GTA: Vice City Stories - first look

Remember that island in between Vice City's two main areas? The one run by Ricardo Diaz? He's not quite the major player he was in the original, but some of your missions will ensure he makes it to the top. In "Steal the Deal," Diaz wants you to head to a strip club with your brother, Lance, and keep tabs on someone. After the dude leaves, you gotta stay on him, but keep far enough back to avoid giving yourself away. In this case, Lance (who's in love with the drug-laced lifestyle) lets you know how close you are to spooking the other driver.

Eventually the dude hops on a jet ski (apparently they're going to be whored out a lot) and heads out to a dock crawling with gunners. Ideally, you'd want to sneak up, scope out the area and plan an assault, but our demo ended in an all-out shootout. Once everything that had a face was dead, Vance took off, only to be tailed by a set of loaded speed boats. True Miami Vice moments for sure.

Finally, we saw "Taking the Fall," where Lance Vance's credibility and sanity are really called into question. He has this idea that a bunch of bikers are stealing "product," and wants to, well, teach them a lesson. As you might expect, that translates to "kill them all." Lance is so incensed that he demands to do the shooting while you pilot a helicopter over the bikers' construction site hangout.

Eventually, Lance falls deep into biker territory, and by the time you blast your way through, he's already stolen himself a top-of-the-line bike. And guess what? There are no drugs in sight - Lance suggests they must have sold it all, but we're thinking maybe, just maybe, Lance is a little more homicidal than first suggested.

Brett Elston

A fomer Executive Editor at GamesRadar, Brett also contributed content to many other Future gaming publications including Nintendo Power, PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazine. Brett has worked at Capcom in several senior roles, is an experienced podcaster, and now works as a Senior Manager of Content Communications at PlayStation SIE.