#occasionally you can find something attractive but then of course the price is ludicrous

[elephantbitterhead]

At long last, I have found a desk that satisifies my seemingly-simple-yet-somehow-actually-impossibly-arcane demands. It's a close cousin to the desk I left behind before moving to Scotland, minus that desk's ~200lb slate top (which is why I rejected the possibility of shipping it here). After 12 years without a desk, I'm looking forward to putting things in drawers & pulling out those little slab shelves.

Its top is also nicely aged/dinged up & I will enjoy running my hands over it -- see below:

It's going to be a tight squeeze to get it into the room where I plan to use it, so let's hope I can channel my crafty-furniture-mover persona (or that the top comes off easily).

[miraworos]

Azira Fell and the Apocalypse Scroll (T)

SUMMARY: The hunt is on for a mysterious and deadly scroll with the power to topple the world into chaos. Will Dr. Azira Fell, professor of Egyptology, find it in time to prevent the impending apocalypse? Or will an evil organization bent on destroying civilization find it first? To have even a chance at saving the world, he'll need to rely on the wily Anthony J. Crowley, professional guide and adventurer. But can Azira trust the inscrutable explorer, or will he lose his heart along with his life?

Or: A Good Omens Indiana Jones AU, because why not?

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford - 1935

Doctor Azira Fell hummed a few bars of Davies’ Op. 51 as he selected a couple of works from the Ashmolean library’s collection. Sunlight streaming through the clerestory window above ignited the gold-embossed lettering on the cover of a book chronicling the Ptolemaic dynasty near the end of the Hellenistic period. To Azira, who practiced knowledge the way others practiced religion, the glow seemed an omen of the treasure within.

Descending the step stool, he carried the volumes to a nearby table. He laid them as softly as possible on the polished oak and tugged the lamp chain. Then he sat in the high-backed chair, wiggling ever so slightly with the anticipation of the chase.

The passages for which he was searching would likely be buried in the usual drivel of martial accounts, rankings, and supply inventories. The Romans really were such tiresome windbags about conquest. Very few saw the forest through the trees with all their facts and figures and mind-numbing reports. Thus, it was up to Egyptologists like Dr. Azira Fell, associate faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, thank you very much, to find the occasional tree that hinted at the actual forest.

Azira took out his small, leather-bound journal, opened it to where the stub of a pencil was wedged into its pages, and began to record the call numbers of the volumes he’d selected. With any luck, he’d have a few hours uninterrupted by students to collect a handful of tidbits meriting further investigation.

“Dr. Fell!”

Azira’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. So much for uninterrupted hours. He hadn’t even made it five minutes.

“Dr. Fell, you have to see this.”

Anathema Device, Azira’s research assistant and the first American woman to study Oriental Studies at Oxford, popped out from behind a set of nearby stacks, breathless with excitement.

“There you are,” she said. “I knew you’d be prowling around the 932s. Look at this.”

She hurried forward, holding a hardcover book open toward him. He recognized it at once as her mother’s account of her expedition to Nubia at the turn of the century, before Anathema was born. Her mother’s obsession with Egyptology inspired Anathema’s own passion for the profession.

“What is it, dear?” he said, as he took the book from her hands.

“I’ve read this entire thing cover to cover so many times, but I never noticed this before,” she said, her face alight like it always was when she made a new conceptual connection or discovery in her research.

Azira looked at the place on the page to which she was pointing, but didn’t immediately see the source of her excitement.

“I don’t understand,” he said apologetically.

She took the book back and read aloud. “In late 34 BC, authorities on behalf of Emperor Octavian claimed that Mark Antony had stolen a sacred scroll from the Library of Pergamum and gifted it to Cleopatra of Egypt as recompense for the burning of the Alexandrian scroll collection during Caesar’s Civil War.”

“Yes, but that was a false account to discredit Antony. Your mother knew that. We all know that.”

