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Vice City doesn't seem very big any more. When it was first released in 2002 - 2002! How long ago does that seem now - it provided us with an expansive, decadent world full of new areas, missions and people to explore and interact with. Then, in 2004, we were stunned yet again: the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas expanded the playing area fourfold and introduced us to a gaming experience the size, literally, of a state: three cities, and just as much again of countryside full of small towns, mountains, lakes and rivers. True to form, the story of the Grand Theft Auto world is not exclusive to the individual games. Its characters and plotlines cross over the various titles. This brings us, neatly, to one of the classics in the Grand Theft Auto series: Vice City Stories. It's less of a full blown, full fat, fully loaded and brand new addition to the canon of Rockstar's finest; instead, it's more of a portable prologue, a port of the PSP game of the same name that's been ramped up to somewhere more approaching PS2 standards for a public clamouring for more.

The game begins two years before the events of Vice City and sees you guiding Vic Vance, Private in the United States Army, along a path that becomes more volatile and dangerous as the game progresses. Kicked out of the army for being caught with prostitutes and drugs - meant for your Sergeant, Jerry Martinez - your only choice is to turn to a life of crime to support your sick brother back home. Soon after, you're plunged into a seedy world of 80s hedonism: drug-running, cop-shooting and gangster-baiting that Miami Vice would never have shown, even after 9pm.

When Vice City Stories first appeared on the PSP, it was, safe to say, a revelation: practically a PlayStation Two game - a Grand Theft Auto game, no less - crammed into a hand-held console. The reviews at the time reflected this, with scores nudging into heady heights wherever the game was play tested. It was then announced as a port across to the PSP's venerable uncle, the PlayStation 2, and the world salivated: would Rockstar deliver another, fully fledged Grand Theft Auto title, building on the foundation of the portable original to devastating effect, ladling more 80s nostalgia into the already overflowing Vice City environment that we're all so familiar with? The truth, despite the early promises and internet hype, is a little more down-to-earth.

Despite Rockstar's best efforts to optimise and improve the game for a large-screen, home console audience, it's clear that Vice City Stories is a portable title at heart. Perhaps we've been spoilt for choice by the bevy of fantastic Grand Theft Auto locations we've explored over the years: the original Liberty City, 80s haven Vice and the stunning expanse of San Andreas State have all whipped up an impressive amount of expectation for any fledgling story set in the familiar GTA universe. That's not to say it's just a poor relation of these larger games, however: it can more than hold its own. Just don't expect the revolution that we've been spoilt with before: think of this as more of a snack than a fully-fledged meal.

So, what's the deal with this GTA Lite? All the familiar elements you've come to expect from the series abound. Flashy, exotic cars cruise up and down the strip, bathed in garish neon light, as rusty spare-or-repair jobs trundle in between. You can also expect many more varieties of car and truck, although transport options are more limited this time around, understandably, due to the portable origins of the title: there just aren't the mind-boggling selections available that there have been in fully-fledged PS2 titles in the series, and aerial options are similarly restricted. It also doesn't help that, after soaring over the majestic, gigantic landscapes of San Andreas for two years, we're now being confined to one city.

It also struck me when I was playing the game, after experiencing the latest in the series, that Rockstar seemed to have cheated us a little bit with the size of Washington Beach: it's huge, taking up over half the island it accommodates. Fort Baxter Air Base and Escobar Airport take up similarly behemoth chunks of Vice City, and whilst these impressive installations didn't look out of place in San Andreas', they take up too much room here. The various areas of the city - Little Havana and Haiti, Vice Point and Prawn Island, to name a few - feel squeezed in and represented as a mere sample, or a demo, of their real-sized selves. Districts flash past in seconds, and it's difficult to not draw comparisons to the last game in the legendary series, especially in terms of the size of the various environments.

I feel like I'm on a tangent, however: there's not much point in drawing extended parallels to San Andreas when, despite the minor flaws that are brought about through excessively gifted relatives rather than through fault of this title itself, the game more than holds its own. The missions that guide you through the intricate and typically dramatic plot are intriguing and exciting, if lacking a little of the imaginative spark of its predecessors, and they easily satisfy those with a hunger for Vice City's 80s life. The tasks you're asked to complete revolve around driving and shooting, taxiing people around the city, completing orders from your superiors, and, generally, behaviour you really wouldn't want your mother to know you were involved in. There are also numerous side-missions to complete, including a relatively deep, absorbing and involved mode of play that hadn't been seen in any Grand Theft Auto game to date: the opportunity to take over Vice City with your own business empire - both legitimate and slightly less so.

