Of course, having such a detailed world on a handheld system made it all the more impressive, and so, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (LCS) rightfully earned praise as a landmark achievement. No PSP game before or since has matched its range or flexibility. In the eight months following its release, developers have shipped numerous titles, both on the PSP and PS2, and while this doesn't affect LCS on the PSP, it certainly does on the console side. The reason being is that every game available on the PSP still comes short of GTA's depth. Certain titles may definitely outclass it (Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and Daxter come to mind), but even those don't match its epic sense of scale.
That's just not the case on PS2. The system has a gargantuan library stocked with the likes of God of War, BLACK and Shadow of the Colossus. More importantly, it has GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas. These three games, more than anything, really put GTA: LCS in its place. And that just happens to be at the bottom of the barrel -- at least where GTA games are concerned. Don't misunderstand, it's still a very good game -- it's essentially identical to the handheld version in every way. Having said that, the selection of quality titles available on consoles (particularly in the GTA family), detract from the overall experience.
That aside, Liberty City Stories still spins a pretty good yarn. The story remains one of the title's highlights. It's a lengthy tale filled with interesting plot twists and characters. And it has some of the best dialogue of any game in recent memory. The quality of the voice acting, not to mention the direction of the cutscenes, is great stuff. It's enough to make you want to play the game all the way through, even if it's not as polished as its predecessors. Fans of GTA III will appreciate this return to organized crime with an Italian flare, and LCS certainly doesn't disappoint in this regard.
Visually, the two versions of Liberty City Stories look almost identical, though it doesn't fare as well on PS2. While LCS easily trumps most titles on Sony's handheld, it doesn't hold a candle to the best and brightest on the console front. For instance, none of the vehicles, characters or environments benefit from enhanced details or graphical effects. As such, LCS on PS2 can't really compete. Interestingly, the game does offer a slight improvement in performance. Though not immediately noticeable, the framerate is slightly smoother, the draw distance is a little longer, and the amount of things onscreen has been slightly raised. You'll notice more cars and pedestrians when driving through town, for example.
Multiplayer helped the outstanding handheld game along quite a bit, but sadly, it isn't available in the PlayStation 2 version at all. Rockstar decided to remove the option for a number of reasons, including the fact that it doesn't exactly fit in with the story and spirit of Liberty City. Company reps told us that the reason Rockstar included multiplayer in the original UMD is because of the obvious nature of handhelds -- the wireless capabilities of the PSP helped the company design some quick, mobile-friendly multiplayer modes that just made sense on the platform.
Since both versions of the game share almost everything, what follows is a tweaked version of the original LCS review that appeared on IGN on October 24, 2005. Whatever differences do exist will definitely appear (or not appear, in the some cases) where appropriate. With that, please read on and enjoy IGN's little dissection of the LCS port for PS2.
A Tale of Toni
Most everyone following the development of LCS knows that it stars Toni Cipriani, a hotheaded member of the Leone crime family. The Leones act like the quintessential Italian mafia. Their influence reaches from the lowest street dealer all way up to city hall. At the start of the game Toni has just returned to Liberty City after finishing a job for Don Salvatore, head of the Leone family. Salvatore places Toni under the control of one of his captains, Vincenzo Cilli, who gives Toni his first set of missions. And while the first couple of jobs help orient the player with the city and the game's control scheme, things heat up in LCS rather quickly.
Like every other title using the GTA name, the action in LCS splits between a series of missions. These missions then divide into subcategories. Certain missions, for example, help advance the story while others simply earn you cash. Some of these cash missions let you hijack a taxi cab or ambulance and actually set off to work in the city. Others let you play the role of car salesman and drive potential customers around the city in test drives. There's also the chance to play a noodle or pizza delivery guy to earn a little extra coin. One of the best on-the-side jobs, however, has you stealing specific cars and delivering them to a garage for around five grand a pop. Others still grant bonuses such as weapons and special vehicles. There are more, of course, but discovering them is half the fun.
The story stages are delivered via the contacts you meet in the game. Once you've been introduced to someone that has some work for you, a letter corresponding to that person will appear on the map. It is then up to you to drive to the contact's place of residence (or imprisonment) to get a mission. At most LCS offers three contacts to inquire about work, but certain times there's only one person to talk to.
