Brewology

What's best about "Miami Vice: The Game" for PSP is not what it is, but what it isn't.

Unlike Michael Mann's film, it is not a stark take on undercover cops featuring Colin Farrell's '70s porn-star moustache. It isn't a bite of "GTA: Vice City." And, most importantly, it isn't another feebly concocted movie game.

The tendency for movie and video game companies to jointly churn out garbage to make a quick and easy buck is reaching an all-time high — "Pirates of the Caribbean," anyone? — and I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not the case with "Miami Vice."

Rebellion, the game's creator, has done a solid, but not superb, job with this throwback, fluorescent '80s drama.

The game, based on the 2006 movie and not the TV series, puts you in the third-person shoes of either Sonny Crockett or Ricardo Tubbs, two undercover narcotics officers working for the Miami-Dade Police Department. The characters are modeled after Colin Farrell (minus the aforementioned moustache) and Jamie Foxx. Sadly, however, the A-list actors didn't lend their voices to the game, and their B-list replacements didn't do a good job. This, although not a major part of the game, was very disconcerting.