The first of what is sure to be an influx of online previews has appeared on German gaming website 4Players.de. We can surmise the following details from the article:

• Lance Vance is "a drug-dependent wreck"
  
• Golf caddies appear, from this we can ascertain that Leaf Links is still a golf course.
  
• In some missions Vic will be helped by Lance and Ricardo Diaz. (Something that has been in all the recent GTA games)
  
• Explosions have been improved with hissing sounds, jets of smoke and parts flying everywhere
  
• Pop ups and fade ins were still a problem in the preview that 4players.de saw, however, Rockstar assure us that they will be sorted out in the final version
  
• It is confirmed that Ving Rhames will voice Victor, this was partially confirmed a few days ago by the updated cast listing for VCS @ IMDb
  

Source: 4Players.de, GTAReactor

Two magazines in Europe have received a preview of Vice City Stories recently. The first being GamesMaster. No new screens appear in the mag but we can surmise the following information from it:

• The game's radio stations will contain "hundreds of top tunes"
  
• "A lot of new vehicles, including all sorts of aircraft" are to be included, on the whole, a "mixture of old and new"
  
• The transition from land to water to air travel will be easy
  
• The vehicles in the game will be a "mixture of old and new"
  
• The plot will feature both new and old characters, most of which will be new, though
  

Secondly, Official PlayStation 2 Magazine France have also received a preview. As my ability to read French isn't too strong, I can't clarify that the following information is 100% accurate (online translators aren't good). If you speak French fluently please let me know via PM or E-Mail if you can clarify the info.

• As the storyline revolves around the two Vance brothers, humourous situations are said to be plentiful
  
• The magazine saw fairly empty streets but Rockstar promised that they will be twice as full with pedestrians and vehicles when the game ships.
  
• Rockstar supposedly has a big surprise planned for the WiFi Multiplayer mode. There's no hint of what this might be though.
  

Thanks to Ultimate Taz for his scans of Games Master, and Genius for the OPS2M France info.

You may recall in yesterday's news post that CVG took down their screenshots of Vice City Stories. We've now managed to get hold of the screenshots, as well as a couple of old artworks, now in excellent quality.

None of the screens are new, but they're much nicer to look at than the poor scans people are making.

Links: GTA: VCS Screenshots, Artwork

Dmac_91 has posted on our forums that CVG have some high quality screens up on their site. Unfortunately there aren't any new shots, and the screens all have huge watermarks over them. They've come from a disc that was handed out to the press in Rockstar's meeting rooms at the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany. This of course means that other press members will have the screens, so we'll add them to our gallery as soon as we get our hands on unwatermarked versions.

Link: Computer and Videogames

UPDATE: It seems the page and screenshots have been removed. We'll try and get the screens added to our gallery as soon as we can.

The latest issue of PSM magazine is out in the United States of Americaland, it includes a preview of Vice City Stories and is actually the first US magazine to even get a preview of the game. The following details have emerged.

• The Cure are one of the artists the magazine heard on the radio, expect songs from them in the game.
  
• You'll be able to see "considerably farther into the distance" than in Liberty City Stories thanks to the improved draw distance.
  
• The magazine's writer got to play four missions, lasting on average 10-15 minutes. This is a substantial improvement over Liberty City Stories' mere 5 minute average.
  
• Custom Soundtracks will return - Using the Rockstar Custom Tracks application you can add your own music to the game.
  

Alongside this are two new screenshots:

Our friends at GTAUnderground have also posted a couple of new artworks that were featured in the magazine, one of the jet ski in action, the other portraying the Vance brothers.

Screen Fun, a German magazine, has a preview of Vice City Stories in their latest issue. Details are a little bit scarce at the moment, but I'll summarise what we've heard so far.

• You'll see many different vehicles on the screen at the same time. This was a problem which has been fixed since previous iterations, whereby you'd see many of the same vehicle in certain areas.
  
• The controls are the same as they were for Liberty City Stories
  
• Vic will receive text messages on a pager. This is actually how Claude received messages in GTA3.
  
• The invitingly named Chunder Wheel, (the big ferris wheel) is in the centre of the city.
  
• You'll need the helicopter in many missions in the later part of the game.
  

There are three new scanned screenshots too, along with one other we've already seen, high res but rather grainy:

As well as three artworks depicting some new characters:

Thanks to Medalion Man @ GTAForums for the information.

Finally, we have some nice digital screenshots to show you, not from IGN or Gamespot or some other large gaming website, but from Game.co.uk, Europe's leading specialist games retailer.

