First VCS Review - From PSM

21
Oct
2006
By Chris | 21st Oct 2006 at 18:34 GMT in Vice City Stories | 7 Comments

PSM are the first major publication to get their review of Vice City Stories out. We've had a flurry of previews recently, and it seems that companies are getting to play the entire game for themselves now, so expect a lot more reviews coming in over the next week or so.

In short, PSM say it's an excellent game, giving it a rating of 9.5. Included in the article are 9 new screenshots, and a few new details.

PSM say that Vice City Stories is the best PSP game they've ever played, but it didn't achieve a perfect 10 due to all the technical glitches. There is an incredibly vague explanation of drowning - it seems that if you swim for 'too long' you will drown, it's unclear whether they mean underwater (running out of breath), or actually above water and losing stamina and energy. I'm sure this will be cleared up in other reviews.

There are still issues with the targeting system, sometimes pedestrians will be targeted instead of armed gang members. There are also issues with the AI, enemies will sometimes get stuck running into walls, and occasionally your fellow gang members will run in front of your gunfire, causing you to kill them and subsequently fail the mission.

The storyline apparently clocks in at taking approximately 15 hours to complete, very short for a GTA game. Then again, taking into consideration all the mini games, side missions, empire building, and the fact it's meant to be portable, this figure is fairly reasonable.

Expect many more reviews, the final site update, and many more screenshots and videos soon!

On a sidenote, UK supermarket Tesco have revealed the back cover of the Vice City Stories box. Click the thumbnail below for the full version.

vcs_back_cover.jpg

Rashon.'s photo
Rashon. 21st October, 2006 @ 18:42 - Permalink

9.5 is pretty good. Did PSM give a score to LCS last year and if so, what was it?

Ciaran's photo
Ciaran 21st October, 2006 @ 19:06 - Permalink

15 hours?

But like who would play it non stop :whistle:

Chris's photo
Chris 21st October, 2006 @ 19:30 - Permalink
9.5 is pretty good. Did PSM give a score to LCS last year and if so, what was it?

They probably did but I don't know what it was, however, I do have some other LCS review scores we can compare it to.

IGN - 9 / 10

1UP - 9.0 / 10

GamesDomain - 4.5 / 5

GameSpot - 8.6 / 10

If these websites post VCS previews I will be posting them and comparing, from what we've heard VCS sounds much better anyway, so I'd assume all these sites would give it a higher rating than LCS.

Noru's photo
Noru 21st October, 2006 @ 19:40 - Permalink

If you drown for swiming to long they made it more realistic then san andreas style of swimming. No one can swim for ever and never get tried. maybe thats what the swimming side missions are for. Build up so you can swim longer and faster

Bear's photo
Bear 21st October, 2006 @ 19:51 - Permalink

That was like Driver3 you would die if you swam for too long. Im not surpised its 15 hours long as it does have alot of extras that LCS didnt have. Aslong as the story is good and not rushed then I am happy with 15 hours

Rashon.'s photo
Rashon. 21st October, 2006 @ 22:18 - Permalink

15 hours is good enough for me. <_<

Dark Lord's photo
Dark Lord 22nd October, 2006 @ 08:40 - Permalink

15 hours are less.

What about LCS.How long was the storyline missions time?

Some of our affiliates (view all):

GTA.com.ua Payne Reactor GTAGames.nl GTA Underground GTAReview GTA Chronicles