“That’s not the interesting part,” Anathema said, grinning wider. “It says a sacred scroll as in one—not many. Scholars generally accept that the rumor stated Antony gave Cleopatra something like 20,000 Pergamum scrolls. Not one sacred one.”

Azira stood up. “You think she means the scroll? The scroll about th-the—Macedonian, er—”

“The Macedonian spice route,” she finished for him with a significant look. “Yes. I think she could have meant that. Hiding an indicator in plain sight is just like her.”

He took the book from her again and traced the spidery writing with excitement. Anathema’s mother was considered the preeminent authority on all things occult during the Ptolemaic Dynasty. That’s how Anathema had come to learn of the sacred scroll in the first place, through bedtime stories her mother had told her. Azira had learned of the scroll through other means, naturally, but when each had discovered the other knew of it, they instantly formed a bond that, over the last two years, had led to a close and trusted friendship.

“There’s more,” Anathema said, eyes dancing. “I looked up sacred scroll in her index, and the page it has listed is a separate page entirely, with no mention of a sacred scroll at all.”

“Which page?”

Anathema flipped the pages while Azira held the book for her. She stopped a third of the way further forward in the book, and pointed at a sketch of statue.

“I’m betting it’s some kind of coded location. But I haven’t worked out if it’s the picture or the words or both.”

“Good lord, Anathema. Are you sure it isn’t just a misprint?”

Anathema arched a cool eyebrow at him. “My mother never made mistakes. Not when it came to her study of Egypt. Never once.”

And, of course, she was right. Azira suggesting that the book was flawed was ludicrous. He had found firsthand accounts with less historical accuracy than the meticulously researched analysis he was now holding.

“Agnes Nutter, you sly devil,” Azira said, scanning the page Anathema had indicated. “You realize this means that not only did she know where the scroll was, or at least what happened to it—“

“—she also knew it was too dange—er, valuable, I mean—historically speaking—to let fall into the wrong hands.”

Azira was too lost in thought to chastise her near slip, though heaven knew what spies lurked in the stacks, just waiting for a crumb of information to fall.

“So it does exist,” he muttered to himself. “It does exist, and its location is knowable. It has been found at least once, and if it could be found by her…”

“It can be found by people other than us. Which could be bad.”

Azira tapped his lips, turning the puzzle over in his mind as he gazed at the page. “But where to start? We can’t go haring off into the desert without a proper destination in mind, my dear. We simply can’t afford it.”

“We could ask the Egypt Exploration Fund for an investment.”

“An investment for what? We’d need to tell them what we were looking for—”

“—the Macedonian spice route—”

“—as well as actually produce something of value upon our return. We can’t excavate a ghost, Anathema. No one would subsidize that.”

“On the contrary, brother,” boomed a voice from near the staircase about ten feet away from Azira and Anathema. “We may be able to come to some arrangement.”

Gabriel, patriarch of Azira’s extended family and, regrettably, Azira’s half-brother, approached their table with a jackal’s smile.

“What kind of arrangement?” Azira said with trepidation. He didn’t trust Gabriel any farther than he could throw him, family or no.

“Well, it just so happens Mother has a keen interest in the Byzantium-antiquities trade gaining momentum in the Mediterranean region.”

“What do tourist trinkets have to do with my research on the, er, the evolution of the gastronomical trade in the early Roman Empire?”

“I think your interests overlap quite nicely with the Foundation’s objectives in this case.”

The Foundation was the philanthropic arm of the White Dove evangelical organization Azira’s extended family had founded generations ago. It used monetary inducements to attract vulnerable populations into the fold, often at the price of sacrificing their cultural identity and heritage. That’s what had pushed Azira toward Egyptology and the study of antiquities in the first place. He wanted to protect the cultures and histories and identities of the people that White Dove’s Foundation tended to erase.

“What are the Foundation’s objectives, if I may?”

“Profit, of course. Profit that can then be turned to…charitable causes.”

