[Infernal Mass]

The litany of vehicles from the previous game has grown in GTA: Vice City, with new additions that makes driving exceptionally fun to handle for serious, efficient missions, or for simply tooling around like a drunken monkey. The cars I drove included the taxi, cop car, Cuban gang car, Phoenix (a Trans Am lookalike), Cheetah, Infernus, Station wagon, '80s SUV (a Suburban lookalike), Stallion, Idaho, Stinger, the Comet (a convertible Porsche lookalike), and the loveable Banshee (which looks like a Corvette). The Banshee, Infernus and Cheetah are still all very fast and they handle with exceptional tight braking and ridiculous acceleration speeds. But they might all be topped by the new Comet, a slightly boxy looking Porsche Carrera, which has unmatched cornering skills and moves with lighting fast speeds.

The best driving experience, however, is perhaps best found on two wheels. The motorcycle driving experience is worth the game on its own, and there are several kinds, providing gamers with a well-rounded variety of driving sensations. The burning fast street cycle -- which was shown in the earliest GTA Vice City shots -- is accompanied by the slower meatier chopper; and now I have ridden a Vespa-like scooter, and a two-stroke dirt bike! The street bike accelerates well and it makes for some incredibly excellent 180-degree powerslides. It's designed to hit top speeds quickly, and one of the missions I played was a "collect-the-icons" mission, that takes place along rooftops and includes numerous jumps and ramps, of course, under a timer.

The chopper provides a slower ride, with a louder sound, and it rumbles like a heavy piece of machinery, giving you a feeling of unrivaled macho power. This should be real fun to play with when the chopper gangs come into play later in the game. It takes wider turns and provides gamers with different animations, too, such as Tommy sticking out his leg during a turn (where, on the street bike, he leans into it). Funnily enough, The Vespa is surprisingly good fun. It's quick, but obviously slower than the other bikes. It's incredibly easy to maneuver, and performing 180 power-slides and quick, tight turns, required for slicing through traffic, for instance, are easy and fun. It's excellent to use to slalom through traffic. The two-stroke dirt bikes are weak in comparison to the other bikes, giving off a loud, whining sound, and providing little power. They too are easy to handle, especially on grass, dirt, and the beach. Nonetheless, they are quite novel and provide easy escapes.


As Rockstar said in an earlier IGN feature, GTA: Vice City features an assortment of excellent "Insane Stunt Jumps" (now there's "Unique Stunt Jumps") and many of them are designed entirely for bikes. Like the mini-mission I took -- the mission on rooftops and through narrow alleys -- it can only be performed by a fast, two-wheeled vehicle. One important thing I learned is that becoming involved in a massive, three-star chase with angry, aggressive cops is no place for a motorcycle rider. Since the cop AI is stepped up from GTA3, as soon as the fuzz smashes into your bike -- no matter which one you pick -- you go flying, and both you and the bikes take damage. Still, if you have mapped out the area, and know where the jumps lie, then escaping from the cops can be a spectacular calculated risk (or failure).

What's exceptionally cool about the bikes is that players can pull off stunts with them. By simply accelerating fast, and pulling back up the Dpad or left analog stick, players can pull off wheelies and can keep them going as long as they can control them. To help facilitate this move, the R2 or L2 buttons give a side view. The bikes can also do endos, too, meaning they can stop suddenly to perform nose wheelies. By pressing Square (brake) R1 and up on the left analog they can perform these nice little added tricks. I suspect there are some missions or Insane Stunt Jumps hidden in Vice City requiring wheelies or endos. Also, one last thing, during any kind of jump, players can adjust the tilt of their bikes back or forth to adjust to the upcoming surface. The bikes bounce when they land, showing just how nice the new shocks work.

The boats weren't so much of a surprise. They function very much like boats in GTA3. Naturally, I didn't get to skipper all of the boats, but I was able to pilot a catamaran and I did get to boatjack another boat! It was cool! You pull up next to another boat, getting parallel with it. You press Triangle to free up from the wheel, and then position yourself to ump onto the boat. Press triangle again, and you chuck the other person from the wheel. In this particular case, the woman boater did a surprisingly funny thing: She ran off the boat! She simply ran off and kept running into the water. Weird! Perhaps that's not what will happen in the game, but I suspect something similar will happen. Because after all, what else are they going to do? Also, for the record, Tommy can't swim. HE CANNOT SWIM. If he falls into the water, he dies. So, you can now stop sending in all those emails with that question.

Although I have written about it before, bailing from cars and bikes is a kick, and well worth examining. It's exactly like it sounds: You press Triangle and than bail (it takes about one to maybe two seconds to initiate) from the vehicle. This kind of thing comes in real handy when you're about to jump from one side of the island and you don't have enough speed to make it. Right before the jump you can simply bail letting the vehicle careen into the water.

Similarly, you can bail from a bike. I was surprised at how little damage the bike and I took. I bailed four or five times from a bike before the engine even started smoking. (I suppose that reaching even higher speeds would cause more damage, but I didn't see it.) The bikes wobble off in the distance and then fall over, and if they're not destroyed, just walk up and drive them again.

Bailng is also very handy when you're being chased in a slow car. When a nice Cheetah comes your way, just bail a good ways in front of it and grab it. There is no noticeable physical damage that Tommy takes, though points are taken off your health score. And if you are driving with a passenger and bail, both you and the passenger ae injured as a result of bailing.