If you asked people to name TV shows from the 1980's I would guess that Miami Vice would be near the top of the most mentioned list. It is quintessential 80s television, but also kind of surprising that it still stands up well 20 years after the first episode was broadcast. Not entirely surprising when you realise that each episode took well over a million dollars to make. Of course, in the original Grand Theft Auto on the PC/PSX, the city that was situated on the map roughly where Miami is was named 'Vice City', a small nod to the show, and a name which was passed onto the second of the Grand Theft Auto games when they went 3D. As well as the name and 1980s theme, GTA Vice City also borrowed the pastel stylings of the Miami Vice TV series.
The Miami Vice game doesn't try to imitate anything done in Vice City though, instead it's a fairly basic shooter/adventure game that sees you playing as the TV show's main characters, Crockett and Tubbs (from a third person viewpoint), as they investigate a Colombian drug cartel through sunny days and hot summer nights. Actually, it has to be said that on first glance that there is vastly more of the show's style carried into Vice City than there is into this game, although at least you get Jan Hammer's Miami Vice theme (which goes along with the Top Gun Theme as the most gratuitously 80's piece of music). No pastel palette here, and the graphics as a whole are a poor show, with particularly low-res textures and low-polygon models all round. When compared to a PSOne game the graphics might look like heaven to your eyes, but not by much even then. The movement of the characters isnt any better than the first Resident Evil games... maybe worse in fact. The best (or worst) example of this is on the first level when you shoot a guy who is on the top of a building. When he dies, he immediately switches to his death animation without any intermediate animation, and you see him suddenly lifted off the floor, up and forward over the railings in front of him as if he's just sprouted mighty wings.
Still, poor graphics do not instantly make a game bad, and neither does poor sound, which is also present in Miami Vice. Hearing the Jan Hammer theme at the start would lead me on to have high hopes for the game's soundtrack. Sadly the rest of the in-game music failed to take my breath away, as did the sound effects. The odd quip by Crockett or Tubbs, and lots of (frankly, quite generic) shooting noises, but that's it.
Now, whereas you can pass off below average graphics and sound, the game itself is a little more difficult to ignore. The game works something along the lines of: you walk into an area, wait for an enemy to pop up, then hold down the lock on button and press shoot while you move around, dodging through the fire of the enemy until you've managed to hit them a few times. Now, I say managed, because the fact is that you're playing with a third person camera, and it doesn't move to show you where you're aiming. So, you can be shooting away and not realise that you're shooting a pipe sticking across front of your character, leaving your bullets to ping away to a destination unknown. Other enemies will be hidden behind objects thanks to awful preset camera angles, and they waste no time in cutting you down. When you die, you go back to the start of the level again, and although the enemies appear in the same place every time, if you didn't see them the first time, you're just going to have to keep going back to that part of the level and sticking your head out until you can spot them frustrating when it's near the end of a level. It's a little better when you play with both Crockett and Tubbs, as you can take one into a danger zone, let him take a few bullets, and then take them back to recover while using the other character. At any time when playing with both of them you can command the non-controlled character to stay put/take cover/go ahead and the like, but the AI is as dumb as a box of rocks it would have been nice to have a co-op multiplayer game for playing with the boys, but sadly the game is single player only.
All in all it goes to make a not just underwhelming game but a downright poor one. The game is obviously finished, and I haven't seen any bugs or glitches, which is better than quite a few games out there, but at the same time there isn't really anything good about the game. Why get this when you could get the 80's experience and a hundred hours of mucking about from Vice City at the same price? Nostalgia I guess. Still, I managed to fit the title of every song from the official Top Gun soundtrack CD into my review.
Thank you - thaaaaaaaaankyouverymuch.
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