G'day, folks. Official Playstation2 Magazine (UK) is the second publication to feature information on Vice City Stories, less than a week after Australian GamePRO got the first hands-on look at the new Grand Theft Auto title. Most of the content is familiar ground, and echoes the details given by GamePRO - however, there are a handful of specifics that we're finding out about for the very first time.

Now for the rudimentary summary (including the bits we already know):

• Vice City Stories takes place in 1984, two years prior to the legacy of Tommy Vercetti.
• Many of the locations we’ve come to know and love from our first trip to Florida haven’t been completely built yet – or even started, for that matter.
• You can take to the air (helicopters!), seas (jet-skis!), and ground (completely new vehicles!) this time round.
• The main character of Vice City Stories is Lance Vance’s older, more badass brother, Victor Vance. He’s currently posted at Vice City, awaiting his departure to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
• Rockstar hints that the boys may have grown up in a low-income family. This is re-emphasized at the very beginning of Vice City Stories - you start the game off in an all-new locale; a trailer park.
• The article takes a shot in the dark and wonders if a looming closure of the trailer park (Avery Carrington, anyone?) may be responsible for the misadventures of the plucky Vance brothers.
• The third mission (Taking the Fall), as we know, features a local biker gang as the antagonists. Surprise surprise, it’s Mitch Baker’s band of hoodlums!
• Visuals have been grossly improved. Draw distance has increased, the resolution on signage has been upped, and the scenery is much more detailed.
• Issues regarding model clumping (seeing a whole whackload of peds gathered together on a street corner in some sort of twisted congregation of civilian look-alikes, for example) have also been addressed.
• Vice City Stories features its own fun fair/theme park/exhibition/whatever you want to call it. The important thing is that it has a huge ferris wheel – the Chunder Wheel - that you can ride in first person.

Related links: GTAForums thread, Vice City Stories forum

PS: As always, head on over to GTAForums and register yo’self up to participate in the ongoing discussion about Rockstar’s upcoming GTA title.