In Play’s opinion, the Eighties get a bit of a bum rap. Sandwiched between two decades that marked a revolution in the way we viewed our position in the world – the Seventies – and the dawning of the digital age – the Nineties – the Eighties are seen as a bastard hybrid of the two, a decade that taste forgot and the majority of people would like to as well. For us, however, it was the decade of our childhoods, a time when the world really was our oyster and we had our whole lives ahead of us – even miserable old gits like Tim Empey, growing up in the dank corners of Northern Ireland.

Our fondness for the Eighties could purely be a combination of rose-tinted spectacles and irony, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less real. Creatively the Eighties was a formidable decade, from cinema to books, music to television, some real classics were produced in all fields. We’re not saying that everything was better back then (especially not games) and some of the fashion makes even us cringe, just that the social and economic flux the world found itself in made the Eighties a lot more important and interesting than they’re given credit for.

This is perhaps why Grand Theft Auto: Vice City remains our favourite in the series. Even today we love to jack a car, tune into Flash FM and watch the sunrise from Washington Beach. Admittedly as a game it simply can’t compete with the size and vision of San Andreas, but it spoke to us on many more levels than that sprawling classic. This wasn’t just down to the fantastic soundtrack, the sharp suits and glamorous drug-dealer lifestyle it featured – it also presented the perfect microcosm of the decade in which it was set, a city undergoing massive changes as the have-nots realised that everything they desired was within their grasp if they worked hard enough.

This gave the typical Grand Theft Auto ‘work youe way up from petty criminal to king of the underworld’ template of Tommy Vercetti’s ascendance even more relevance and this is the theme once again visited in Vice City Stories. Set in 1984, two years before Vice City, you play as Victor Vance – brother of double-crossing scum-bucket Lance – a marine dishonourably discharged for possession of cannabis. His pressing need for money to pay for his younger brother’s medical care leads Victor down ever-shadier roads of criminal enterprise. The story is reminiscent of San Andreas, but rather than that game’s message that it’s not so easy to escape your past, Vice City Stories shows that sometimes good people do bad things for the right reasons.

It goes without saying that Victor’s progress is never straightforward and at almost every juncture Vice City Stories’ cast of misfits looks to impede him with their own agendas. Many familiar faces return, including Lance Vance, Phil Cassidy, Ricardo Diaz and Umberto Robina, who is a lot less blimp-like than you may remember him. As always, the ensemble cast is introduced through the cutscenes that precede each mission and as you’d expect from a Grand Theft Auto game, the voice acting is universally fantastic and the script is filled with Rockstar’s trademark humour and profanity.

This excellent work extends to Vice City’s nine eclectic radio stations and the DJs are once again the undeniable stars of the show. Vice City Stories features eight music stations: Emotion 98.3, Flash FM, Fresh 105, Paradise FM, Radio Espantoso, VCFL, V-Rock, Wave 103 and one talk station, VCPR, each with one or two egomaniacal hosts spouting rubbish. Our favourite is still Flash FM, where perennial groupie Toni is joined by the cocaine-addicted Teri. The two spend the entirety of their segments slagging each other off, to great comedic effect. Even if you don’t like the music, you’ll find yourself flicking through each of the stations just to hear the DJs.

Of course, there is much more to do in Vice City Stories than just driving around listening to the radio and there are around 70 main missions to get your teeth into. For the most part these are your usual Grand Theft Auto fare, requiring you to do some driving or kill a mob of people. There is a bit more variety than those in Liberty City Stories, thanks in part to the more interesting layout of Vice City and the inclusion of water and air vehicles, but if you’ve played a Grand Theft Auto game on the PlayStation 2 then there shouldn’t be too many surprises here.

It’s testament to the quality of the series then that even after four three-dimensional Grand Theft Autos, Vice City Stories is still as much fun to play as III was in 2001. There are times when you’ll want to tear your hair out after repeating a particularly tricky mission for the umpteenth time, but when it clicks and you nail it, there are few experiences in games that are as satisfying. If you do get stuck though and you need a break, there are plenty of things to keep you busy while you work off a little steam.

Not least of these is the big new addition, Empire Building, which gives you the chance to build your own criminal empire completely independent of the main story. During the course of the game, Victor acquires a number of enterprises from a former associate and from there it’s up to you whether you want to build on these or not. Located across Vice City are a number of gang-run locations from which you’ll run the illegal businesses. Each of the gangs wants to own as much property as possible, so they’ll attack your businesses at every given opportunity.

When you own land, you can choose the type of criminal endeavour you want it to be used for: drugs, extortion, loan-sharking, protection, prostitution or robbery. There are three available qualities of business, with the highest requiring a greater initial investment, but providing much greater returns. The success of your businesses is also dependent on location – a protection racket, for example, won’t do well if it’s not near shops. It’s got some great depth to it and with the extra missions opened up and the constant turf wars, Empire Building offers a massive distraction that you could conceivably spend more time with than the main game.

On top of all this there are all the usual Grand Theft Auto distractions, making Vice City Stories one of the best value games on the PSP. It improves upon Liberty City Stories in every single way and there is so much more to see and do. Despite taking place in a much larger area and with more pedestrians and traffic, the graphics engine is much better, with a smoother frame rate and greater draw distance. The control scheme is the same, but tweaks to the aiming and driving mean that getting around the game is a lot less frustrating than it’s been.

You can probably tell that we absolutely love Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and we’re not ashamed to admit it. You’d think that the Grand Theft Auto formula would be getting stale by now, but somehow Rockstar keeps managing to achieve what no other developer can – to make a truly engaging sandbox title.

Like Liberty City Stories before it, this being on the PSP casts it in a better light, but we believe that this will come out of the translation to PS2 a lot more favourably than its predecessor. Liberty City Stories is a great game, but it felt a bit like diet Grand Theft Auto, whereas this is the full fat, full sugar variety. Vice City Stories is the best game the PSP is ever likely to see, unless Rockstar can squeeze San Andreas onto UMD.

Jude Salmon