"No Rules. No Law. Lots Of Bullets." Miami Vice: The Game is the game companion to the release of the 2
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The plot of the game starts before the events of the 2006 movie, with almost no relation to the television show. The game opens with detectives "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs arresting a criminal when they get a call from their boss. They receive instructions to rescue an F.B.I informant, who has called the police for help after being attacked at his mansion. In exchange for their help, Freddie the informant promises to help the Vice squad bring down a major drug baron. The story progresses as the case progresses, as Crockett and Tubbs take down major operations areas of the drug gang, slowly working their way up to the head of the entire operation.
Gameplay
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Most of the game is played through a third person shooter perspective. You play as either Crockett or Tubbs, working your way through the levels, sneaking past or defeating the enemies, and reaching an objective. Throughout the level, you will find guns, hidden drugs, and flashdrives of information that can be hacked at the police station. These are also known as FlashRAMs in the game, and hacking them involves a mini-game at the police station, featuring a computer interface and basic geometric shapes with different functions. The shooting segments of the game are done in a manner similar to that of Resident Evil 4 or Cold Fear. For those unfamiliar with these games, pressing the right shoulder button will bring the camera over Crockett/Tubb's shoulder, causing the character to raise his gun and turn on the laser sight. Aiming is done with his laser sight acting as the crosshair. It is important to note that the player cannot shoot without raising his gun in his manner first. Reloading is done with the square button, and holding down square while not aiming your gun makes your character sprint. Pressing up will use one of your healthpacks (you can only carry 3), and pressing down will switch between your primary and secondary firearms. Movement and aiming controls are done through the nubby stick. Enemies can be hit with the stock of a gun if they are close enough. A prompt will tell you when you are close enough to melee an enemy, at which point pressing X will unleash a blow from your character. The game focuses on using cover in shooting segments. You can lean against an object, or hide under it by standing beside or close to it, and pressing the left shoulder button. You can then move along the wall and aiming around the corner if you stand at the edge of the piece of cover and press the right shoulder button. Another part of the game is done in a cinematic format. These involve going undercover with your character and trying to sell narcotics to drug barons to earn some money and increase your reputation on the street. Most scenarios start the same way. Your character pulls up to the location in your Ferrari, and gets out to meet with the baron's henchmen. The henchmen will start to search and question your character. A bar will then appear at the bottom of the screen with a meter inside of it. You must keep the bar inside a certain location on the meter for a certain amount of time before you pass that segment. If you are having trouble keeping the bar in place through frequent tapping, you can always bribe and negotiate. The discussion with the Baron works the same way, though it is much harder then trying to get past the henchmen. Typically, higher class drug barons are also harder to negitote with then the lower class ones.
With your money, you can purchase drugs to keep until the price of the drug rises on the streets, and sell it back for an increased profit. You can also use these drugs to bribe your informant and get information for your next mission. Each segment in between missions is limited to a certain amount of days. Each visit to a drug dealer will take one day. You can store extra drugs in the police station. Money can also be used to purchase or upgrade your character's clothes. These include buying and upgrading a suit, tactical armor, and an unlockable cheat suit later on.
Weapons can be purchased from the gun shop. Once you acquire these, you can upgrade them at an additional fee. Upgrades usually include magazine size, fire rate and power. The two basic weapons can be upgraded as soon as you can acquire them, but later weapons such as the assault rifle and sniper rifle require hacking of FLASHRAMs to obtain upgrade information before it can be purchased. The weapons included in the game are the pistol, the shotgun, the submachine gun, the carbine (really just the submachine gun with a silencer added on), assault rifle and sniper rifle.
Visual
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Most of the scenery in this game is quite stunning. The lighting effects on most of the outdoor levels are extremely high quality. The enemies aren't quite as detailed as the environments are, but you won't be getting particularly close views at them anyway. Since the game is based on the 2006 movie rather then the 80s TV show, Crockett and Tubbs are played by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, respectively, as opposed to Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. With this in mind, Crockett looks nothing like Farrell and Tubbs looks more like Eddie Murphy. The details on the Ferrari and boat could have been more elaborate, but they were sufficient, as they are not seen as often as the characters who use them.
Audio
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The background music is fantastic. It consists of a mostly blues guitar, with what sounds like a synthesizer occasionally. The gunfire effects are loud and crisp. The voice acting is where the audio falls short. Extremely. The enemies' lines are extremely repetitive, and seem to be limited to only 10 lines at the most. Also, you practically hear the spit entering the microphone in the recording studio when they did the voice acting. Crockett and Tubbs again fail in this category, as neither sound like their actor counterparts, though the voice acting for both characters is still sufficient. Replay Value
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If you have a friend that also bought the game, the two of you can play co-operatively, and play the story missions together. The two of you pick either Crockett or Tubbs, and you blast your way through the levels together. While this is a great feature, this is not a game many people have, and you probably will not get a chance to try it. This mode also lacked an infrastructure mode, which watered it down considerably.
Upon getting enough reputation points in single player, you can purchase the Cheat Suit from the tailor, and upgrade the suit to unlock different cheats at each upgrade level. You can also try hacking all the FLASHRAMs, buying all the info, and getting all the gun upgrades. There is a hard mode to the game, though it is doubtful that many people would play the game a second time through from scratch.
The major flaw with the game is that the single player is extremely short, and the average gamer could beat the game in 7 or less hours. Experienced gamers and seasoned shooter veterans will probably finish the game in even less.
Summary
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In all, I'd say this is a great game. It is worth the purchase out ot the bargain bin, but otherwise, this game is best suited to a rental, unless you really like the gameplay, or if you're a fan of the Miami Vice universe.