Review

Feeling like you’ve played a game before is nothing new in gaming. Whatever genre you choose: FPS, arcade racers, RTS or survival horror; there are dozens of copycat titles that eventually blend into one when you’ve played enough of them. The attack of deja-vu you get while playing GTA: Liberty City Stories is different – you really have played this game before and, to make matters worse, that was five years ago! Oh, but they’ve introduced motorbikes, so that’s different.

In a way that’s not really fair. This game started out life as essentially a tech demo for the PSP, and it succeeded admirably in providing a cut-down GTA experience in handheld form. It was never going to have the scale and scope of San Andreas so we shouldn’t expect it to but by releasing it for the PS2 Rockstar have not only annoyed everyone who bought a PSP to play it (especially with its sub-£20 price point), but they have also thrown it into direct competition with the rest of the series.

None of this goes anyway to explain how bad this game looks. We know the PS2 can do better as we have seen it already in the rest of the series. It’s almost as if Rockstar Leeds have taken the lazy option of just putting the PSP graphics straight onto the PS2 and left it at that. It is jerky, plagued with clipping problems and pop-up and, at times, downright ugly. GTA III still looks better and I’d even go so far as to say it looked better when it was on the PSP as well!

Fortunately, looks aren’t everything and the joy of GTA has always been in the combination of intriguing characters and a well-told narrative and then giving the player the chance to ignore it all and just explore. All of this is true of Liberty City Stories as well, except the characters are a bit dull, the plot’s tired and your exploration is severely restricted by the miniscule play area. Missions are all nothing new either so you’ll quickly become tired of those too.

The saving grace could and should have been the online mode, which was a first for the series on the PSP, but for some reason it’s been stripped out for this version. This baffles me, frankly as it’s far easier to get a PS2 online than it is a PSP! Maybe this is another example of laziness. After all, this is a GTA game and it will sell regardless.

Ultimately, this is a pretty pointless release, which, even at budget price, is very difficult to recommend, even though bad GTA is still better than most other games. If you’ve never paid a visit to Liberty City before then you should probably pick up a copy of GTA III instead as it looks better and is has a greater sense of fun. Unless you’re a GTA completist you might be better off waiting for the real-deal (i.e. GTA IV) to arrive next year.

About the Review

Platform

Sony Playstation 2

Developer

Rockstar Leeds

Publisher

Rockstar Games

Released

23rd June 2006