You can view all the screens on our VCS Screenshots page.

Source: Game

The Official PSP Guidebook Magazine, yet another UK publication, has a rather uniquely styled preview. An interview with Mr. Rockstar on the VCPR radio station.

The preview contains mostly already known details, some of which are below:

• In terms of the narrative, the new trailer park which we found out about earlier is going to be a key part.
  
• There are more than 70 storyline missions to play through.
  
• Urban renewal is the term used to describe the period in which Vice City is going through. You'll see many familiar landmarks uncompleted with scaffolding jutting out.
  
• The soundtrack still isn't finalised. Rockstar realise Vice City's soundtrack was so good that they're trying even harder to better it now.
  
• Foliage and explosions have been improved and look a lot nicer than they did in the original Vice City.
  
• The AK-47 and Sniper Rifles return, the full weapon list is yet to be finalised.
  
• There's a suggestion that you'll be Monster Truck racing at the Hyman Memorial stadium.
  
• Another subtle suggestion implies that the basketball minigame may make a return from San Andreas.
  

Keep in mind those last two bullets aren't confirmed, they're just suggested.

Thanks to DeAnO_GTA~MaStEr for posting about this at GTAForums.

In other news, we hear Vice City Stories will be shown to select press members at the upcoming Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, according to Take Two Interactive Germany. This is behind closed doors though. But at least we can expect some different previews from some more publications. Keep in mind we still haven't even had a US magazine with a preview yet, so if you live in America look out for any magazines with previews in upcoming issues.

Source: GameFront.de

German magazine Play The Playstation has a few more details on Vice City Stories. Again we are still only seeing European and Australian magazines with previews, not one single American publication has received a preview yet, which is somewhat strange considering past GTA games' previews.

The magazine, which goes on sale August 18th, gives the following details:

• You will NOT be able to modify vehicles in the game
  
• The game will have the same outfit changing feature as Vice City and Liberty City Stories, you still won't be able to change individual garments as you did in San Andreas though.
  
• You can once again manually target the crosshairs on your gun for more accurate shooting
  

Thanks to German fan site GTAReactor.de for the news.

*UPDATE*:

It seems that this magazine may not have actually received a preview of the game, and what they've actually done is (poorly) translated information they've found on fan sites. The screens they have are blatantly stolen from a certain fan site, and also, they stupidly refer to Vic as 'Vic Lance' (*laughs*), not Vic Vance, as we all know is his real name, and that Lance is actually his brother.

Take this information as you will, but we reckon this magazine never received a preview, and as such, doesn't contain any factual information.

Coca-Cola have recently produced a brilliant advert, parodying the world of GTA. The twist being that the character is now a good guy. In the advert we see the character (who bears more than passing resemblance to Claude from GTA3) hijacking a car and driving eratically, scaring shop owners and what not. With various other references to GTA (including a SWAT helicopter) and a catchy background tune, I think you'll like it.

Link: Grand Theft Coke @ YouTube

Thanks to everyone who notified me of this link, there were many of you.

The Vice City Multiplayer team are holding a public beta test for version 0.2 of their multiplayer mod for Vice City all this weekend. Head on over to ViceCityMultiplayer.com where you can download and install the mod.

The server you'll want to connect to is the following:

IP Address: 203.57.95.118

Port: 5192

For further information you may want to join their IRC channel.

Nowadays when it comes to stunt videos, we usually always see them coming from dedicated sites such as GTAStunting. However, last year, we decided on our forums to make a video of our own. Unfortunately the project fell through, but earlier this year, a small group of members tried to revive the project, and now their video is finished.

The video, entitled Blackout was mostly organised by Ghost, with stunts also being provided by Slayer, Jace and Engel. It features a good mixture of both aerial, car and bike stunts across the state of San Andreas. Blackout is 5 minutes 47 seconds in length and is quite a large download at just under 95MB.

If you're interested in participating in a community stunt video, then fear not, as Ghost also has a Vice City video planned which we're still capturing stunts for. You can check out this topic for more information on that.

If you're not yet a member of our forums, we recommend you sign up today. Registration is free, fast, and easy, and is a great way to get involved with the GTA community.

As I'm sure you were aware when we posted yesterday, GamesTM is available today in the UK, and we now have more information on Vice City Stories thanks to their preview.

