Grand Theft Auto : Vice City Stories

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on PS2 heads back to the neon-soaked Vice City of 1984, two years before Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The city is still taking shape beneath its palm trees, pastel hotels, construction sites, and crime-fuelled nightlife, making familiar streets feel like a different chapter in the same world.

The story follows Victor "Vic" Vance, an Army corporal trying to earn money for his ill brother Pete. After a corrupt superior leaves him disgraced and stranded, Vic is pulled into the city's criminal power struggles. His alliance with his brother Lance turns a fight to survive into a bid to build the Vance Crime Family, bringing him up against gangs, drug lords, and old Vice City faces.

At its core, this is an open-world action adventure viewed from the third person. Vic can roam the city between jobs, commandeer cars and motorcycles, take to boats, helicopters, planes, and jet-skis, or simply follow the next thread of the campaign. Story missions gradually open up more of the city, but the streets also make room for diversions, stunt jumps, rampages, hidden red balloons, and other optional work.

Missions move easily between high-speed driving, shootouts, chases, and more focused set pieces. On foot, Vic has firearms, hand-to-hand attacks, and grapples and throws for close encounters; the targeting system gives priority to immediate threats. The PS2 controller keeps the action direct whether the moment calls for steering through traffic, lining up a shot, or escaping a rising wanted level.

Vice City Stories sets itself apart with empire building. Vic can clear rival gangs from business sites, buy the properties left behind, choose criminal operations to run there, and complete specialized jobs to improve them. The businesses generate income, unlock rewards, and must sometimes be defended from retaliation, so taking territory becomes an ongoing part of controlling the city rather than a one-off mission objective.

Developed by Rockstar Leeds with Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games, Vice City Stories first arrived on PSP in 2006 before this PS2 port followed in March 2007. The PS2 version carries over the full single-player story and empire system for the console, with improved visual effects, draw distance, and performance, plus extra odd jobs, unique jumps, rampages, and an additional Easter egg. Its PSP wireless multiplayer modes are not included here.

That combination of prequel storytelling, free-form travel, and a growing criminal enterprise gives the game its own place in Vice City's history. It lets Vic's rise play out across the same sunlit cityscape that players may know from 1986, while the businesses, battles, and shifting alliances show how much was already at stake before Tommy Vercetti arrived.