GTA: Liberty City Stories (PSP)

My transition from GTAII to GTAIII didn't fare well, but I've become used to it. How has the transition from Console to Handheld fared? Read On.

The game takes place in the same location as GTAIII, but setting is 3 years prior. Toni Cipriani comes back to Liberty City after killing a rival mob boss a few years prior. But as usual for a GTA game, you start at the bottom and have to move your way up to the top.

With about 12 hours of play-time, I am at about 25% completion. There is literally a wide range of genres represented in the game. From racing, to action to stunt jumps. But how does this compare to the console counter-parts? A small gripe I have is that the only gun that you can run and shoot with is the pistol. Everything else you have to stay stationary when shooting. Still even with that, there is a wide assortment of weapons that are available. The weapon-upgrade system introduced in San Andreas isn't included but isn't really necessary either.

The game is literally Vice City in Liberty City. It includes many of the features of Vice City, such as jumping out of a moving car or motorcycles. But also includes a lot of San Andreas features as well such as the shooting of tires and clothes change. Although changing clothes consists of full outfits and not individual items. There are however limitations to having a GTA on a handheld. These are primarily hardware issues, such as the lack of a second set of shoulder buttons or a second analog nub.

With the lack of a second analog nub, the controls become a tad bit harder. The game uses the "L" button as a view complimenter. It is used for free look and also when sniping used to slow down the aiming reticule to help for more accurate shots. However they do make shooting out tires easier, all you have to do is shoot at the car and their tires will pop and start skidding.

Also there are the occasional annoyances of ground fighting. Rockstar has done their best to fix this but to no avail it still exists. I’m talking about locking onto the wrong person. Sometimes in missions, when you want to lock onto a certain person, you instead lock onto a pedestrian. Which makes the game very frustrating at times and is the single line between life and death? The vehicles in the game control just as fine as the console counter-parts as well. Motorcycles run noticeably faster though. But there is still a slight learning curve to become used to driving with the analog nub.

Also if you were wondering on how the load times were. The only Loadings I have experienced were when entering buildings, starting of missions and switching islands. Even then the load times are very acceptable. About 10 seconds for switching islands, and 5 seconds to starting a mission. With that in mind, there has always been a sense of humour involved in all the GTA games. Like one of the funniest scenes where you have to take pictures of a fat guy in a diaper chasing women. Other fun missions include the on-the-rails shooting and the funny dialogue after you do missions for your mother. You also need no prior knowledge to any events of the previous games as the game's story is designed for newcomers. But the game does reward you with returning characters from the series.

The graphics are definitely on-par with the PS2 version of GTAIII. Although there are a few slowdowns. The textures on the character models are fantastic although I believe they are made from fewer polygons. Another thing that’s odd was Rock star’s decision not to use motion-capture for the cut-scenes so the characters may seem "out of motion" a bit. The frame rate drops have apparently affected the game. Now when you are chased by the cops, only a few cop cars will chase you otherwise a slowdown would occur. Now when you get 5 stars, it is actually possible to survive. Slowdowns also occur when you enter the vehicle.

But other than that everything looks very beautiful. When first playing you will have to adjust to the darkness of the game. But after an hour or so you will no longer notice it. All of the weather effects are still present, rain, fog and sun. Not sure about Snow but I heard you will see it when you get to the third island.

Rockstar has recorded 9 radio stations for use in the game. There are a lot of humorous commercials as you'd expect from a GTA game. The music I am a bit iffy on as there are better music out there that can better represent '98. But otherwise the music here does an alright job of representing the era with boy bands.

Another feature that caught my interest was the inclusion of Custom Tracks. Although the tool Rockstar provides to upload custom tracks only works with CDs, there are work-around for it. But anyways, the feature is good and there are no problems with the sound as the music is encoded in Atrac3. Even better is the occasional commercials that usually play when a story event occurs. So far the only things I dislike about the feature is the ability to only use music from cds, and not having a system to play music in the order you wish (play lists).

I've had a limited time testing the multiplayer aspects of the game, but in the time that I have played with it, it was quite enjoyable. The only mode I've tried so far is "Liberty City Survivor" and "Tanks for the Memories". Liberty City Survivor is basically a death match using the whole island as a battleground. Anything can be used as your weapon, and also power-ups are scattered across the whole island. The mode is quite fun, and very balanced. There is even a feature that will signal to you when you are being locked onto. Before starting the game, you can choose which character skin you want, ranging from Police uniform to a pimp.

There is an occasional lag during wireless play when having it with more than one person but that is to be expected and it hardly hinders the game play. One thing I found to be ridiculous is how if a car runs you over and stays above you, your HP will continue to drop and you will eventually die.

Once again an Infrastructure mode would have done the game a lot of good. But if you have someone near you with the game, the Ad-Hoc mode is more than enough to satisfy any multiplayer insecurities you may have.

Definitely a must-buy for the PSP. Personally I'd have rather paid £20 for this game than £35. But the game includes a Map like all GTA games if you were wondering on extras. It’s a great game for the PSP, with the surprise addition of the custom soundtrack. There is just too much to do in the game that no review could nearly cover it all. I spent about 10 hours of my play time just driving around and looking for hidden items. Sometimes driving around in GTA will help you therapeutically, maybe you'd like to go to the beach and stare at the sunset. Even if you do get bored, you can always do the RC car races)

Pros

• Custom Soundtrack
• Short Load-time
• 60-80 Hours of game play
• Humour throughout the game

Cons

• Not an exciting story
• Camera issues
• Slowdowns