Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

They did it. Rockstar released a handheld instalment of Grand Theft Auto. Liberty City Stories is an amalgamation of all things cool found in previous GTA games, crammed on to one little UMD. I've played it through to 83 percent completion and have thoroughly enjoyed thugging my way through each tick of the game percentage meter.

The new game offers a fresh campaign of carnage back in Liberty City, and running for supreme ruler is you. Play as future mob boss Tony Cipriani and work your way through the ranks of Liberty City's organised crime families. It's not a new concept in the start-from-the-bottom world of GTA games. Just once I'd like to start a GTA game as a millionaire and let my own bad decisions and dirty habits be the reason I'm broke.

That aside, the story missions in LCS feel less like annoying errands or tedious chores. To quote my younger nephew after he started playing LCS, "Wow, these missions are actually fun." He was never a fan of missions from previous GTA games, he only saw the game as a massive, casual environment for casualties, driving aimlessly off the highest cliffs, and into waters at every shore. He never had any interest in doing someone else's dirty work.

That was before playing a few LCS missions. I thought it said a lot about the story that my nephew with an attention span that peaks at 12 seconds didn't mind failing and retrying them. Besides that, I really like the missions for their variety and funfulness. No, it's not a word, but I think it sums up the story mission experience quite nicely.

All the usual sub-missions are back; Vigilante, Paramedic, Firefighter, Taxi, and Delivery Boy. New to GTA streets are the Avenging Angel missions where you and an Avenging Angel gang member essentially carry out vigilante-style pursuits on other gangs and hoodlums. More innovative are the Salesman missions found in Portland and Staunton. You impress customers by taking them for test drives with the car or motorcycle of their choice. This can be fun and rewarding while hardly killing anyone on the street. Look mom, no violence!

Anyone who played GTA3 remembers how annoying it could be to get the garage door at your hideout to recognize you and open. There were enough times when you'd have to do a little dance around the front of the garage before it would wake up and realize you're going nuts trying to get in, and not break-dancing your way to stardom. Daddy glitch had a baby glitch, or so it would seem. That problem still exists in LCS. It was weird when I first noticed this problem again while trying to park at the new LCS hideouts for the first time. Almost nostalgic, in a frustrating kind of way. What makes it worse is the fact that garage doors in Vice City and San Andreas work fine all the time; I never have any problems in those locales of the Rockstar globe. Now I'm back in Liberty City and the garage doors are leaving me out in the cold once again.

With so many different types of vehicles available in LCS you'd think you'd find yourself stuck in a midday traffic jam while trying to shake the hitmen Ma Cipriani had chasing you, but you don't. But if you did, you could now easily thread through traffic with needlepoint precision on your new Manchez! That's right, the Sanchez we all know and love from Vice City and San Andreas now has a bigger brother. That translates into more air, more outrageous jumps and more killer face plants than ever before! My personal record is an 82-foot spinning face plant in Shoreside.

Water and air vehicles are both present and functional in the game, but the player never gets to control either. On the boat you're only firing the mounted gun (a kick-ass mission by the way), and the brief encounter with the helicopter puts it right in front of your nose, but still completely out of your reach. In my uninformed opinion I think the guys at Rockstar are saving these vehicles for future PSP-sized instalments of Vice City and San Andreas.

Get out your battery chargers for the PSP multiplayer, because LCS is a power pig when you play networked with your friends, but it's worth every red cent you cram into your parent's hydro bill. Cancel your date, call off the toga party, and throw away those messy jigsaw puzzles. LCS multiplayer will change the way you spend time with friends. It is that fun.

There is one thing that took me by aggravating surprise; the chainsaw in multiplayer can be a deceptively effective weapon against a fully armed and armoured opponent. This was infuriating for me the first time I played because I WAS the armed and armoured opponent getting mowed down by a little motorized chain. You should see that thing go. No really, because someone other than me has to get humiliated with this thing.

If you prefer driving around GTA streets listening to your own custom tracks then you may be slightly annoyed to discover it's not as easy as copying music files to your PSP music folder. Songs can only be extracted from music CDs. But wait, there's more, the annoyance doesn't end there. Custom tracks are either enabled or disabled from the audio menu, meaning you can't just scan through radio stations to find your custom music channel.

And perhaps most annoying for some is the fact that LCS uses a proprietary compression to store your tracks, which means they take up space on your memory stick but you can only listen to them during the game. I imagine this was done for some technical purpose and not to thwart music piracy. Of course if it was, then good for them. Maybe now the music industry will start caring about software piracy, ahem.

A work around I found is to play the music from the audio menu while the game is paused, then put the PSP in hold mode and toss it into a medium-sized pocket.

If you've finished the game or you're partial to spoilers and cheats, you should definitely look up "Edison Carter's Cheat Device." It's a saved game file that loads a neat little interface that lets you play God by controlling weather, freezing pedestrians, and spawn cars and helicopters. That's right; this cheat device is the only way I know of to get control of a helicopter in LCS, and you'll be surprised at the list of playable choppers that don't seem to be implemented in the standard game. Another cool feature is the ability to capture in-game screen shots, but wait, there's more! You can actually capture a sequence that is automatically saved as an animated .gif that you can play on your PC.

In true form of previous GTA games LCS will appeal to the hardcore GTA fan or the casual gamer who wants something fun to occupy his or her time during the daily subway commute. Overall this game rocks and delivers exactly what it promises, and more!

Steve Rizzo is a student enrolled in the Video Game Design & Development program at the International Academy of Design & Technology in Toronto.

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