So here's the story in brief: the Leone's are at war with the Sindacco and Forelli families, each of which wants to establish itself as the ruling crime organization. The story in LCS unravels through a series of well-directed, excellently-voiced cutscenes. It takes as many twists and turns as any GTA game before it, yet the characters themselves aren't as compelling as those of San Andreas. There's no feeling of genuine camaraderie apart from the loyalty you start to feel for Don Salvatore. It seems everyone just wants to use Toni as a total piece of meat and it's therefore easy to feel somewhat letdown after spending dozens of hours with the well-developed characters of 2004's PS2 title. Still, Don Salvatore is the game's saving grace. He gives Toni a reason to do what he's doing. And it's not just for the money or power, but for Salvatore himself.
Still, that's not to say LCS lacks interesting characters. On the contrary, you meet a stable of seriously whacked out characters before the game's end. And you end up working for most of them. Take Donald Love, for instance. He's best known as an entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, but you soon discover that the guy's totally insane. He's dirty, cold-hearted and a borderline sociopath. And it's one of your tasks in the game to make sure he's elected as the mayor of Liberty City. Then there's JD O'Toole, owner of a sex club in the red light district. Any mission you perform as a favor for O'Toole (since he's not actually your superior) usually involves pimps, prostitutes, money and lubricant. Sometimes, it even includes grown men in bunny suits. Add to this the remaining 18 or so characters and LCS becomes a sprawling urban epic
Mission: Eclectic
The missions themselves offer a diverse mix of good, bad and all sorts of terrible. Most of the objectives in the game revolve around destroying things, collecting things, or getting to places when pressed for time. At first, missions will include only one of these objectives, but later include all three. The best missions in the game clump toward the end of the story, while the lesser than cool objectives sit near the beginning. And by less-cool, you should understand that they're mind-devastatingly bad. See, you face about the same level of opposition at the beginning of the game as you do toward the end; only you're severely ill-equipped to start. There's nothing like fending off 16 bloodthirsty contract killers when all you have under your coat is a pistol and a shotgun. Such is the case in a mission titled "No Son of Mine" where the opposition hires more than a dozen machinegun-packing killers to off you.
But the worst case of LCS feeling totally unbalanced is a mission where you're stuck in a large room with over a dozen chainsaw-yielding maniacs. Everything about this mission seems intentionally engineered to annoy. True, at that point in the game you should be carrying a pistol, shotgun, and machinegun, but the situation feels awkward, unfair, and totally ill-conceived. Eventually you'll figure out the strategy, but there's so little room to maneuver that the mission just feels annoying. It also doesn't help that a chainsaw kills you instantly. If you're wearing body armor, it'll simply knock you down, at which point everyone in the room surrounds you and hacks you to pieces the moment you try and get up.
And then there are the peripheral problems that greatly affect how missions pan out. Police offers, for instance, seem to ignore every dangerous character but you. Most missions require a specific degree of homicidal action or destruction of property, all of which draws the attention of the police. Which is fine, really, but things get increasingly less-fine when you find yourself blasting cops in addition to enemy gangsters and pistol packing civilians. Hell, even this would be fine if the damn cops would shoot at anything besides you. But no, cops in Liberty City act as though they're completely blind to violence, unless caused by one Toni Cipriani.
Fortunately, there are plenty of satisfying missions to more than out-balance the bad. As mentioned above, most missions adhere to the trusted formula of destroying and collecting things, with the only difference between positive and negative assignments being balancing and circumstance. In one mission, for instance, you need to scare a union leader into helping the Leone family. This involved the murdering of her chauffeur and the hijacking of her limousine. Once she hops in the limo you need to drive haphazardly until she agrees to work for Don Salvatore. Perhaps the coolest mission in the game, though, is the last -- where you're riding shotgun in a speedboat and battling enemy ships and even a helicopter. The action is fast, furious and very engrossing.
Another cool assignment involved the assassination of three celebrities. You're actually given the mission by a mysterious figure posing as a priest. Each celebrity is trying to make it to a radio station to promote an upcoming film and it's your job to stop them. One is coming in by boat, another by car and the other by helicopter. It's great fun hunting them down, blocking their means of escape, and launching high-velocity explosives at them. Yet another mission involved Donald Love's campaign to become mayor. We had to drive around town in a campaign van promoting Donald Love by hitting specific neighborhoods. What made it fun was the fact that another political figure has a van too, and is winning back the territories you've already won over. It basically becomes a totally satisfying territorial race.
It would have been nice to skip a few story missions but that's not the case. The only choice given to you is what order to complete them in. Once you've completed all missions for a particular contact their corresponding letter will disappear, leaving you to seek work from whichever contact is still on the map. Once you've exhausted all your contacts, though, that's when you usually get a quick call on your cell phone from Salvatore or someone else that requires your expertise.
