No. 1, with plenty of bullets

Ray LIOTTA is a very bad man. He can hardly believe it himself, watching what vaguely looks and sounds like the actor stomping across a TV screen, a dark-haired wiseguy with a tough Jersey sneer, wreaking havoc in a Florida resort town. He’s doing terrible things, stealing cars, firing weapons, igniting gang warfare and battling local cops and FBI men.

Then there are warnings and insults, shouted in Liotta’s distinctive bark: “Get out of the car!” or “You’re not a cop, you’re a robot!” and “Don’t make me angry!”

The voice already sounds angry, which is a key to its dangerous charm, adding another layer of brutal personality to this year’s top-selling video game, “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.” Liotta is the new voice of the game’s antihero Tommy Vercetti, a man just out of prison and enjoying a renewed career of crime and revenge in the pastel ‘80s.

But his lead role doesn’t mean Liotta is any less astounded by the game’s high-concept package of computer graphics, gangster mythology and dark, dark comedy. He saw the finished game for the first time in his publicist’s Beverly Hills offices long after the game’s release in October.

Not that he’s playing it himself this afternoon. The PlayStation2 controls are in the hands of a producer from Rockstar Games. Liotta is no gamer. He has never played a single round of “Pac Man” or “Donkey Kong” in a bar or restaurant. He doesn’t even use a computer at home.

“Oh, yeah, I’m like a little kid,” says Liotta, 47, still watching the screen. “I’m shocked by all of it.”

He’s portrayed many edgy characters over the years, from the enraged ex-con boyfriend of 1986’s “Something Wild” to the young hood of 1990’s “GoodFellas” and last year’s good-bad cop of “Narc.” The aspect of “Vice City” that has his mind spinning is that all across the country, gamers control his motions and criminal acts on their home game consoles.

“Now we’re going to shoot something?” he asks, as the Rockstar producer sends Vercetti on yet another dangerous mission. Then, as Vercetti jogs through traffic, Liotta shouts directions at the screen: “Take that car! Take the taxi!” Liotta’s eyes widen. “See, that’s unbelievable!

“Then I could have taken the other car. I just think it’s really cool. Go left! Down there! That’s amazing to me. Go right, right, right!”

“Vice City” sold nearly 3 million copies in its first month on the market and has now sold about 8 million worldwide. The PC version of “Vice City” will be released May 13.

In previous editions of “GTA,” Vercetti and his cronies never spoke. But for “Vice City,” the game’s creators have upped the ante from massive sales of 2001’s “GTA III,” enlisting Liotta and a cast of veteran actors, including Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper and Tom Sizemore, each providing the voice for a key figure of sin and abuse on the streets of a fictional Florida metropolis. The Rockstar script spins a dark satire of the glossy ‘80s underworld of “Miami Vice” and “Scarface.”

That amounted to about seven full days of voice-over work for Liotta in New York and Los Angeles last year, acting out the longer dramatic scenes between missions, along with the 100 pages of throwaway lines that accompany Vercetti on his crimes of profit and revenge.

Liotta knew of the controversy surrounding the “Grand Theft Auto” series, with all its violence and sexual innuendo, which has earned special scorn from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), a longtime critic of the video game industry.

But Liotta was comfortable with the project after discovering that games were subject to a rating system, much like movies. “Vice City” is rated Mature (for players 17 and older).

“In this day and age, when you attach your name to something and if you don’t check it out far enough, it can bite you later on, as it’s done with some people,” Liotta explains. “I just wanted to make sure. That’s not on my radar.”

Prestige and name recognition were not the reasons for hiring Liotta and other expensive actors, says Rockstar writer-producer Dan Houser. Their names don’t even appear on the box. “I don’t think anyone would ever buy -- nor would we want them to buy -- a game based on the fact that a famous actor is doing the voice,” says Houser. “If we want these guys [in the game] to sound like gangsters, then you need the guys that can do that and deliver their lines.”

At Rockstar, says Hous- er, dramatic elements are no afterthought. “Characters and narrative are a great way of helping video games move forward as an art form,” he says.

Liotta figured his work on “Vice City” would remain somewhere “under the radar.” But on the street, he finds people asking him not about “Narc” or “GoodFellas,” but frequently obsessing over “Vice City” with an intensity that Liotta compares with his nearly four years on the NBC soap “Another World” early in his career.

“It’s almost feeling like being in a hit movie,” he says.

Last year there was inevitable interest from Hollywood to transform “GTA” into a film, though Rockstar instead chose to spend its time creating “Vice City.” And at least one actor is beginning to understand.

“I’m just not a game person,” Liotta says. “But now that I see it, it’s pretty cool. If they do the movie, I better get the part, that’s all I could say.”