Strange but true: when I first played Grand Theft Auto III on the Playstation 2 I didn’t “get” it. I’d messed around for a couple of hours, stealing cars and mugging the odd pedestrian or thirty and came away feeling…. nothing. I then went online to see how my buddies were getting on with it and was greeted by proclamations of “the greatest game ever” and “ultimate freeform gameplay”, and that old chestnut: “it’s like a huge sandbox full of your favourite toys.” I then proceeded to bitch to my online compadres that the graphics were pretty lacklustre and the frame rate was somewhat less than stellar, only to be told that I was missing the point. Flabbergasted (and not just a little bit pissed off), I returned to the game to give it one more shot at redemption before the local video game emporium welcomed it back to its loving bosom.
Upon this second chance at reprieve “IT” happened; not the book by Stephen King, but that fabled confluence of events and experiences which combine to make something almost audibly click into place. Suddenly I was hooked. Maybe this was the first instance where a kind of peer pressure had actually produced a beneficial result; if I hadn’t have listened to my online buddies it’s debateable as to whether or not GTA III would have seen the inside of my PS2 again, as it was, it remained lodged in that tray (barring the odd bit of time off for good behaviour whilst Gran Turismo was incarcerated within) for about a year (or however long it was until GTA: Vice City blasted into my life.) It was the only game that I wanted to play. It was everything that I wanted a videogame to be, since the days of playing Siren City on my Commodore 64 and wishing that the horrifically basic 2D top-down city would some day be represented fully in three dimensions, and I could play as a cop OR a robber. How could I have been so blind as to the majesty that was GTA III? How could I not have seen that this was the very epitome of gaming nirvana? - F*ck knows, but the happy fact is that I did eventually see it for the marvel that it truly was.
Flash forward a couple of years and, after visits in Vice City (better than GTA III) and San Andreas (better than just about everything in the whole universe); we arrive back where we started: Liberty City, this time playing as Mafioso Toni Cipriani. The difference is that this time we can steal cars, mow down countless pedestrians, complete missions and blow stuff up whilst sitting on the crapper. Some of you may have strange interior designs whereby you’ve been playing console games for years whilst evacuating your bowels, but our house adheres to old fashioned design principals of having the toilet and the TVs in different rooms, so you’ll have to excuse my excitement at this innovation...
It’s so damn easy to take technological innovations for granted. We assimilate the latest leaps and bounds in gadgetry so quickly into our life that it’s sometimes a really good idea to sit back, look at the stuff going in front of you and just say: “Holy shit – that is amazing!” I would strongly advise that you try and forget that your PSP has already played host to Wipeout Pure, Ridge Racer and Burnout Legends for just a few minutes and try and put yourself back in your own head at the time GTA III was blowing you away on the PS2…. are you there yet? Good. Now imagine what it would be like to have a whole new version of the game, complete with new story lines and side missions (and motorbikes) looking exactly like what you’re playing now, but on a little handheld device with a beautifully proportioned widescreen, that you could play whenever and wherever you liked. Wouldn’t that idea have just been the sweetest ever? Guess what? The reality IS that sweet.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is as good, if not better than GTA III on the PS2. That’s not to say that GTA III wasn’t pretty much THE most amazing gaming experience at the time, but in so many ways, the small but beautifully formed PSP outshines that gaming landmark, not least because you can play it whilst crimping off a length. Liberty City looks almost exactly the same, but because of the timeframe (set before the events in GTA III) some buildings are not yet there, or are under construction. There still seems to be pretty much the same amount of traffic on the road and pedestrians on the pavement (or sidewalks for any Americans out there) – that’s the first shock. The second shock is that the draw distance is superb. The third shock is that the texture models are all loaded fantastically quickly, so no (or very, VERY little) screeching round a corner in a fast vehicle to find some weird, sky-blue void where the road should be until the system has loaded in the appropriate textures. The final shock (well, it’s NOT the final shock, but for the sake of brevity and all that) is that the vehicle handling seems to be more “San Andreas” than “GTA III” in as much as the cars are imbued with a real feeling of weight and inertia which was slightly lacking until San Andreas came along. This really IS an entire (3D) GTA game in the palm of your hand! Isn’t that enough for you? Think about it for just one second: an entire GTA game that you can play whilst lighting a bum cigar!!! Go buy it!!
To every Ying there is a Yang, and to every GTA there is a True Crime, and so it is that we come to the negative sides of this nadir of handheld gaming. Actually, there are VERY few reasons to bitch about this game, and most of them are entirely the fault of the hardware rather than anything that Rockstar have done wrong. My first gripe is that GTA LCS really shows up the limitations of the PSP’s LCD screen’s response time; when the right (or rather wrong) set of conditions coincide onscreen (for example, something red moving against a fairly dark backdrop) the smearing that ensues can be really off-putting. There is no doubt that there is some deliberate use of “trails” in this game as in the previous games (to a far lesser effect), but there is no getting away from the fact that sometimes, the PSP’s screen just can’t cut the mustard. However, I find that after about 5 minutes I’m so wrapped up in everything that I don’t notice it any more. Another complaint is that the control method isn’t as customisable as I would like – maybe I WANT to control the vehicles with the D-Pad and the on-foot sections with the analogue stick, and not just have a choice of the same method for both sections?
My last complaint?
That this is Liberty City rather than San Andreas on my PSP…. but maybe I’m just being overly impatient…
This review was sponsored by Andrex toilet tissue.
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