“And by charitable, you mean missionary, I presume?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Don’t forget that a sizable donation from the Foundation helps maintain this academic institution you love so much.”

“You still haven’t said what it is you want me to do,” Azira reminded Gabriel as Anathema slowly closed her mother’s journal and eased backward to be half-hidden behind Azira. Smart girl.

“We need you to travel to Cairo and make inroads with the traders in antiquities. You have an eye for these things. You can tell when something is worth procuring.”

“And what do you intend to do with any relics I obtain?”

“Why, resell them, of course, at a price more fair for the discerning market,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the mysteries of the pharaohs have caught the imagination of others in the empire, others who happen to have the benefit of deep pockets. And why not indulge their petty interests if it encourages them to give generously to God’s chosen causes? In exchange, you could mount your expedition for your gastronomical …. whatever ... in your spare time, with our resources and our blessing.”

Azira pursed his lips, on the verge of refusing Gabriel’s request, no matter the familial consequence to himself. He didn’t need Gabriel’s blessing to go about his life, nor did he want it. If he was ever given it, he’d have to immediately examine at length whether he wanted to continue doing whatever it was that Gabriel approved of. Azira wouldn’t go so far as to classify Gabriel as evil—he was Azira’s brother after all—but if not outright malicious, then he was something just this side of it.

The refusal hovered on Azira’s tongue, despite the small nudge of a pointy elbow in his back. Anathema clearly wanted him to take the deal. But it was hardly worth the burden of being under Gabriel’s thumb again. The last time Azira had been in a similar position, it had not gone well.

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about setting up an antiquities trade, Gabriel. How would I even find these so-called traders? How would I know I could trust them to deliver a bona fide artefact?”

“No worries on that score,” he said with false amiability. He took a black card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Azira. It simply read “Crowley,” with no address or number, only a snake sigil curled along the left-hand side. “This man is affiliated with a trusted business associate of mine. He’ll see to you, help you set up when you arrive.”

“And how do I find him, then?” Azira asked, agitated. “There are no details on this card.”

“Oh, he’ll find you,” Gabriel assured him. “Your accounts have been furnished with whatever funds you might need for travel and expenses.”

Guide or not, funding or not, Azira simply didn’t have the wherewithal to do what Gabriel was asking.

“Gabriel, I don’t think—“

Gabriel took that moment to lean into Azira’s personal space, looming over the shorter man with a deceptively mild expression.

“Listen, Sunshine. I may have understated things when I posed this as a request. You will do as I say, or I will be forced to withdraw my protection from you and my financial support from this fine academy. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

Azira swallowed. Much as he’d regret the loss of the funds to the university, the larger threat lay in the euphemistic “withdraw my protection from you,” which meant far more sinister things than the words themselves invoked.

“I look forward to monitoring your progress,” Gabriel said with barely concealed contempt as he shook Azira’s hand and tipped his hat to Anathema. “And, as always, Godspeed.”

Then with a dramatic swirl of his argent coat, he took his leave.

Azira stared speechless after his brother. He hadn’t even agreed to go. But that was how White Dove, and its founding family, operated. No one was permitted to say no. Questions were forbidden unless strictly necessary. Only the most powerful family members were chosen to lead, and if those leaders dictated that something be done, it was done—end of conversation.

Azira had thought he’d escaped it by becoming an academic. For the last fifteen years, he’d managed to skirt most family engagements and nod politely at the ones he couldn’t avoid, until almost no one in the family even remembered he existed, but for the annual expense in the ledger with Oxford as the payee. Or so he’d thought. It appeared he was still very much on Gabriel’s mind, in the event that he might prove useful.

“Well, that was…something,” Anathema said, returning to her position by his side. “Is he always that pushy?”

“Most times, he’s worse,” Azira admitted glumly. Then he looked at the card in his hand, the snake sigil sending a thrill of foreboding down his spine. “Cairo.”

“Don’t look so downtrodden. This is exactly what we wanted,” Anathema said, laying a reassuring hand on his arm.

