Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories was developed by Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North and released in 2006 (PSP version) and 2007 (PlayStation 2 version), respectively. The game's plot takes place in the city of Vice City, two years before the events of another part of the game series, GTA Vice City.

It's 1984, and the main character, Victor Vance, finds himself discharged from the military. Unable to continue his military career, Victor decides to go to his friend, Phil Cassidy, who happily introduces him to his business, which is built on the illegal arms trade. Thus, thanks to this (and also with the help of his older brother Lance), Victor becomes entangled in the criminal world, which draws him in even more.

Alas, Victor does not live long (and this is not a spoiler at all): at the beginning of the game GTA Vice City, which was released earlier (in which he is shown as one of the guys making a deal with Tommy Vercetti), he is killed, while his brother, Lance Vance (playing an important role in the plot of both games) escapes by flying away in a helicopter. In general, in Vice City Stories the player will meet many characters known from the previous game about this city.

Moving around Vice, copied from Miami, in free mode (the resort city, by the way, looks a little different compared to GTA Vice City: some buildings have not yet been completed, other buildings were not in the projects then, but there are also completely new places on locations, such as an amusement park, which you can visit and go on rides there), the protagonist of Vice City Stories can buy clothes, eat in snack bars, play mini-games, including even golf. Compared to its predecessor game, the number of interiors you can enter has increased significantly. In addition, Victor can fully swim — this is precisely the ability that players lacked in the original GTA Vice City, especially considering the location of the city (it is located on the coast).

The developers of Vice City Stories have made 59 main story missions, which, if played continuously, can take players 15 hours. The missions have become an order of magnitude longer and more complex than in the previous “portable” GTA Liberty City Stories (the relatively short length of the missions in this game was due to the desire of the developers not to make the game, which was originally created for a portable console, too complex).

Vice City Stories has many secondary missions, traditional for the series of games, so even after completing the main story there will be something to do. For example, you can try yourself as an entrepreneur, controlling such, no doubt, interesting branches of business as racketeering, usury, prostitution or smuggling.

Guns and vehicles, which are an indispensable attribute of every game in the GTA series, are fully represented in Vice City Stories: there are about thirty different types of weapons, and more than a hundred different types of transport, including cars and sports cars, motorcycles, bicycles (which are not was in the original GTA VC), vans, trucks, yachts and boats, planes and helicopters.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, allowing several owners of Vice City Stories to play simultaneously on their PSP.

Traditionally for games in the series, the strong soundtrack in GTA Vice City Stories consists of such performers and groups as Foreigner, Rainbow, Accept, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Scorpions, Depeche Mode, Blondie. Nine radio stations, each of which broadcasts music of a certain genre, play 110 tracks. Some radio stations, such as V-Rock, Emotion 98.3 or Flash, are already very familiar to all fans of the original Vice City, while other stations (VCFL, Paradise) appear for the first time in Vice City Stories.

Very little is known about the technical part of GTA Vice City Stories, as well as about the contents of Liberty City Stories. According to the developers, the game is built on some completely new engine (whereas previous parts were based on RenderWare), but there are no detailed information. It is quite possible that this engine is a special version of RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) optimized for the needs of consoles — Rockstar’s own technology, known from GTA 4.

Vice City Stories is, most likely, one of the most beautiful, and even more ambitious games on the PSP. Compared to Liberty City Stories, higher quality textures and models were used here — reflections appeared on vehicles (but not processed in real time, of course), and the bloom effect, which was added to the PlayStation 2 version, makes the picture more pleasant and “hot” " The developers are proud of how they managed to implement water and its behavior — it casts glare on the sun and looks completely different in different weather conditions.

And by the way, about the version for PlayStation 2, which was released a year later than the original version for PSP: in addition to graphical innovations, new secondary tasks appeared, including racing missions.