A new videogame is renewing the debate on the link between onscreen and real life violence.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the fourth installment of the tremendously popular -- and controversial -- videogame series, arrived in stores Tuesday.

The Playstation 2 game is a bigger, badder version of its predecessors. Players move their way up an organized crime hierarchy, progressing from stealing cars and beating up old men for pocket change, to shooting police officers with high-powered firearms.

"You can do whatever you want," said Alex Davis, a Toronto videogame store manager. "You can go out on any street, take any car, run into any store, pick up anything you want and, obviously, beat up anybody you want."

Grand Theft Auto is more of an interactive movie than a videogame. Realistic computer animation replaces the cartoon settings of other videogames. And the game features an all-star cast of voices, among them actors Ray Liotta and Luis Guzman, porn star Jenna Jameson and NFL great Lawrence Taylor. Take-Two Interactive Software, the company that developed the game, is even releasing a soundtrack.

It's a formula that has proven to be hugely popular among videogame fans. With global sales topping eight-million units, Grand Theft Auto 3 is the fastest-selling, highest-grossing Sony Playstation 2 game released to date. Grand Auto Theft: Vice City, which has sold more than six-million copies in advance sales alone, will likely top the record.

The game is a new breed, some say, because instead of shooting at targets indiscriminately, players are required to choose their targets and victims.

"At lot of the issues around the violence hit home, or are getting more attention, because that's your choice as a player," says Radical Entertainment game developer Danielle Michael.

Some say that's why it crosses the line.

"To hear that this latest game is aiming at law enforcement is disappointing to say the least," says Sgt. Bob Beaudoin, with the the RCMP's North Vancouver Detachment.

Despite critics' fears that games like Grand Theft Auto spur real-life violence, experts say a link has yet to be established.

"Here's the bad news: We don't know," says Nick Dyer-Whitford of the University of Western Ontario. "The debate about the effects of representation of violence in media has been long-standing and it's been inconclusive."

That hasn't stopped places like Australia from banning the series. Some U.S. cities are pushing for new laws that would block the sale of games like Grand Theft Auto to minors.

The videogame industry has responded to the controversy by establishing its own rating system. Games like Grand Theft Auto come under an "M" classification for mature. Fewer than 10 per cent of video games receive a mature rating.

The rating system is voluntary. Though vendors are required to label games, there are no rules prohibiting minors from buying them.

"It's still up to the individual consumer citizen to decide what is it they want to purchase, what's their taste," says Harvey Nightingale, executive director of the Canadian Interactive Digital Software Association.