Give Me Liberty (City)!

Everyone knows the love and respect I have for the Grand Theft Auto series of video games, even naming GTAIII one of my top ten games of all time. Now it’s back with GTA: Liberty City Stories, and I implore everyone to buy it.

One of the big complaints about follow-ups Vice City and San Andreas (especially the latter) was that they were too damn big. San Andreas was so huge and cavernous you could spend seemingly hours driving aimlessly on missions. Looking back, Liberty City and its three islands were really the perfect size – big, but not huge (although finding your way around Shoreside Vale is still a huge pain in the ass). Well, when I heard they were releasing a new GTA game set in Liberty City, I was intrigued.

LCS was originally designed for the portable PSP, which about 7 people have bought, so they made a port for the regular PS2 and are charging only $20 for the game. My only caveat was that I’ve been playing the GTA series on my PC, which has its own control scheme that obviously differs from the PS2. Well, I needn’t have worried; the control scheme is fine and easy to get used to (thanks to the auto lock targeting).

Some may squawk that revisiting Liberty City smells of rehash, but really, it’s like putting on an old pair of slippers. It’s awesome to revisit all the old sights, like the bistro in St. Marks or the Cochrane Dam in Shoreside Vale. It just…feels right.

The story is largely similar to GTAIII – you’re Tony Cipriani, returning after a long hiatus to Liberty City. The year is 1998, 3 years before GTAIII, and you do dirty work for a variety of folks, including mob boss Salvatore Leone, his wife Maria, and media mogul Donald Love, all later seen in GTAIII. In fact, the continuity is incredible, as minor characters from Vice City and San Andreas pop up all over.

The controls have “regressed” to GTAIII, in that you can’t climb, crouch, or swim (the latter is a travesty – falling into water neck deep results in instant death), but they did add motorcycles this time, and thank God (in a funny note, the instruction book, which is designed like a newspaper, has an article calling for the banning of motorcycles, explaining why they’re not in GTAIII).

The radio stations are back, more like GTAIII where there are a lot of unknown or little known artists. I will say I miss being able to load my own MP3’s onto a station, but the radio chatter (listen for Nurse Bob, Lazlo, the technology show, and the bickering DJ’s on the pop station) makes up for it.

I’m actually pretty close to finishing all the main missions (I’m at the part where I have to steal the two corpses for Donald Love – don’t ask). The game can be challenging but never unfair. I’m planning a marathon session tomorrow and hopefully can wrap it up then.

Have a happy 4th, y’all.