Much to my surprise, I completed Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories yesterday after a marathon four-hour session. I was taken off-guard because the savegame statistics indicated I had only completed 42% of the game.
But that tells you something important about the game: the story missions are only part of the experience.
Indeed, you could make the case that GTA:LCS is two games in one.
One game is a sandbox in a brilliantly realised city environment. Liberty City is a living, breathing entity, one that doesn’t wait for player intervention for things to occur.
Turn around a corner and you could come across an accident scene. Body on the ground in front of car, driver out, a policeman running towards the scene … Jogging on the sidewalk, I passed by a fistfight in progress … Coming out of a gun store, I witnessed the vehicle which I had recently appropriated being stolen by someone else.
The game does provide incentives for you to do explore every nook and cranny. There are hidden packages which provide permanent weapon spawns, optional missions to try and locales suited for attempting the perfect insane stunt.
I’ve not seen this kind of environment since the best of the Ultima games and even those classic games didn’t come close to what Rockstar has achieved here.
You have complete freedom … until you choose a mission.
At this point, the other LCS game reveals itself. You will find yourself in a harsh gaming enviroment with extremely strict win/lose conditions.
If that wasn’t bad enough, you’re only allowed to save when you’re back at a safehouse. The problem here is mission-critical locations can be so far away from your safehouse that returning to save isn’t usually a viable option.
According to the game’s stats I’ve put in over 14 hours into it but that is way off. I’ve easily played four or five times that amount. I only save when I’ve successfully completed a mission and some of the missions are so hard I’ve had to repeat them numerous times before succeeding.
Story-wise, I was hoping for a bit more. I was expecting the player character to rise further but then this story is a prelude to events seen in GTAIII and thus, the ending was already pre-written.
My biggest criticism is that the game starts off slow. I had actually started the game over a year ago but quickly lost interest. I recently restarted the game with the express intent of finishing it and was quickly hooked once I made it to Staunton Island where the missions are a lot more action-packed.
There are a couple of irritations — the targetting, the disappearing rides, the sophomoric smartass lines, etc. — but the game more than makes up for it with great cinematic moments that leave you grinning.
A fine game once you get into it.
Final game stats:
Continued…