“It’s not the expedition that worries me,” Azira answered softly, tucking the card in his coat pocket. “It’s the demons we will owe when we return.”

Read Chapter 2 on AO3

Start at Chapter 1

[twylaymaa727-blog]

We describe the PC game Grand Theft Auto VC

Last year, Grand Theft Auto III took the world in surprise. While the first two games in the chain had a small, hard-core monitor, their basic 2D artwork and lack of a focused narrative structure control the request. On the other hand, GTA3 featured a massive, clockwork world which was really remarkable to consider, and it refined its predecessors' free-roaming, nonlinear layout also swollen a far more compelling story in the process. Those improvements, coupled with amazing vehicle physics, a bombshell amount of class in the gameplay, also a great perception of cut, made Grand Theft Auto III a fugitive hit and one in the extraordinary match that happens acknowledged by both great and relaxed game players similar. But as good as GTA III is, the next game in the sequence, Grand Theft Auto VC, improves after it. Vice City expands on the designs and strategies found in Grand Theft Auto 3, fixes some of the teenager issues in the last game, then adds many new powers and items to tease with. It all comes together to form one of the most stylish and most enjoyable games ever released.

The new Grand Theft Auto game is set in a fictional take on Miami, Florida, known as Vice City. The season is 1986, and Tommy Vercetti say now happened announced by jail after accomplish a 15-year stretch to the mob. The mob--more particularly, the Forelli family--appreciates Tommy's refusal to cry in exchange for a lower sentence, so they send him into Vice City to launch some fresh business. Tommy's first sequence of subject with Vice City is to gain a greater amount of cocaine to operate with. But Tommy's first drug trade goes sour, causing him without money, no cocaine, and no idea which wronged him. The mafia is, naturally, angry on the entire situation, now Tommy has to make up with the decline before the gangsters come down from Liberty City to clean in the mess. As Tommy, you'll surprise the investigation, decide that flew people down, take care of responsibility, also create store with Vice City in the big, big way. Oh, and you'll and make taxis, get involved in a turf battle between Cubans along with the Haitians, befriend a Scottish rock group named Love Fist, become a pizza delivery boy, smash up the local mall, demolish a form to real estate prices, hook up with a biker gang, run an adult film studio, remove a level, and much, much more.

While Grand Theft Auto has become a violent, mature-themed series, it has always calculated the chaotic crime with an total volume of tongue-in-cheek humor with cut. Vice City is no different, providing the exaggerated picture in the 1980s that makes use of many the loud pop-culture stereotypes found in tape with television from the decade. The drug-laced tale recalls such records as Scarface and tv program like Miami Vice. The comedy comes mainly from the radio, that really gets home the type of form-over-function mentality which many people link with the '80s. Some of the game's main characters are a spring of comic relief, in the Jim Bakker-like Pastor Richards to the Steven Spielberg-like porn director Steve Scott. The playoffs large cast of appeals is interesting and remarkable. For example, local drug kingpin Ricardo Diaz is always hilariously breaking something and cursing wildly each time anyone eventually tell him. Ken Rosenberg is the fidgety coke-fiend lawyer pal, next he receives you started in area by getting you connected with the city's key players. Lance Vance, appropriately said by Miami Vice alum Philip Michael Thomas, becomes your associate of persons, as both of you chase vengeance for your own reasons. Your Cuban gang contact, Umberto Robina, is regularly reminding you how much of a man he is, and most of the Cuban team members you'll face are likewise inclined.

Stylistically, the game shows an exact description of your normal '80s crime saga. Like here Miami Vice, many of the identities are wearing pastel becomes. The game's vehicles and right the tab, with a lot of basic sedans combined at home with vehicles which aspect enough like Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris to leave behind to the real thing. Nothing in the vehicles are passed, of course, though in the good touch, some of the cars are earlier models of vehicles which happened in Grand Theft Auto 3. Fans of the past game can undoubtedly appreciate little stuff like this also one other occasional ties on the earth of GTA3, that really help this another Grand Theft Auto game feel like part of a consistent universe.

