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Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Review - PS2

The Grand Theft Auto series comes back to PS2, after a brief stint on the PSP. While Liberty City Stories was meant to be an exclusive for Sony's handheld, and was released only a few months ago, the option for a quick cash in on the PS2 obviously appealed. With much the same concepts, gameplay, and missions of the PSP version - Liberty City stories hits the streets. Unfortunately in many ways the game lacks the spark of the previous games, and just seems a little flat. Maybe recognising this, the game is released at a lower price point of only $50.

Introduction

Liberty City Stories takes you back to Liberty City of GTA III fame, except the events take place a few years before. You return as Tony Cipriani, making his way up to the mob boss you work for in GTA III. You start off working the Mafia, but later on can you even end up playing missions for your mother (yes, tough guy I know).

The mission structures are much the same as any of the previous games in the series - you are given a basic task to undertake in the city, and do somebody else's dirty-work as a thug for hire. This often involves take out somebody, stealing a special car, blackmailing another crim, often with a humourous angle to lighten things up a little. Again, several vehicle based missions are available as an aside to the main storyline-missions - playing as a taxi driver, cop, ambulance driver and a repeat of most seen in other GTA. Nothing too much new here, just another set of GTA style missions which are much the same as any other.

It seems that this time, many of the missions in the game can become controller throwing difficult. After you have failed the same mission some 20 times, the fun is taken right out, and it can really turn you off from continuing the game. In the vehicle missions, cops can hammer in and can box you in ruthlessly, and quickly deploy tyre spikes to totally destroy your cars handling - making it almost impossible to get away in some circumstances. While missions in the other titles have not always been easy, they didn't become mind-numbingly difficult.

Vehicles in the game seem quite limited and bland throughout the streets of Liberty City, and often you are wandering around passing up car after car, for something a little more interesting than simply a slow van or taxi. When you do find something that is actually worth jacking, they destruct a lot more easily than previous games, and it feels like they're made of paper. Two major hits into an object, and your car is nearly done for. Again, this makes things at times frustratingly difficult, for no real game-play benefit. A lot of the fun was just being able to slam continuously through other (continued next page)