Miami Vice - The Game for PSP Reviews by Gamers

The guys at Rebellion have already scored themselves major brownie points this summer with the PS2's surprisingly entertaining Rogue Trooper, and have proven with past efforts (From Russia with Love and Sniper Elite) that they're certainly capable of putting together a decent shooter. But that's why Miami Vice: The Game, Vivendi's recreation of Michael Mann's remake of NBC's spiritual spin-off of Hill Street Blues (whew), is the epitome of underachievement -- because its proven development team didn't realize the game's more interesting ideas as well as it should have.



Borrowing its camera from the already-classic Resident Evil 4, Miami Vice is, on the surface, a rather crisp-looking over-the-shoulder shooter. Playing as either Sonny Crockett or Ricardo Tubbs, gamers can take their city slicker or country boy on a "shoot first, ask questions never" adventure in such interesting locales as "the mansion, the warehouse," and "other nondescript levels we've seen in cop games a million times before." Of course, that's not what makes it interesting...



No, what really makes Miami Vice: The Game fascinating is that it has a number of appreciable concepts that power it between bouts of mindless shooting. Take, for instance, its reputation system. While not the first game to have such a thing, the notoriety feature in Miami Vice actually comes with a trade-off: wear body armor and use badass weapons and you'll get through the level much easier, but do it with defenseless lounge singer clothes on and nothing more than your department-issued handgun, and your rep will go up a lot quicker.



Why is your reputation such a big deal? Because how popular you are in the underworld ties into another one of Miami Vices strong ideas, its hub system. Used between levels, the Hub looks like a standard map found in most city-based games but it has a twist. Here, Crockett or Tubbs can travel to different sections for a set amount of days to help prepare their character for what's to come. This could mean anything from visiting an informant to buy tips for the next stage and upgrading weapons to take with you, to visiting a Tailor in search of new threads or hacking into a FlashRAM file to earn new opportunities for yourself. You can even move narcotics that have been confiscated in previous levels and resell them to drug dealers to affect their value, demand, and your own personal bank account.



In addition to what's mentioned above, Miami Vice also has a couple of mini-games that that mix things up as well. Pay a visit to one of the several drug barons, for example, and you'll have to convince his bodyguards and the baron himself that you're cool with a meter-based hand-eye coordination test. The better mini-game, though, is the FlashRAM hacking mini-game that takes popular old-school-style shooters like Asteroids and Geometry Wars and adds its own (noticeably slower) spin. Throw in the ability to make good or bad morality decisions and the foundation for a compelling game is certainly there.



The problem is, with all of its interesting ideas and potential, Miami Vice never does any of them particularly well. Take the informant. Sure you can buy all the locations of drugs, enemies, and the other tidbits he provides, but he offers them to you at such a cheap price it isn't really needed. His whole presence seems to be more of a step than an option worth earning. What's worse, is that if you're a gamer of slightly-above average skills, you'll be able to blow through the game in just a couple of hours no matter which weapons or armor you're carrying. And, because the game is so short and so easy, it dilutes the whole reason you do the cool map-screen stuff to begin with.



To its credit, the actual shooting mechanics (which make up the bulk of Miami Vice: The Game) are addictive, if not simple, fun. Built from the ground up specifically for the PSP, the controls were designed with the single-analog stick in mind, and as a result, the adventures of Crockett and Tubbs don't suffer from the same "stripped down port syndrome" that a lot of similar games on the system often do. There aren't any awkward controls here and that's a big plus, and the fact that there's so much emphasis on finding cover is a really nice touch.



Unfortunately, having controls specifically designed for the PSP doesn't automatically mean that the rest of the game has been tuned for them. It's not uncommon for Crockett or Tubbs to get stuck in corners, on obstacles, or even wedged against invisible walls. In fact, it's not a matter of "if" any of that will happen, but "when." The sloppy collision detection is further mired by some of the dumbest enemy character's I've come across in a long time. Because they too are interested in finding cover before shooting, your opponents are constantly running around the stages like idiots -- stopping, starting, hiding behind something, popping out, and repeating all over again. They almost never come after you either -- meaning that zipping through the game is as easy as finding a good cover spot (which are seemingly everywhere at all times) and waiting for the final shot.



Amazingly, even with these obviously bothersome issues -- which also include the fact that you can't move while targeting, that levels are almost always linear with little diversion, and the voice-overs from the targets are so repetitive you'd think you're playing Groundhog Day: The Game and not Miami Vice, it still retains a decent modicum of fun. Chalk it up to the fact that, at the very least, the effort was made to mix things up between shootouts and that there's a genuine (and somewhat unexplainable) satisfaction in blowing some criminal punk away with a souped-up carbine.



The UMD-only (sorry, no game-sharing) multiplayer deserves a little credit too. A second player can drop in and out at anytime during a multiplayer session, and the lag-free co-op action makes the poor AI and straightforward stages a little more forgivable. Rebellion's focus on a solid presentation, including a collection of interesting cutscenes, fast loading times, and almost-impressive graphics helps ease the pain a bit too.

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