As large as the game's presentation and using its foundation ideas survive, without a collection of gameplay improvements, that would experience lived little more than a mission group with a touch-up work. But Rockstar North has definitely been tough at work in this field. The most obvious addition is the inclusion of types of motorcycles among the many cars on the road. There's a decent variety of two-wheelers from the game, including mopeds, street bikes, dirt bikes, and massive hogs. As you'd think, the cycles feel a lot differently in one another. Your basic street bike is a good mix of fly with maneuverability. The immense choppers are harder to drive, yet give ludicrous top speeds. You'll get tossed off a motorcycle in virtually any impact, which costs you a small amount of strength or armor. That gets them pretty much useless in any situation that interests dodging the police. But they're incredibly handy in any vision that demands speed, with since you can influence a lot of fancy tricks on them, they're also many fun to drive around.

You'll also perform bit of rushing into Vice City. Like go through a number of major piece points, you'll available the western half of Vice City, which is locked apart on the dawn due to hurricane warnings. After that, you'll encounter vision to let anyone escape a seaplane around the city. You'll also get a few different helicopters here and there. Travel throughout the city is attractive impressive, and it show off the playoffs engine quite well--you may visit for miles when you're up inside air. While some of the city's skyscrapers are extremely tall to get on top of, you can settle the choppers in most from the game's buildings. Expect to find a few of the game's hidden items stashed away into these forms of difficult-to-reach areas.

Some new person cases have been included in the game as well. Pressing L3 will lock Tommy in a crouched put. That permits people suffer cover behind reasons and looks up the speed accuracy. You can also dive out of step vehicles, which helpful for ditching cars or bikes to the ocean, escaping a shed vehicle, or just ramming empty cars in different vehicles for kicks. Like wrecking a bike, bailing from a car causes some bodily harm. You can and enter certain buildings now. While the interior situations are few in number and mainly extraneous, they stare good and are used to effectively create a city that's more realistic than Grand Theft Auto III's Liberty City. You'll be able to go into your hotel then run right upstairs to help ones bedroom. You can also get into a nightclub, a reel club, the Vice City mall, and a few other buildings. There are load times associated with entering certain buildings, but they're pretty simple.

Many of the game's story missions are more involved than those associated with GTAIII. GTA 3 had many missions where you needed to get great before bring someone somewhere and return to your reward. You can get those types of assignment with Vice City, yet many of the novel game's missions are multiple-part business which include more than now shift by heart A to position B and then to spot A. Some positions are basic extensions, like because possibly having to break a respray look after moving a job. But, other missions are more required also involve the use of more-advanced strategies. For order, one mission requires you to hide a bomb in the mall that takes place swarming with cops. To do so, you'll first have to get a miniature heat chasing after you. You'll then direct the cops into a garage, where you'll ambush them also haul one of their standards so you can pose as a cop, which makes stepping into the heavily guarded mall possible. After you've taken trouble of company at the mall, you'll then should escape and get all the way time for the hideout.

The objective live fortunate designed for the most position. The noticeably longer average mission length is great, even if this could become a supply of unexpected frustration, since failure in a mission means having to replay every piece until you have it right. Moving back to a quest district becomes easier than ever before, even though. In GTAIII, you'd restart in a clinic or watch station and be compelled to bargain a car and hightail it back to a quest area, which could take a Grand Theft Auto Episodes from Liberty City Download while. Wearing Vice City, a cab appears close your respawn stage, with, instead of a tiny price, it will need people back to the last mission briefing question you visited. Unfortunately, since you're generally going to want to pick up some section along with several armor before heading back into most missions, you'll even have to get up to the local Ammu-Nation opening. This would have become fine if you could have treated the cab to handle this phase of the development as well. At any rate, while the game definitely has the portion of difficult missions, the average mission difficulty looks a level or two easier with Vice City than in GTA III, and so you ought to have to repeat too many missions too often. Though, overall, Vice City's amount of sweat is a lot like which with the earlier game, because of increased tenacity on the part of the police of their hard work to help impede you.

