GTA: Vice City Stories - First Look Preview

One of the best selling titles for the PSP, Rockstar Leeds' GTA: Liberty City Stories is in the personal collection of around half of the UK's PSP gamers. Such a fact meant that a follow up was inevitable, and a trip to the mid-80s town of Vice City soon beckoned. Set in 1984, two years before the events of 2002's GTA: Vice City, TVG recently had the opportunity to take a flying visit to the new look town...

No doubt by now, you'll have heard that the events of Vice City Stories centre on Victor Vance, the elder brother of the original Vice City's Lance. A soldier in the US military, Vic arrives in Vice City ahead of his next posting to Guantanamo Bay, only to find himself caught up in his brother's dubious antics with the city's criminal underbelly. In a similar move to Liberty City, the atmosphere is set to be quite different to the Vice City of 1986; the yuppies are yet to make their mark for instance, and there's a lot of construction work going on throughout the city. That said the layout of the roads remains the same, and familiar locations from Vice City (such as the golf course) will be there for Vic to visit this time around too. Perhaps the most noticeable addition to the Vice City-scape is the Chunder Wheel, a giant Ferris wheel and homage to the Wonder Wheel of Rockstar's The Warriors and Coney Island, New York...which Vic can take a ride in.

There were a number of criticisms levelled at Liberty City Stories, mainly for the perception that the franchise had taken somewhat of a backward step. Whilst some would argue that such comments were a tad unfair given that the preceding GTA title was San Andreas on PlayStation2, the lack of swimming, clambering, and flying abilities in Liberty City Stories meant that even without the RPG-like character attributes, such missing features left players wanting. One year on and with the release of GTA's second outing on PSP just weeks away, developer Rockstar Leeds has already made strides to fix all of that.

During the course of the demonstration, we got a first hand look at two key additions to the game: Vic's ability to swim and fly. For a long while, it seemed that swimming lessons weren't part of the curriculum in schools across the world of GTA, the result being that characters had a habit of drowning, even in shallow water. When CJ Johnson in San Andreas finally mastered the art, it opened up the gameworld to greater depths, quite literally. Thankfully the ability, which Toni Cipriani also failed to learn by the release of Liberty City Stories, has been added to Vic Vance's repertoire - perhaps he learnt it at military school? Aside from a quick swim in the water, Rockstar did confirm that the deep blue will get more than enough gameplay time in the missions.

We were however shown one flight-based mission, which saw Vic and Lance team up against a gang that has apparently stolen some drugs. Whilst Lance took to balancing out of the door of the helicopter with an automatic rifle, Vic (the player) flies the vehicle above the streets of Vice City to the top of the building that the gang is hanging out. In the mission, as well as controlling the chopper, players will have to take into account Lance's balance on the side of the helicopter (indicated by a balance meter) so he can get an accurate aim on the targets.

Back to the water, where Rockstar has introduced a new mode of transport for the GTA franchise as a whole, a vehicle that pretty much epitomises watercraft in the 1980s - the jetski. Essentially acting like a motorbike on water, the jetski is a fast and mobile vehicle, far more than the speedboats that have featured in the series so far. In the mission that demonstrated the jetski, Vic is a stuntman for a chocolate commercial - one of the latest productions to come out of Vice City; racing across the waterways that surround a lot of the city and collecting time-enhancing checkpoints, Vic has to ramp onto the road before jumping onto the good old PCJ-600 motorbike to continue the shoot....

With the new swimming and aerial gameplay, Leeds has also been hard at work developing two different aspects that will enhance both: longer drawing distances and improved water effects. The extra year in getting used to the PSP has enabled Leeds to increase the draw distances quite considerably compared to its predecessor, so that the distant shapes of the buildings on the horizon fill the background of the city ever so slightly. In addition to the buildings, the studio has been working on new algorithms that decrease the amounts of 'clumping', where the same vehicles and citizens appear in close proximity. Added details to the water have also been made to the game, including a wake behind boats and an added detail to the waves. In short, the water is more realistic than the water in any of the previous GTA titles (and yes, that does include San Andreas). Another added refinement in Vice City Stories will include shorter loading times when Vance crosses from one of the Vice City islands to another; in fact, they are noticeably shorter than in Liberty City Stories.

Since the PSP is a portable system, Rockstar Leeds devised shorter missions for Liberty City Stories that could fit into a 'pick up and play' session of gaming, but for the follow up the studio has gone back to the longer missions that we all know and love. Relying on the fact that the Sony handheld has quite the effective standby mode, Vice City Stories' mission lengths will take a tad longer than just a bus stop of two, but it may just make the experience flow better than before.

One of the key elements of the original Vice City that helped to ground it in the 1980s was its soundtrack, which included the likes of Quiet Riot and Michael Jackson. In the same way, Vice City Stories will also include an eclectic mix of early to mid-80s music. Though the complete line up of tracks is yet to be confirmed by Rockstar, its use in the game's trailer is sure to mean that Foreigner's iconic 80s hit 'I Want To Know What Love Is' will be making an appearance in the final release. As with the appearance of Frank Vincent as Salvatore Leone in Liberty City Stories, another GTA alumnus will be reprising a role for Vice City Stories: Miami Vice's Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance.

Rockstar also confirmed that Vice City Stories will feature multiplayer modes, but that's for another time...