'Empire Building' forms a central point of game's plot as well as a highly engaging side pursuit, allowing you to unlock various types of firm and a multitude of rewards for successful running of your ventures - that stretch from prostitution to robbery to gun-running - that are both financial and material in nature.

Graphically, Rockstar have done a good job trying to hide the cracks that show up in the translation from pocket pictures to big-screen grandeur. New, PS2-powered particle and trail affects streak after your car when you're travelling at high-speed, providing a relatively good sensation of velocity. The rest of the game, in a slight change to the other titles in the series, has even more of an 'Arcade' feel that seems to be something of a hangover from Vice City Stories' clunky and unsubtle hand-held origins. While the preceding games didn't exactly pride themselves on lavish amounts of detail - think back to them being shown up by The Getaway's gorgeous recreation of Old London Town - they always provided a fantastic spectacle when combined with the atmosphere of the rich, vivid worlds as a whole. Vice City Stories, on the other hand, seems to revel in bland, static, flat textures and often dodgy collision detection. These aren't often important in the middle of a gangland fire fight, and the memory of Vice City from games past will often fill in graphical gaps and glitches that are properly exposed on a larger screen, despite Rockstar's attempt to fill in the various missing pieces.

I've tried to avoid comparison, but with a game like this, it seems unavoidable, the interweaving and plotting of the series being so intertwined from title to title: whereas San Andreas filled a world with cartoon visuals that impressed due to just the right balance of detail and slick pace, Vice City Stories has been optimised for an obviously weaker machine - the PSP - and this comes glaring through in the conversion. You'll see vast amounts of empty, blank walls in this title that you just know would have been paid more attention if it was a title developed for the console originally.

The original Vice City was the first Grand Theft Auto game that really stunned players with the depth and breadth of the soundtrack provided by in-game radio: famous names blared from every speaker, linked up by genuinely interesting and funny DJ's. San Andreas took these in-game entertainment sources to the next level, and its here, as with the graphics, where Vice City Stories impresses without really achieving the heady heights of its predecessors. There are, of course, sure-fire classics littering the nine stations that make up the audio world of Vice City Stories, including the returns of fan-favourites V-Rock, Flash FM and Emotion 98.3, and popular DJ Lazlow returns, too - as well as the first radio role for GTA cult figure Fernando Martinez. Tuning the dial as you drive you'll find KISS, Motley Crue, Phil Collins (who has a cameo in the game), INXS, Alison Moyet, Blondie, New Order and 10CC, as well as many other stars whose 80s celebrity was only beaten in size by their hair. The problem with this, though, is the driving. Bizarre as it may seem, part of the attraction of San Andreas was the necessity of driving cross-country and going through several songs and the intertwining DJ banter while you were at it, and getting a real flavour for the station. Despite the brilliant soundtrack to the game, you hardly hear any of it beyond the occasional snippet as you drive to the next mission or task - the relative size - or lack of it - in the game area means that you'll never be able to hear a song all the way through before you're out of the car.

The gameplay is solid almost all the way through, if not as spectacular as its big brothers, carrying on the fine tradition of the series: the mechanics of the title are always good enough to provide a genuinely enthralling and addictive experience. The new targeting system is a bit hit-and-miss, however: it's supposed to guide you through the pedestrians who may get in the way of your bullets hitting their intended targets, but it's made it even less controllable and responsive than the controls were before. Perhaps this is a symptom of gamers having to control it on the clumsy PSP nubbin rather than a more precise analogue stick, but it robs you of any control you once had and leaves the combat feeling slightly formulaic.

As I play the game, I can feel Vice City Stories yearning: striving and fighting to escape its hand-held origins, finding itself hogtied by hardware limitations. It's a game with the best intentions (aside from the morally dubious material, if some news sources were to be believed) and one that sets out to try and provide the best, most involving, prettiest and most aurally-pleasing experience that a PS2 gamer can have, but it's ultimately let down by its foundations. No matter how much plastering Rockstar have tried to do, PSP is still seeping through large TV screens up and down the country. That's not to say it's a bad game: graphically, it's fine, the gameplay is absorbing and involving and the sound is great. But those expecting a fully-fledged chapter in the Grand Theft Auto story will have to wait for Grand Theft Auto IV, appearing later this year. This game is more of a prologue to the events of Vice City, and the smaller price reflects this. It's for completists and those searching for a quick hit of fun, and if that's what you're looking for, this should certainly satisfy.