Alongside the cash to the missions themselves, the game's mission design is sweet different from that of the earlier GTA match. In prior installments, you were given a pretty clear-cut path to follow--you could have had multiple mission choices at any present period, and you consistently knew just what to do then plus for who. With Vice City, you'll spend the first piece from the game undertaking vision for people, much like in GTA3. But once the city is yours, you'll be working for yourself, going and go on your safety racket into collection and identifying yourself as the town's new boss.

Eventually, you'll even be able to go out with hold various properties, that begins up another missions. For example, when you buy the taxi company, you'll open up a series of taxi-related vision to occur separate through the edge missions to you can handle by entering any taxi. Once you've achieved a property's missions, to property may launch making money for you. This information means that money eventually turns into a nonissue--as it should be for any self-respecting crime lord--since your various properties will also have some cash for you. All you need to do is run around to all advisors with gather from time to time. There are several other properties to purchase, including the film studio, the Malibu Stick, with a car dealership. All the secondary-mission types from Grand Theft Auto 3 have returned, like as vigilante missions, taxi missions, fire truck vision, and ambulance missions. New to Vice City is the ability to do on a special type of scooter and transport pizza. Pizza is given while in motion using the same mechanics you'd normally work for drive-by shootings, only in this case you throw pizza pies on customers.

While the inspection in Vice City is mostly the same as which of Grand Theft Auto 3, the trading of the game's various cars feels really different, because game's frequent driving sequences seem much more exciting and dangerous. Perhaps in part due to the adjustment of point period, a lot of the cars feel a lot looser on the road and manage to find hit in a good bit easier. This presents much on the game the form of car-flipping, explosion-filled quality you'd expect via a great instance in the A-Team. And when you consider the new ability for you--or other in-game characters--to burst out tires, handling becomes an even bigger question. Cars with blown tires are really hard to control, making car chases to very much tougher when you have a flat (or many). And as if cars weren't dangerous enough, a motorcycle with a blown wheel is nearly useless, as it usually spins exposed next puts people over the handlebars whenever you try and attain any significant speed. One of the tougher vision gives people trying to get a cycle with even tires returning to a motorcycle bar while remaining pursued by angry thugs.

Cars split apart in an even more spectacular fashion now around. Along with holding away tires, you can hit up cars with your melee weapons now. Reaching winning and caving in a car's hood with your baseball bat is usually a good way to make the tenants to quit the vehicle in a hurry. You can also run out car windows and even hit the people inside car with your shots. That becomes an enormous difference when it comes to taking away cars, as you can now aim at the rolls to slow down the vehicle down and then take away the drivers with a well-placed rifle shot.

As revealed, the police have become a much more powerful risk than they were in Grand Theft Auto 3, especially since they have the ability to get the wheels about your own getaway car. Attempting to jump in a auto then run off the picture of an crime usually gives the cops enough time to take out among the wheels. In higher levels of response, the police force set up spike strips to take off every the tires. Of course, they'll and set up standard roadblocks also act all of the things the Grand Theft Auto 3 cops did, including ignore most common traffic violations. Though, in Vice City, stirring up a serious ruckus will get both the rob and the FBI in the situation. Helicopters will also chase after you. This time in, SWAT players will in fact rappel out of the helicopters, making them more dangerous. If you can manage to get a good shot with a chopper's cockpit, although, you can rent one overcome with individual strike. On the supreme level of law enforcement answer, the multitude once again rolls tanks on the street, doing your own chance of success slim. All this means that, as in GTAIII, many encounters with the conviction with Vice City can be extremely exciting. Yet, one mark for the police record is the fact that the policemen still do not deal with elevation changes remarkably so. If you come across a square garage then effect the first or back ground, the police officer aren't wise enough to get the system around deal with you. They'll even hold firing in your general direction, even though there are several blocks with ceilings between a person along with the specialists. But you'll encounter such a thing really rarely amidst many, many wonderful and powerful chases and shoot-outs.