Driving Mr. Leone
Traveling between the three islands that make up Liberty City is a source of joy and frustration. To start, the driving mechanics in LCS feel smooth and refined. In fact, just throttling through corners and alleyways is one of the best ways to spend time in the game. Each car, truck, and motorcycle handles differently, adding a great deal of depth and strategy. Should a mission require a sturdy ride with good handling, then you go for the Patriot. On the other hand, if a mission requires speed and there's no fear of being shot or rammed, then it's best to go for a sports car or nimble motorcycle. And there's plenty to choose from, too. LCS packs over 70 different vehicles, including scooters, fire trucks, ambulances, speedboats, vans, armored transport vehicles, big rigs and more.
You can also choose from four different camera perspectives to get the best angle while driving. Certain encounters require the precision of the first-person in-cockpit view while others are better suited to the third-person. About the only complaint when it comes to driving is that it's hard to see when your vehicle is on fire (almost destroyed) in first-person mode.
And then there's the radio. Most of LCS takes place on the road so it's fitting that you be given a decent selection of tunes. The game boasts 10 radio stations brimming with talk shows, reggae, dance, hip hop, rock and yes, even boy bands. Each station features six or seven tunes, including officially licensed tracks from about every genre available. A good chunk of the humor and wit in LCS comes from the group of DJs that rule the airwaves in Liberty City. There's so much social commentary packed into the game that it's possible just to drive around town and cycle through available radio stations just to listen to what's new. Cooler still, every major event in the game (most of which you cause personally) is echoed throughout Liberty City through a number of special bulletins. This lends the game an even deeper sense of realism and helps make LCS one of the most immersive games available.
Of course, this isn't to say that transportation in LCS is beyond reproach. For starters, there's simply too much travel in story missions for those pressed for time. Sure, there's plenty to do when all you have is five minutes, but traveling across three islands (multiple times during some missions) is excessive. Add this to the fact you can't save the game wherever you want (only at three safe houses) and things become very unfriendly. More importantly though, these travel-intensive missions become wildly time consuming -- Every mission in LCS takes only five to ten minutes of action to complete, but then there's the five minutes of travel and two minutes of load times to consider. Plus, some of the missions can be tough, so you'll try each several times. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing, but in this case it sucks having to drive from one part of the city to another just to receive your objective, then drive to another part of the island (or another island) to complete the job.
To be fair, LCS includes a taxi cab system where a taxi ferries you back to a mission when you die. But the consequences for using this system are way too severe. To start, you lose every single weapon in your possession. And if you had body armor you lose that also. Certain weapons are very rare and some are just expensive. Either way you never, ever want to lose them. So taking a taxi after losing a mission is a total non-option. It's cool that it's there for those that don't mind spending thousands of dollars on weapons and driving around town to find those rare weapons, but for those who don't want to spend the time or money well, you'll have to load your game and start from scratch.
Take Control, My Son
The handheld and console versions of LCS behave the same. Having said that, the game certainly handles better on PlayStation 2 thanks to the Dual Shock 2's pair of analog sticks -- as opposed to just one on the PSP. Like most third-person action games, the right analog stick controls camera movement, and it's no different here. In essence, LCS controls just like San Andreas and Vice City. The left analog stick controls character movement where the face and shoulder buttons control melee and ranged combat, as well as other actions such as getting in and out of cars, jumping, and the like. And while the camera is pretty decent in LCS, it's nowhere near perfect.
One area that needs serious help is the game's targeting system. It leads to numerous trips to the city morgue. Whenever you need to target a cop or enemy gangster, the camera will often target civilians instead leaving you open to attack. It would have been easier to forgive if this had happened only a few times, but it actually happened constantly. And when it happens at the end of a mission and you have next to no health left, it can get beyond frustrating. Also, the camera locks on to targets when it's not possible to shoot them, say when an enemy is hiding behind a wall or other obstruction.
Another issue that will lead to your untimely passing is the fact you can't run while targeting enemies. At least not with the best weapons; the one's you will count on. Unless you're using a pistol or a particular type of machinegun, you'll need to stand still while engaging multiple enemies in shootouts. This is especially maddening early in the game when weapon selection is limited. Most of the time, you're left to shoot a few rounds, reposition yourself, shoot a few rounds and repeat. Later on, you'll score flamethrowers, mini-guns, and rocket launchers so standing still isn't much of an issue. But damn, until you do get those weapons, this targeting system feels downright broken when in comparison to other 3D action titles.
