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| Source // PlayStation.com |
After a successful trilogy of titles on the PlayStation 2, where does the Grand Theft Auto series head next? The PlayStation Portable is a thing, and Rockstar does have a studio that specialises in handheld games... How about we roll the clock back a couple of years and revisit Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories?
Can GTA3 be squashed onto a UMD? How will a lack of buttons and sticks affect gameplay? Do I have enough charge in my battery for this mission? Let's find out.
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| Source // PlayStation.com |
Fond Memories
On January 28th, 2006, I gave up. So far as I could tell, I was at the last mission of the story but just couldn't get past it. It involved lots of boats, and then a helicopter at a lighthouse, and I just couldn't complete the damn thing. Death after death after death, and with all those deaths means restarting from a hospital or reloading your save, and both require travelling back to the mission icon, skipping the cutscenes, and getting through all the bullshit once more.
Calm down. Calm down.
After another few attempts in 2020, I decide there is only one way to overcome my problem. Other than cheating, which I will definitely resort to. It's emulation. Let's transfer some saves and relive those memories.
Fun Times
So here we are, in Liberty City, as we all remember it from GTAIII. There are some subtle differences, notably bridges being under construction as LCS takes place a few years earlier, but much of the map is the same.
We are Toni Cipriani, working for Don Salvatore Leone. Recognise the names? You don't have to. I barely do. Salvatore is adamant that we save the mayor from the Sicilians. I've literally no idea what the plot has done to lead us here - it's been fifteen years since I've touched it, for goodness sake. But let's go and save the mayor.
The driving controls are those that you expect, and they feel alright on the PSP itself. The sliding analogue nub is its own beast to get used to, but driving isn't the problem, really. Shooting is the problem.
Ok, these are bad examples of showing the problem. More are coming later. R1 (or, I guess, 'R' on the one-shoulder-buttoned PSP) locks onto the nearest target using San Andreas targetting triangles, and the circle button fires your currently selected weapon.
On the waters, we have infinite ammunition and close to that many boats chasing us down, waiting to be blown up. Abruptly, Portland Island loads in. It's a short load, I suppose, but there is a fair bit of loading on the PSP, as you might have guessed.
Eventually, we make it to a lighthouse where our target - and the mayor we're trying to rescue - is holding up. I've been here many times before. Up to this point, I'm competent. Ideally, I'd have lots of health and armour still left. Cheating can solve that. We don't mind cheating, do we?
Oh, there's a hidden package here. I guess in my 9 hours of playing this back in late 2005 I never bothered with the side attractions, of which - like other GTA titles - there are a fair few. Hidden packages, stunt jumps, rampage missions. As well as taxi missions, you can even make money selling cars. But I'm here to save the mayor, damn it, and I'm determined.
Frustrations
This. This is bullshit. The lock-on works. I can't complain about that. What I can complain about is miracle cover that enemies can crouch behind. Can you crouch behind cover in LCS? No. The animation is there - I've seen it in cutscenes. But is the action in there? Nope.
And so you have to stand in the open, like a sitting duck, hoping to tank the incoming damage enough to dish it out when you get the chance. Even with full armour and health, you'll go down quick, against just one armed threat, let alone multiple.
I flanked my target. Do you think I can hit him from here? Can I bollocks. That crate is blocking every shot. Every single one!
LCS is painful. GTA games often have a lot of grind when you die or fail and have to restart, but this is the absolute worst, even with shorter missions 'suited' for handheld play. To control the camera requires you to stop in place, hold the Left shoulder button and set the camera with the analogue nub. It requires you to go into combat in a different way to the console games.
But I'm emulating this now. I'm going to go into combat not only with cheats but with save states. LCS, your time has come. I'm finishing this mission. I hope it's the last...
With no grenades to lob, I wasted a rocket on this twat, but could finally reach the lighthouse and deal with this helicopter.
Ok, the first attempt wasn't very good. Missed rockets will do that. But savestates will do this.
Yeah, well, I need more than save states. Save states and cheating and not standing in front of a machine gun will do this!
Further Fun Times
In an anticlimactic finish, the helicopter catches fire, spins, falls into the sea, and that's that. I've done it. Have I done it? It feels like I've done it.
Hell yeah, we're done. What did I do? What was the plot? Is it time for GTAIII yet? I'm not entirely sure. I think I need to start a new game.
Liberty City Stories tells the tale of Toni Cipriani, coming back to the city and being told to lie low by our boss, the Mafia Don, Salvatore Leone. If I know anything about Grand Theft Auto, it's that we won't be doing that for very long.
Yup, there we are. Crashing through the traffic is a staple of the series. The rules of the road don't apply to you. The cops don't take much notice. Turn the music up and drive like a maniac. Several radio stations are available, complete with a few period-appropriate tracks, and the PSP version can play your own music through the in-game radio.
For every step down from console to handheld - like very basic cutscenes to introduce missions - there's a step up. Motorbikes make an appearance in Liberty City for the first time. If you're wondering where they all went in GTAIII, the instruction manual in the form of the Liberty Tree newspaper answers your queries: a protest group sponsored by car manufacturer Maibatsu encouraged the citizens to 'knock these killers off their motorcycles' to save the children. How very noble. How very satirical. How much we miss paper manuals in our video game boxes.
The Sindacco's are muscling in on Leone territory, so we're put to task to deal with them throughout the game. The PSP version chugs along fairly well, those motion is blurred quite a bit. Was that an effect of my early PSP model? I forget. Suffice it to say it's not too distracting. Not as distracting as the slowdown. It's to be expected to some degree, but when ported to the PS2, LCS ran even worse. I read that mobile phone ports are the best way to play this game. Eesh.
I branch out after a couple of missions, and can now accept jobs from this JD fella - if I'm wearing the right set of clothes. He doesn't deal with the Mafia, apparently. Come back when I'm not in this slick suit.
Well, I only intend to keep playing until I die or am busted. I'm at half health already and haven't seen nor accidentally run over any health pickups to change that. But now that I have a gun, you can bet my time is running out.
Ah, nuts.
Final Word
After 10 hours of gaming, spread across 15 years, I've 'completed' Liberty City Stories. But as I can't recall any of it, have I really? Should I go through it again? Should I endure the suffering that the controls bring or the slowdown? Should I push through the combat all over again? I suppose this time, I've got save states available to me.
Liberty City Stories is a bite-sized, but no less impressive Grand Theft Auto title. The whole city is here. All the gameplay you remember. The side missions you probably don't care about. The radio stations you don't listen to. It's fully voiced. It's Grand Theft Auto in your pocket.
But it's not without its problems. The city can now be navigated with a pause menu map, at long last, but it still has that GTA slog from marker to marker. They're shorter slogs, but if you have to keep redoing them because of combat not going your way - and combat won't go your way, prepare for it - they're going to add up quick.
The controls are limited, as they have to be, and while the mission structures have changed to accommodate the handheld, they're still annoying. Using an actual analogue stick instead of a nub helps out, though, which leaves you either with an awful PS2 port, or emulation.
If you're desperate for a GTA game on the go, there are better choices. But this is Liberty City. We like Liberty City. It's a nostalgic setting, especially when it looks like GTAIII, only smaller. For all its faults, LCS gets a lot right. It knows it can't do too much, but it offers so much. This wasn't phoned-in. There's a big game here. A big game in a little package.
Give it a shot, on the PSP if you can. Go through the same pain I went through. I might go through it again. I'll probably watch it instead, though...
Fun Facts
Despite feeling incredibly similar, the engine underneath the hood is completely new, designed with the PSP in mind.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, developed by Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar North, first released in 2005.
Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2005, also via teenage memory and emulation.