Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories . www.covermix.com

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is an installment of the Grand Theft Auto series. It was released for the PlayStation Portable in North America on October 25, 2005 and in the United Kingdom (UK) on November 4, 2005. The official site credits Take-Two Interactive companies Rockstar Games, Rockstar North, and Rockstar Leeds in the creation of this game. The game has since been followed up by Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.

A port for the PlayStation 2 was released on June 6, 2006 in North America for a recommended retail price of US$19.99, June 22, 2006 in the UK and the rest of Europe for GBP £19.99 or EUR €29.99, respectively. The pricing of the PS2 port is less than half the typical price of a big name new release title (the first three PS2 installments of GTA debuted at US$49.99 each). The PS2 port does not feature the multiplayer mode or custom soundtrack ripping capability of the original PSP version.

Setting

The game is set in Liberty City (the same city featured in Grand Theft Auto III). However, it takes place in 1998, three years before the events of GTA III. Toni Cipriani is fresh back in the city after lying low for several years, having offed a made man as a favor for Don Salvatore Leone. The grateful Salvatore puts him straight back to work. During the course of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, players can accept a variety of missions from many people, including Salvatore, Salvatore's wife Maria, JD O'Toole, wise guy Vincenzo "Vinnie" Cilli, and even Toni's own mother. Players may also accept missions from the "Avenging Angels", similar to the Guardian Angels, earning special vehicles and wardrobe rewards.

The game features a club named "Paulie's Revue Bar" which is later taken over by the Leone family and renamed "Sex Club Seven". In the PSP version, as in all subsequent versions than the beta version you cannot go in the club, due to a public outcry (see controversy.) Although Liberty City Stories is set in 1998, the introduction DVD for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which takes place in 1992, shows the club as "Sex Club Seven". This is likely a continuity error as Liberty City Stories was not in development when the San Andreas introduction DVD was released. San Andreas' events lead up Grand Theft Auto III where the club was also named "Sex Club Seven".

Gameplay

The ways to get from island to island have also been tweaked. A ferry now runs from Portland Island to Staunton Island, and the tunnel that connects the islands in Grand Theft Auto III has not yet been completed - only the section of the tunnel that runs from north Shoreside Vale to south Shoreside Vale is open. The Callahan Bridge (the bridge that was blown up at the beginning of Grand Theft Auto III) has also not been fully constructed yet. Only after the mission "Driving Mr. Leone", which occurs at around 19% completion, can the player actually traverse the bridge as its construction progresses.

In addition, motorcycles were previously permitted in the city. The official Liberty City Stories website reveals that motorbikes were banned by the turn of the 21st century, due to a public ordinance supported by the Maibatsu Corporation (which marketed the over-sized Maibatsu Monstrosity in GTA III) in order to promote the use of automobiles in the city.

Though airplanes and helicopters can be found in Vice City, usable airplanes and helicopters cannot be found in Liberty City Stories, although a glitch to fly a helicopter has been discovered.

Multiplayer

The PSP version of Liberty City Stories has a multiplayer mode, for up to 6 players through WiFi ad-hoc mode (same area). The game features 7 modes of wireless multiplayer gaming, in which various pedestrian and character models from the single player mode are available as player avatars. Rockstar decided not to include these modes in the PS2 version.

Characters

Graphics

As stated in an IGN preview, "Rockstar dropped Renderware in favor of a brand new in-house engine to best utilize the resolution, texture density and particle effects of the PSP". RenderWare has been the game engine behind every GTA since GTA III (which includes GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas).

Soundtrack

Radio stations

Liberty City Stories features ten radio stations, which comprise a mix of both licensed music and tracks created specifically for the game. The ten radio stations are as follows:

Custom soundtracks

A special feature (only in the PSP version of the game) is the ability to listen to custom soundtracks. Previously, only Grand Theft Auto games on the Xbox and PC were able to implement custom soundtracks. When Liberty City Stories was released, the custom soundtracks option was featured in the "Audio" section of the menu (by pressing Start in gameplay) but did not have any use. Many people posted on various internet forums asking how to use the feature. At one time, it was thought that these custom soundtrack abilities had to be unlocked, but this would have been very unusual since previous games did not do this.

A few days after release of the game, Rockstar placed the application called "Rockstar Custom Tracks v1.0" on the official site under the "Downloads" section. This then gave people the chance to use the custom soundtracks feature. The application appears to be based on Exact Audio Copy.

In the application, songs from a CD are ripped, compressed, and converted to files that can be read by the game. Rockstar Custom Tracks (RCT) only allows the ripping of songs that are from a store-bought CD. However, fans have found a way to compress and convert MP3 files that are not burned onto CDs. RCT can also look up and use the names from the FreeDB server if there are no names for the song(s). There must be at least one save file in order for RCT to work. It is thought that this will be used for other games Rockstar will release on the PSP from the name. More details can be found in the PDF in the file downloaded from the official site.

PSP exploit

In late 2005 a vulnerability was found in the way the PSP version of GTA: Liberty City Stories processes saved games. In December 2005 software was developed to execute unsigned code on PSPs with firmwares 2.00 through 2.60. In April 2006 firmware 2.70 was released and patched the exploit, however, as of January 25, 2007 it was discovered that Sony did not completely patch the exploit, and unsigned code may be run on 3.03 firmware, a 3.03 downgrader was released 3 days after the exploit was found. Also, new copies of GTA: Liberty City Stories patched the exploit as well, preventing it from being executed on any firmware version.

Sales

In the United States, the PlayStation 2 version of Liberty City Stories had sold 1 million copies by February 6, 2007; as of December 27, 2007, the PSP version has sold 1.83 million copies and the PS2 version has sold 1.32 million. As of March 26, 2008, Liberty City Stories has sold 8 million copies according to Take-Two Interactive.

References

^ OFLC (New Zealand) rating. New Zealand Customs Service. Retrieved on August 26, 2006.
^ Official Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories website. Rockstar Games. Retrieved on 2006-05-23.
^ Rockstar Games Announces Release Date for Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on PlayStation2. Take 2 Interactive. Retrieved on April 20, 2006.
^ $20 PS2 GTA: LCS due 6/6/06. GameSpot. Retrieved on April 19, 2006.
^ Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Preview. IGN. Retrieved on September 9, 2005.
^ GTA Custom Soundtrack Loader. GTA Network.com. Retrieved on October 29, 2005.
^ Colin Campbell (2007-02-06). The games people buy - Positions 30 to 21: 800,000 sales to 1 million sales. Next-Gen.biz 13. Future Network USA. Retrieved on 2008-04-09.
^ US Platinum Videogame Chart. The Magic Box (2007-12-27). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
^ Recommendation of the Board of Directors to Reject Electronic Arts Inc.'s Tender Offer (PDF) 12. Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (2008-03-26). Retrieved on 2008-04-01.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories