Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Impressions

[Wizard]

GTA: Liberty City Stories Impressions

 

So you've heard about the PSP instalment of the Grand Theft Auto Series. We've seen it first-hand - so come inside for full details, screens and video.

 

Everyone knows that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the biggest selling game of recent times. Now, Sony's PSP handheld is getting an exclusive title from the GTA series all to itself. Kikizo was recently treated to a first-hand look at the new game, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

 

 

This entry into the series sees players returning to Liberty City - the clues are there - which will be familiar to anyone who played the first 3D incarnation of GTA, for the most part at least. You see, as with every GTA game, this one has a particular time-frame; the story takes place three years before the events portrayed in GTAIII - before the silent-but-violent Claude set about his quest for revenge - as players take control of Toni Cipriani.

 

Toni was (chronologically, 'will be') a character in Claude's glory days, a 'made' member of the Leone mafia family - and this game charts his rise through the ranks. It starts out with his return to Liberty City following a four-year exile, after carrying out a particularly risky execution for Don Salvatore.

 

 

Liberty City Stories has now been in development for around the two-year mark, currently set for release sometime in October, and Rockstar Leeds has the development honours. Rightly so, after its previous track record with portable conversions of Midnight Club 3 for PSP and Max Payne for GBA. This time they've been working in conjunction with Rockstar North, and the original minds behind the series at Rockstar New York, so this is as 'GTA' as it can be. Indeed, as Rockstar put it to us, this conversion is not just a watered down version for handhelds, but is considered by the company to be the "next chapter in the series". After seeing it in action, it's easy to see the amount of effort that's gone into the game, with a product that is stunningly comparable to the various PS2 GTA titles.

 

In fact, that is doing the game an injustice, as it takes some of the best bits of all three PS2 games, and crams them all onto a UMD. It looks so great our eyes could melt - better than with the PSP conversion of Midnight Club 3, this resembles the PS2 games to a tee, with their familiar, likeable roughness and chunky vehicles. GTAIII has obviously contributed the actual playground of destruction we'll all be navigating, though not just a carbon copy of the one already explored. The main areas of Liberty City (Portland, Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale) will be just as recognisable as from our last visit, but have some tweaks: different short cuts, alleys, buildings, and some interiors have been thrown in for good measure too.

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Kikizo has the full article down. Might be worth it to grab a PSP down.

 

Trailer(WMV)