While there are a lot other systems in Vice City, the free arsenal gets really changed that significantly overall. The most obvious additions are in the melee weapon department--or, somewhat, the hardware department. You can visit a hardware collection and grab a screwdriver, a strike, a trusty baseball bat, or a machete. You'll and learn other melee weapons in different measurement on the city. Knocking the course, for example, gets it easy to find a golf club. You can also make a chainsaw, which is large with principle, but surprisingly unsatisfying in action. Weapons are destroyed upward in another styles. Your main attack rifle will be a Ruger, but later on you'll manage to obtain the M16. You can have one weapon in each grade, so picking winning an M16 can return the Ruger, getting a golf club can change your baseball bat, and so on. The choice of weapons closely mirrors GTA3's set, only now with more types of pistols, submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, sniper firearms, and confused explosives.

You'll work your way upward from central weapons up to deadlier versions. For example, the Tec-9 is a good submachine gun, but later on you'll be able to obtain a MP5K, that includes a much faster measure of passion. Later still, you'll be able to wield rocket launchers, a flamethrower, an M60 machine gun, or even a Gatling gun. Different weapons have different weights, and your movement rate may suffering from the bat you're holding. Wielding a gun or a submachine gun lets you throw at full speed. Busting away the shotgun or rifle prevents people through sprinting, but you may move normally. Also the deep weapons cause you to land around slowly. The ending system by GTA 3 has been reworked a bit for Vice City, making it easier to target opponents and house the video camera by obtaining too crazy when you're locked on a goal.

Vice City also increases on GTA 3 graphically. The only trouble with the image is the body rate's movement toward bog down after you've grew a mess of law swarming all over you, doing escape to very much harder. But considering that problem is no worse in Vice City than it had been during Grand Theft Auto 3, and that the game looks a good bit better overall than Grand Theft Auto III, it's not really a huge deal. The entire glimpse on the game is quite different from their predecessor overall, but technically, that modern Grand Theft Auto game owns a radically cleaner appearance. The character examples become superior gaze, and the animation--some of it reused from GTA3--looks great. Some of the highlights include jacking a bike in the top, which affects Tommy to complete a wing jump end that beats the condition dust away the bike. Jack a cycle in the wall, with misery give the elbow to the look with the condition.

The draw distance is a lot farther away this time about as well, meaning you can see a greater distance down the road than you can in GTA 3. This is even more apparent when you're flying high preceding the city and can see most the way across to the new part of it. But you'll still see when simply driving in the street, especially when you give up a cause car and watch this cruise off outside with its. Outside which, the playoffs surfaces are lively with bright, properly considering what '80s-era Miami should look like. Nearby shops are mixed with neon that glows nicely at night. You'll also see whole lot of large little touches, such as the flicker of sunshine down the openings of community cars.

GTA 3's sound played a crucial cut with establishing the tone to the overall game. The voice acting used throughout the history segments effectively shared the offense lie, and the air offered the soundtrack to go with the action. Vice City's sound is a dramatic increase on GTAIII's already amazing good. The sport cast is top-notch. The main variance from the words run becomes which, unlike in GTA III, the advanced spirit in Vice City speaks. Tommy Vercetti's expression is given by Ray Liotta (Blow, Muppets By Area), who does an excellent post of produce the character to life. The rest of the voice talent--which includes Gary Busey, Dennis Hopper, David Paymer, Danny Trejo, Luis Guzman, Philip Michael Thomas, and retired adult film actress Jenna Jameson--also does a very good post. The playoffs positive effects are top-notch. Everything from explosions to gunfire just sounds outstanding.

The radio classes with Vice City are extremely well done. The '80s music found on the posts really helps settled on the tone to the entire game. You'll find plenty of