• Sea planes and helicopters will be included, this probably includes the Skimmer and Sea Sparrow we all know from the original Vice City
  
• Philip Michael Thomas, who voices Lance Vance is "the only confirmed voice talent" at the moment
  
• Binoculars will be available at all times, rather than just being available on one or two missions like the camera was in Vice City.
  
• Jet skis will have completely different handling to boats, as is expected
  
• Different pedestrians will appear at different times of day. For example, you'll see people partying late at night, and bums early in the morning scouring the streets
  
• Phil Cassidy is to return. GamesTM say he appears in one of the game's loading screens.
  
• The city features enhanced dynamic lighting effects, essentially making Vice City look a nicer place.
  
• A brand new Rocket Launcher will be available for your everyday general explosive needs
  

Unfortunately we can't post scans as we'd be breaching the copyright, however, our friends at VCS:PSP have posted some nice high quality ones you can look at for the moment, not sure how long they'll be up though.

GamesTM, another UK publication, goes on sale tomorrow, and according to Kikizo, Philip Michael Thomas who voiced Lance Vance in Vice City will be returning in Vice City Stories to voice the same character.

Thomas became world famous playing "Tubbs" in Miami Vice, the legendary TV series which Vice City drew inspiration from.

Amongst other details the magazine gives are the fact that once again gamers will be frustrated by the annoying 'pop-up scenery', whereby objects will suddenly appear when the player is in close range, often resulting in dissatisfaction for unlucky gamer.

The magazine also suggests the game will revolve heavily around Vice City's waters. Since the article (like others recently) contains inaccuracies we shouldn't take this as 100% confirmation, but it's a pretty good indication.

You can check out Phil's colourful career at his IMDb page.

Source: Kikizo

The latest UK edition of Official Playstation 2 Magazine has a four-page preview of Vice City Stories. The magazine, available only to subscribers until Thursday, seems to have virtually the same hands-on preview that Australian GamePro Magazine had, which unfortunately for us means there isn't a lot of new info.

Two of the screenshots in the magazine are new, and the following information is given to us:

• One of the SMG's in the game has the ability to have a silencer fitted
  
• Two sports cars, the Phoenix and the Stinger are confirmed to return.
  
• In a couple of screenshots we can see Vic with a tattoo on his right arm, however, whether or not this is customisable as in San Andreas is unknown.
  
• Weather will have an affect on the sea and make it very choppy. So driving boats and jet ski's during a thunderstorm or a hurricane (possibly?) should probably be avoided
  

The screenshots (some of which are the same) are better quality than those printed in GamePro, we'll hopefully have some images to show you shortly, possibly even an official site update soon. Expect a lot of new info then.

Thanks to Neil for the info.

The latest edition of Australian GamePro magazine has an exclusive interview with Rockstar. Editor Chris Stead has posted on GTAForums letting us all know about the magazine. We've got scans of it which he has allowed us to post, and we've got details of vital information and new features below.

Vice City Stories - The Brothers Vance - That's right readers - not only was Australian GamePro the first in the world to play Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, but we also got to put the hard questions to RockStar themselves in our world exclusive interview!

• Victor Vance is the main character. Vic is a 28 year old marine in peak physical condition.
  
• VCS is set in 1984 and is "much" bigger than Vice City, there are also lots of familiar buildings that we see just entering development.
  
• Improved Animations - The animations have been improved massively from the other GTA game. It is now much more realistic and the character's emotions are are more true.
  
• New Vehicles - JetSki's for example, are in the game.
  
• Vic does have the ability to swim.
  
• The game will feature a multiplayer mode similar to that in LCS.
  
• New weather effects including hurricanes
  
• Less "A-B" missions, more unique style of gameplay
  
• New water effects, shower the streets with spray from your jetski.
  
• Vice City's radio stations will return with new songs
  
• New loading system which means only slight pauses before missions
  
• Improved draw distances (again) - better than other titles.
  
• Increased density of pedestrians, foliage, cars and objects
  
• Less "clumping" (where groups of the same model would appear together)
  
• There's a new theme park on Ocean Beach - it includes the "Chunder Wheel" - a large ferris wheel which you can ride on in first person view!
  
• Trip Skips return, this is where a taxi appears after you die and can take you back to the start of the mission you were attempting.
  

And the downsides? Well, it is confirmed that Vice City Stories will not feature the following things:

• Character and Vehicle Customization
  
• Wall Climbing
  
• Seamless integration of interior and exterior areas (as seen in LCS) will no longer be in VCS
  

Thanks to Jar-Jar at GTAForums for getting this info to us