It was over six months ago that Rockstar Leeds brought Liberty City to Nintendo’s favourite ‘children’s toy’ ditching the third dimension in favour of a 2.5D top-down flavour similar it’s early beginnings. It was greeted by rave reviews and disappointing sales.
The PSP version is an almost direct port of the DS original. The soundtrack has been beefed up slightly and the graphics look crisper and brighter. Throw in an annoying extra character (Mel) and you have the PSP version of one of the most refreshing
Grand Theft Auto games for a long time.
Of course, you might not have played the DS version before, unless you own a DS as well as a PSP, you may be wondering what on earth I’m on about. If you do, you are a wealthy man and far too important to be told what to do by a mere peasant like me. If not and you’ve been disappointed by the lack of quality PSP titles, here is a recap: You play Huang Lee, a stuck up kid whose dad was top of the Triad food-chain until he was popped off by some undesirable types. Huang arrives in Liberty City to present a family heirloom (a sword) to the head of the family, Uncle Kenny, only to be ambushed by some more bad eggs who steal the sword and leave Huang for dead. Cue a series of missions in which you meet a string of unpleasant characters, most of whom are looking to make it to the top and want Huang to get them there.
Characters are one of
CTW’s strong points; it may be void of any voice acting but the dialogue is crude and funny although it can often feel that some swear words and just thrown in for shock value – something would have worked on the cutesy DS, perhaps. It’s also a relief to have a central character that isn’t battling some inner-demons, just outer-demons with guns and poor aiming.
The city inhabited by this motley crew is the same Liberty City we got to know in GTA4, just without Alderney. But with the loss of a 3D environment comes the loss of the grandeur that meant I often spent hours just driving around for the sake of it. Driving in
CTW is a mixed bag. While car handling has been tightened up considerably the top-down view makes driving at speed a real pain, to begin with especially.
If you opted for the ‘cinematic’ camera angle when playing GTA4 this won’t feel too different but no right-minded person would play a racing game top-down for plenty of reasons. One big being that it makes seeing far enough in-front of you bloody difficult when travelling at high speed. It’s reminiscent of the Micro Machine games with the major difference being that poor driving in Micro Machines just resulted in your car hitting a plant pot or a waffle - in
CTW you’ve got the cops on your ass if you just scuff their paintwork.
