PSP HuB: Miami Vice : The Game

Rebellion has done well by the Miami Vice name with this sordid blend of guns, boats, and drugs.

With its surplus of scenic locales, beautiful women, and cigarette boats, as well as that trademark silver Ferrari, being an undercover narcotics officer never seemed as fun and glamorous as in the seminally 1980s action drama Miami Vice. Director Michael Mann, who executive produced the original series, has taken the concept and updated it for a new feature film, which in turn prompted the development of Miami Vice: The Game for the PlayStation Portable. Though we can't speak to how well it represents the movie (since the game's release has preceded it), on its own, this is a slickly produced shooter with some dark edges and whose biggest offense is that it's over too soon.

The Good

Great sense of atmosphere

intense and responsive gunplay

drug-trade elements make the experience all the more immersive.

The Bad

Over too quick

enemies aren't terribly smart or aggressive

some sound effects get repetitive.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="180" caption="Being Deep Cover can be both lucrative and fun"]

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During most missions, you can recover a FlashRAM containing encrypted data, which usually provides access to a new weapon upgrade or the location of a new drug baron, and you can attempt to hack into it at police headquarters between missions. The hacking minigame is really abstract and basically has you controlling a triangle that can emit shockwaves to destroy antagonistic cubes and collect rings of valuable data. The hacking minigame is highly stylized, and it can get pretty tough as you progress, with the cubes shooting data-stealing crosses at you after just a few levels, but more variety still would have been welcome. You also have an informant that you can pay off with confiscated drugs, and for the right price, he'll tell you a lot of extremely valuable information about your next mission, such as how to disable security cameras and the locations of enemies, drugs, first-aid kits, and FlashRAMs. If you're smart about your drug trade, the amount of product that you have to pay off your informant with is nominal, which makes this feature a little too useful, thus undercutting the difficulty in a game that's already relatively easy.

Despite its relative ease and short running time--you'll probably be done with the game in less than six hours--Miami Vice: The Game feels really well put together. The presentation is authentic and consistently atmospheric, and the variety of the action goes a long way toward making you feel like a deep-cover vice cop. If such a concept sounds at all intriguing to you, and you can forgive the brevity, this is an easy game to like.

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