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> Results: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
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Many of the games released for the PSP feel like sloppy ports or translations of console games with little consideration of what would be effective on the platform. Given the game dynamics of the Grand Theft Auto gamesﾗlarge open areas to explore, moving on foot as well as by vehicle, weapon based action and loads of interactionﾗit seemed likely that much would have to be sacrificed to create a handheld version. That makes it doubly rewarding that the game delivers a very satisfying open-ended play experience while not suffering from protracted load times or slow downs.
The essence of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories centers around two modes of playﾗmissions and open exploration. From the very beginning of the game you are assigned missions that need to be completed to advance the plot. Some can be accomplished at any time while others need certain requirements to be met (usually completing another mission with the same person). Missions are plot based and vary in difficulty, which is much more interesting than the usual way games approach missionsﾗstart out trivial and work up to nearly impossible. These are generally interesting and challenging, and use all available skills while leaving much of the strategy up to the player. Some are very straightforward, while others are of the ﾑtry until you learn the trick' variety, which tend to be much more frustrating and require many more reloads of saved games.  One of the coolest things about Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is that when you're done with the story, you're really only about half done with the game. There are side-missions for selling cars and noodle delivery, and small bonuses for things like helping the police capture criminals eluding capture. Some of these possibilities are revealed after completing certain missions, others you can stumble upon by stealing the right vehicle or being in the right place. I had a bad motorcycle accident while involved in a checkpoint race and a message on the screen commented on my 28.5m face-plant. I figured I had discovered a new side-mission branchﾗand I was right, there are all sorts or tricks and stunts to be accomplished. The game allows some amount of flexibility in how you approach things, what weapons you use, the type of car (or motorcycle) you use, your clothes, and so on. There are problems in Liberty City, however. In what is becoming a typical PSP complaint, the camera never seems to be where you need it, requiring the player to constantly reorient themselves. The controls take some getting used to. Driving straight at anything faster than a crawl can be a challenge early on, and properly targeting enemies to avoid shooting innocents is a challenge throughout the game. While the load times are pretty quick and very reasonable for a handheld game, the save system is not. It works in the same way the console version functions: you get a ﾑsafe house' in each locale, and that is where you can heal, change clothes, and save the game. That means for each mission you need to go from the safe house to the person giving the mission, accomplish the mission, and return to the safe house to save. For a game that should focus on short bursts of gameplay due to portability, that is too much running around. Other games allow for saving immediately after completing a mission, which would have been preferable.  But despite those issues, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is the best game so far for the PSP and a very good game by any standard. As you continue playing, the issues become minor quibbles that you learn to integrate into the course of gameplay. The game is good enough to transcend minor issues, and you enjoy working to master the controls all in the name of making it to the next mission, seeing what happens next, unlocking more content and hardware. Add to that mix the unique addition of a multiplayer mode (using ﾑad hoc' local wireless) with multiple game types, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a very good game that all adult PSP owners should definitely check out. 
Given that it was a Grand Theft Auto game at the center of the ﾑHot Coffee' controversy and ended up re-rated as ﾑAdults Only' (AO), it should be no surprise that this game is rated M. While the game doesn't cross the line from M to AO in terms of content, it revels in presenting mature content across the board. There is drug use, rampant lawlessness, vigilante attacks, police killings, and language inappropriate for kids strewn throughout. It's best to not let your kids play this game, don't let them watch you play this game, and don't even let them listen to you playing this game.
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