If you’ve seen the graphics from any of the games on the Grand Theft Auto 3 engine, then you’ve seen them all. Vice City Stories looks just like all the previous titles, complete with all the old graphical bugs. I would have hoped since they’ve made all these GTA games, they’d at least take the time to fix some graphical problems.

The most annoying graphical glitch has to be vehicle/pedestrian pop up. There’s nothing quite like being in a chase, and getting far ahead just to have a van spawn in your path. Or maybe if you’re trying to do a mission without getting police attention and a pedestrian just spawns up in front of you, and he happens to be a cop. It isn’t like GTA has a ton of polygons in the models; other PS2 games have had easily as many polygons on the screen with better load times than this. The graphics aren’t horrible, but there’s nothing new to be offered from them.

The only “new” thing in the graphics and sound department is a new soundtrack on the radio, with both new and old characters to laugh at. The music makes this one of the more fun GTA games to just go on an all out kill spree in, along with the original Vice City. The licensed 80’s music, which includes such songs as “Here I am, Rock you like a Hurricane”, can either get a good laugh or bring back nostalgic memories, depending on your view of the 80’s music scene. The talk radio shows are worth stealing a car just to listen to them. Just as in the other GTA games, they make fun of all sorts of stuff, and manage to do it with that 1980’s feel to the characters.