The PSP always had a problem with shooters. The lack of a second analog stick will forever haunt it, and no other genre gets their undies wet more than shooters. Usually games just use the face buttons to move the camera and aim, and this is a barely functional solution. Miami Vice is not one of those games.

With an over the shoulder camera, you'll be moving around using tank controls with the analog stick, and you can only shoot your weapon while aiming. You cannot move around while doing so, and you'll only have a laser beam to pinpoint your exact aim. If this sounds familiar to you, then I'm sure you know that this is very similar to OG Resident Evil 4. Yes, somebody actually copied RE4 controls. I can't think of many games that do this. Anyways, it actually turns out pretty good, because this control scheme fits the PSP's button scheme quite well. It's obviously not as deep as RE4, there's no melee attacks or anything like that. It does have a decent cover system. The enemy AI can goof around pretty often, but they're pretty accurate and can mess you up if you're exposed for too long. All of this results in a slower paced, slightly clunky, but ultimately satisfying gunplay. Unfortunately a lot of things hinder the combat, including the one-note level design, nonexistent enemy variety, basic objectives, and limited weapon variety.

Outside of the combat, there's a drug economy system where you can fnd the highest bidder to sell your drugs to, so you can get cash to buy weapons and upgrades and such. There's a reputation system that rewards using weaker weapons, no armor, and certain gameplay feats, but it's quite easy to maintain a high reputation so there's not enough incentive to do it for the long term. You can unlock weapon upgrades by collecting "flashRAMs" and doing a hacking minigame in order to decrypt them. There's also a "balance the rope" minigame when you want to sell your drugs to the most lucrative client. Both minigames are pretty okay. While these systems are all undercooked, it's nice to see the devs at the very least trying some fun ideas.

I'm not familiar with the source material, and the story is just meh. Luckily it's quite light in story. You can play as Crockett or Tubbs, I don't think there's any significant gameplay difference between them.

While the game itself is just pretty alright, Miami Vice offered a glimpse of what could be the ideal combat system for a PSP shooter. It could be a trailblazer, maybe in another reality it did. But here and now, it's at least a neat food for thought.

...and yes, it does bother me that you're selling drugs that is stored in the police depository back to random drug dealers to get cash.