Grand Theft Auto: Vice City PC Game

Inspired by the look portrayed on television's stylish crime drama Miami Vice, the game takes place in the 1980s with criminals wearing pastel-colored suits, bikini-clad babes relaxing on sandy beaches, and palm tree-lined streets bustling with motorcycles, cars modeled after Ferrari Testarossas, and more. Players can now enter buildings like hotels or discos and walk through hallways to visit rooms.

Players can embark on a series of missions to build a reputation or simply explore the city, hijacking one of 120 vehicles (including motorcycles) and wreaking havoc on foot with an arsenal of 40 different weapons. The targeting mode has been refined once players leave their vehicle, with the camera taking a fixed position behind the character's shoulder and an auto-targeting system based on priority and danger level.

The change in vistas has resulted in new types of pedestrians populating the streets, including roller skaters, joggers, and different gang members. The AI has also been retooled to account for greater variety in pedestrian movement as well as gang behavior. Now gangs are designed to act independently of players and will fight with citizens or steal their cars. The police will also respond to these incidents, and may attempt to engage in high-speed pursuits with gangs as players go about their own business.

Features exclusive to the PC version include the ability to edit the lead character's appearance and switch to a radio station that plays MP3 files stored on the computer. Perhaps the biggest change is the improved visuals, now optimized specifically for high-performance systems. Players will be able to view the game with new 32-bit textures, longer viewable distances, and support for multiple display resolutions. Furthermore, players can watch replays of the last 30 seconds of action and then e-mail them to friends. ~ Scott Alan Marriott, All Game Guide