit your mark because it's either you or him.

While on a level you can pick up FlashRAM and take to the station to hack. However, this is just like picking up a scroll or any other important piece of paper in any other game. And when it comes to hacking the RAM, this opens a bizarre mini-game that's impossible to describe but looks like a dire version of the '80s classic Asteroids, yet 100 times more complicated and nowhere near the as much fun as the inverse of that(!) It doesn't make any sense and would allow you to unlock weapon upgrades, etc, but just kill a baddie on the next level and steal their weapon. End of. You'll also be able to collect and take the baddies' weed to the station or keep it and trade with snitch Freddie Luiz who will give you information in return on a number of things such as shutting down CCTV cameras at the next location, where to find FlashRAM, showing where the baddies are on the map as well as the drugs and health packs. Sometimes he won't be available because he's temporarily in the slammer. Inbetween levels you can also buy new firepower or visit your tailor for more cool threads, but again this is just window dressing given the aforementioned stealing a bad guy's weapon and since what you wear doesn't preclude you from entering any particular location. As each level ends your score is tallied and you can lose 'reputation' points by using health packs, not having a lot of ammo at the end, etc, but these can't be helped and it's just a rather meaningless addition to the proceedings when all's said and done.

Miami Vice is a very linear game where its ideals are as dated as the clothes from the original TV series. It carries an 18-certificate but presumably that's down to the combination of shooting, drugs and strong language. There's also a multiplayer mode in which you can join up with someone who wants to play as the other character if you know someone with a PSP, but I only had myself to play with for this title and the single-player version at least becomes very annoying very quickly, especially as all the baddies repeat the same set of insults, such as "You're gonna die, bitch!", "I'm gonna fuck you up good!" and "You're going down!" Only this game is going down... down the PSP charts.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ENJOYMENT
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.