Reviews// GTA: Liberty City Stories (PS2)

For the times when missions become too frustrating or you just fancy a few minutes of action, there's the usual selection of mini-games; RC racing, taxi, ambulance and vigilante missions, street car and bike races. There are a few new mini-games, including chainsaw massacre Slash TV and a rather peculiar job where you aim to sell cars to prospective buyers by taking them for a test drive, performed in manner that matches their own preferred style of driving - without wrecking the car. It's good to see the return of the Rampage, which was strangely absent in San Andreas. There's nothing better than blowing the crap out of everything in sight to put the day's stresses and strains behind you.

On occasion, all this action takes its toll on Rockstar's home brewed game engine, with periods of very noticeable drop in frame rate. Overall, though, there's no clear improvement on the draw distance or textures in the game. However, if you take a few minutes to go back to GTA3 and compare the two, it's jarring just how much more traffic there is in Liberty City Stories. GTA3 looks utterly deserted in comparison, so the frame rate issues are the necessary downside to a more lively city. The quality of the animations has also improved over the years. Cut-scenes, though acted out by chunky, paddled handed mannequins, carry the story well thanks to decent motion capture, lip syncing and facial animations. Still, if you put all of this next to something like, for example, Driver Parallel Lines, with its highly polished playground city, you soon realise that GTA is really looking pretty haggard. Fuzzy textures and cardboard box characters just don't cut it anymore.

You talking to me?

Where GTA continues to win out is with its dialogue and scripting, and it's something never yet bettered by the "Grand Theft Alsos". LCS is another fine example of how to successfully script and voice act a game that relies on heavy narrative. Most of the characters are voiced by different people; most notably LCS' lead character Toni Cipriani, who was last heard sounding a lot like Michael Madsen, is now voiced by Danny Mastrogiorgio. Similarly, smarmy gobshite Donald Love no longer carries the tones of Kyle MacLachlan..

Having set the standard by which video game soundtracks are measured, this time the radio stations had a limited selection of tracks and are a let down, possibly another example of budget constraints. But who gives a crap? Flashback FM plays back-to-back Giorgio Moroder! Surely there's a hack somewhere to lock every car's radio to this station? When you're out of a car, and sadly unable to tune in for more "murder by Moroder", the hustle and street banter is not far away. The ambient noise works well, but the limited pool of "witty" pedestrian quips wear thin really quickly, and if I hear one more time that somebody is late for a swinging party, I'm gonna shove my Banshee right up his ass. Or, perhaps he'd like that? It's a twisted place, Liberty City, after all...

And on that note, getting back to the shagging an old flame thing. If you've "done" Liberty before, it works for and against the game. You know which buttons to press to hot things up; almost knowing instinctively where your target is, what's around the next corner and where's good to get a hooker (for a mission, you understand). But it's not so much fun anymore; the lure to say "sod the missions" and head off exploring is almost non-existent. And when you try, it's like a bad case of top quality deja vu. Still, if you persevere you'll be rewarded with some little Easter eggs; like the new message in that apparently inaccessible alleyway on Staunton Island...

SPOnG Score: C+

For anyone new to GTA, if there are such people, Liberty City Stories is fine place to start; missions, scripting, dialogue and voice acting are among the best you'll find. Veteran GTA players will find it a mixed experience; it's like slipping right back into the saddle - nostalgic, cosy and comfortable, but being a well trodden path, it lacks the challenge to break her in. While technically accomplished - something that shouldn't be taken lightly given all the hard work that's been put in at the back end - LCS just doesn't have the shine that we've come to expect from latter day PS2 titles. As a full price PS2 title, this would have got a very big thumbs down, but as a budget title, it falls right into SPOnG's "go on, give it a try" category.