Boat missions play a large role in Vice City.
However, Vice City isn't just GTA III-in-a-new-town, as Rockstar has added a number of significant new features. You can ride motorcycles, which allow you to shoot directly in front of you, making drive-bys much easier. Buildings are no longer hollow shells; you can enter several buildings and even purchase property, which becomes a key element in building your empire and progressing through the game. If you get killed in a mission, you'll often find a taxi waiting to take you back to the start, saving you the trouble of having to jack a car and drive all the way back. There are a number of boat and helicopter missions completely unlike anything in GTA III and this barely begins to scratch the surface.

City Sounds

While it may only take up a bullet point or two on the back of the box, there's no underestimating the contribution Vice City's brilliant audio adds to the game. First, there's an amazing cast of voice actors, with Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti, as well as Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, and Miami Vice's Philip Michael Thomas as sidekick Lance Vance. Even smaller parts are filled by notable names such as Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, ex-football star Lawrence Taylor and even adult film star Jenna Jameson. Luis Guzman is particularly brilliant as drug lord Ricardo Diaz, stealing almost every scene he's in with his animated (and agitated) hysterics.

The helicopter offers some amazing views.
The other component of Vice City's audio is the soundtrack. You spend a lot of time driving around, and there are nine radio stations available to listen to at any time. In the tradition of the series, there's a lot of humor to be found in the form of talk radio and fake commercials, but unlike GTA III -- which had a completely original soundtrack -- Vice City's soundtrack features the biggest hits of the '80s, with artists like Michael Jackson, Judas Priest, Toto, and Run DMC. There's even one-hit wonders like A Flock of Seagulls and Gary Numan, with roughly 100 songs that can be played from the CD or installed to your hard drive (it's a 2-CD install, and with music, takes up nearly 1.5 GB).

If none of these stations are to your liking, there's a PC-only feature that allows you to create your own custom radio station simply by dragging your own MP3's into a special folder. It may not sound like much, but let's face it: Everyone likes driving with the radio on, and since you spend so much time driving, the soundtrack really helps define the character of Vice City.

On the technical side, however, the PC version benefits from a number of upgrades, the first of which is support for resolutions up to 1600x1200 (as opposed to the PS2's 640x480). Everything looks a lot crisper, and in particular, almost everyone here at GameSpy HQ who's watched me play has pointed out the huge improvement in draw distances (an adjustable setting on the PC). Many of the textures appear to have been bumped up in resolution, although a few stragglers could be found here and there. The latest GTA games have never been on the graphical cutting-edge, and Vice City is clearly not going to steal any visual awards from DOOM III or Half-Life 2, but considering the size of the world and all its moving parts, the graphics get the job done. (We'll just hope that Rockstar switches tech for its next games).

Just one of the many cars available in Vice City.
Another change PC gamers may welcome is the obligatory addition of mouse/keyboard control. It may seem like a small thing, and it doesn't have much of an effect on driving, but when you're forced to get out and shoot, the ability to aim with the mouse makes things much easier. Console diehards, you can whine all you want, but there's simply no substitute for aiming with a mouse; there are a lot of gamers out there who have stopped playing the GTA games (and other shooters, for that matter) out of frustration with the controls. My buddy Allen got particularly upset watching me blaze through the "Phnom Penh '86" chopper mission on my first try, picking enemies off rooftops with ease -- nothing like the trouble he had attempting the same mission on the PS2 and aiming with the analog stick. (If you must, there's gamepad support as well, which you might find handy during the helicopter missions.)

One of the few complaints levied at last year's PC version of GTA III was the state in which it was shipped. That game required a pretty strong PC to run, and many gamers had trouble getting it running consistently, requiring patching on Rockstar's part. In the interest of full disclosure, we've only been playing Vice City for a week, but from what we've seen so far, the game is in a far better state this time around. I've yet to encounter a single crash, and have actually been playing through the entire game at 1600x1200 with a solid framerate.

Normally, this would be the point of the review where we talk about a game's multiplayer except there isn't any in Vice City. As much as we'd like to cruise the streets with our buddies, however, it's hard to complain -- there are so many things to do that you could probably play for weeks and still not see it all. You can get a job flinging pizzas from the back of your bike, open a "special business" while driving an ice cream truck, take part in various races or just drive around performing crazy stunts.

Some missions require you to play gunner instead of driving.
Of course, no review of a Grand Theft Auto game these days would be complete without a disclaimer regarding its mature content, which has sparked all sorts of controversy since GTA III was released. Vice City is in every way the equivalent of an R-rated movie, with profanity, violence, and any number of other things that make Jerry Falwell turn in his pajamas. It's definitely not a game for 10-year olds. However, it is a game for adults: It's smart, it's funny, and it's just damned FUN.

To be honest, my biggest disappointment with Vice City is that -- as we're all getting set for a week in Los Angeles to cover E3 -- I have to put it away for a while. Many of today's action games compel gamers to race through them as quickly as possible, rarely stopping to enjoy the scenery, but Vice City is the total opposite. It's a game you want to soak in; a game you want to take in slowly and enjoy every moment. I can't tell you how many times I was heading for one of the "main" missions and simply decided to go another route and explore some corner of Vice City. Maybe I wanted to see if I could actually make that jump across the river, or climb to the top of that building, or simply see how much trouble I could get into. If you haven't been to Vice City yet, pack your bags -- it's a trip you won't soon forget.