Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories @ Gaming Target

Written by Adam Woolcott on August 10, 2005

First Impressions: Nearly guaranteed to be as hot as a cup of coffee.

Not too long before the US release of the Sony PSP, Rockstar Games made an announcement that stirred up a hornet's nest of discussion Ц that a Grand Theft Auto title was in development for Sony's portable platform. While the announcement in itself wasn't a real surprise considering the inevitability of a GTA game appearing on the system, the discussion based itself around whether it would be designed in the spirit of the top-down GTA games of the past as well as the recent GTA Advance, or done in the form of the modern GTA games that have become so influential and controversial. To the certain delight of GTA fans across the world, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories will thankfully be the latter, pushing the capabilities of the PSP to limits unseen thus far in its short life. At least that's the hope Ц after Rockstar delivered a competent port of Midnight Club 3, but saddled it with ridiculous load times, it would be excusable to have some trepidation about whether or not MC3 and GTA developer Rockstar Leeds can make it work. Set to release sometime in the launch window of the European PSP release, GTA:LCS has a lot to live up to, and if they can pull it off it could very well be the game that makes the PSP a monster, not unlike how GTA III helped pave the way for the dominance of the PS2.

As the title of the game demonstrates, this edition of GTA takes place in Liberty City, the beloved home of Grand Theft Auto III. In this case, it takes place a good bit before GTA III's timeline, though it seems to be based in the years past Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so we're talking mid 1990's. The main character of LCS is none other than Toni Cipriani, the tough-talking mama's boy who asked you to do nasty deeds on those mean Triads, and make it all biblical and such. After pulling a major hit on a rival family, Toni lays low outside of Liberty for many years. When the events of LCS begin, Don Salvatore Leone calls Toni back into town, now that it's (mostly) safe for the now made-man to return. And now Toni, a high-level member of the Leone family 'business' gets to rampage through Liberty City, all at your behest. The idea that you're playing as an already powerful mobster is different from the 3 console GTA's this generation Ц whereas Fido/Claude, Tommy Vercetti, and Carl Johnson had to work their way from nothing to the big time, Toni is already there. It will be interesting how it all plays out Ц and considering every GTA has had some kind of crazy plot twist, who knows what really will happen.

Rockstar Leeds (under the supervision of GTA creator Rockstar North) is determined to craft a GTA game comparable to the console versions, with little sacrifices along the way. Certainly this will have to be seen to be believed, as the UMD format doesn't have anywhere near the space to include as much as a PS2 DVD. However, they managed to sneak three cities and two huge countryside areas full of small towns onto one single-layered DVD, so perhaps it's more possible than you'd imagine. Liberty City will likely not be changed too much, though apparently there will be a few more areas that weren't explored in GTA III. Mission structure is to remain the same; you'll travel around to job locations and accept various work. Rockstar Leeds promises as many, if not more, missions than any other GTA game, though they will be slightly different. Because this is a portable game, and people use them frequently as a 'quick fix', LCS's missions will be a bit shorter and more direct compared to some of the epic missions of the console versions. Hopefully that doesn't mean more shallow missions, but instead just missions that get to the point quicker. In addition, hidden packages, unique jumps, and rampages will make their returns (2 of which of course were removed for San Andreas), but don't expect to find any of these sidequests in the same locations as GTA III.

Most car designs from GTA III will return since that game is so close in years, though there will be some new cars and motorcycles will make their Liberty City debut. Some cars will display rust and other signs of age, thus every car won't look nice and shiny out of the pay & spray. The weapon targeting system is an offshoot of San Andreas, which in turn of course came from Manhunt's version. Hopefully it will be tweaked even more to fix up some of the hassles from San Andreas, so you won't target the wrong enemy or other shootable object. Little has been mentioned on the soundtrack front, but you can expect, hopefully, a Lazlow appearance on Chatterbox, amongst the other stations from GTA III, just playing mid-1990's hits. And while this is not known for sure, it's a possibility that you'll be able to play music right off your own memory sticks, making this the first GTA on a Sony platform to feature a custom soundtrack. We'll see if it happens.