Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

"It's good but all too familiar..."

This game was on the PSP...now it's on the PS2. Odd decision there Rockstar. It's another installment in the Grand Theft Auto series. This game takes place in Liberty City....the location of Grand Theft Auto 3. Is it an improvement and worth getting? I'll let you decide.

STORY
You play as Toni Cipriani. He's a former mob thug that worked for the Leones in Liberty City. After an unknown incident, Toni had to leave town for awhile. But now he's back, and he finds his importance has been forgotten. In order to make a name for himself and rise back to the top of his family, he'll have to accept missions, kill some people, cause a little mayhem, and do all the deeds you'd expect in a GTA game. And that's all you need to know really.

GRAPHICS
This (aside from GTA1 and 2) is the worst looking of all the Grand Theft Autos. Even GTA3 looks better. This one has slowdown, choppy textures, and all around it doesn't look that great. Which comes as a shock to me. You'd think if they're gonna port a PSP game, they'd at least improve the graphics. But no.

SOUND
The audio while good at some parts, also fails to live up to some of GTA's greatness. First off the music on the radios are totally forgettable. I didn't know one song on the stations, and none of them really stuck with me. The voice acting and stuff however is always gold. Some of the returning characters are voiced by different people, but it's great nontheless. Though it's disappointing that Micheal Madsen, who voiced Toni in GTA3, didn't reprise his role for the sequel.

GAMEPLAY
The game is just like all the other Grand Theft Autos. You go around accepting missions, collecting cash...causing mayhem, really it's all up to you. You can accept taxi missions, police missions, you can steal cars and shoot people...if you've played a GTA game before than you know what I'm talking about. And that's sorta the problem I had with this particular game in the series. I'm kinda getting tired of Grand Theft Auto.

I got into San Andreas because it made the series go in an awesome amazing direction. Totally customizable appearance, amazing audio, great celebrity voice actors, so much to do, you could climb small walls, go swimming in water, and the game a great story. This one had none of what San Andreas brought to the table. And I'm bored of it.

To make matters worse...I've been in Liberty City already. It feels like an expansion pack to Grand Theft Auto 3. And so I have no need to play it. The cutscenes are fun, the radios are still funny and fresh as always. But doing the stuff I've already done in GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas.... seriously I'm GTA'd out. One nice feature that this game improved was running with the bigger guns. In the old games you couldn't run fast with a shotgun or AK47 or something. This one however you can, and I love that. It has multiple costumes like Vice City, but this time all your clothes are stashed at home, and whatever you die in, you wear when you come back to life, which I liked.

We've never had motorcycles and helicopters in Liberty City before though, and so that was fun and nice to have. The loading was almost non-existent and it's still a fun game to play. But if you're like me and you've played too much GTA...this one will not blow you away.

IN THE END...
I give this game the rental only rating. It's a good game but I've played enough of it and I'm getting bored with the series. If you've never played a Grand Theft Auto game before however, than by all means go out and play this game. I'm just warning the diehard fans...it's getting old. Not only is it getting old, it's the worst one.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/12/06