Grand Theft Auto has had a storied history, from main series titles to side entries like Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. Long-time fans often remember its first fully 3D entry, Grand Theft Auto 3, with great fondness, and that lent the first two handheld releases more weight as legitimate titles than they might otherwise have had, with both Grand Theft Auto Advance and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories acting as prequels to GTA 3. While Rockstar Games had already put themselves on the map with their first several games, the third installment made them a household name all over the world. It came as no surprise that players were anxious to return to Liberty City, the series stand-in for New York City, after Vice City and San Andreas had taken them to areas that mimicked Miami and Southern California. While series fans in 2021 might not want another GTA set in Liberty City, 2005 was a perfect time for that nostalgia trip, especially with GTA 4 still two years away.

Since Liberty City Stories felt a lot like a handheld version of GTA 3 when it released for Sony’s PlayStation Portable in 2005, it made sense that the gameplay was similar, especially given that both games share a nearly identical version of Liberty City. But not everything remained the same, and plenty of the improvements that Rockstar had implemented to the usual formula over the course of Vice City’s development made their way into the gameplay of Liberty City Stories.

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The game largely mirrors gameplay concepts found in the larger series entries, especially when it comes to how it’s structured. The familiar mission loop is present and accounted for, with NPCs offering work for the player in both optional side content and missions that progress the main story, and the latter are broken up with cutscenes in much the same way they were in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City.

Liberty City Stories Adds Vice City Upgrades, But Truncates Everything Else

GTA 3 Hidden Packages

Because Liberty City Stories followed Vice City, there were some additions that might have stood out as glaring omissions had they not been included, and many of its gameplay improvements came as a result of this conscious effort to make a more fully-featured game on the PSP. Motorcycles, for instance, felt like a necessary inclusion, there was the requisite host of sub-missions (such as driving a taxi or an ambulance) which expanded to eight types over GTA 3's five types, and players could even acquire new outfits and change into them at will. Not all of the upgraded design elements from Vice City were crammed into Liberty City Stories, however, thanks in large part to the game’s origin on the PSP, which necessitated some cutbacks to make things work properly.

This shows up most obviously in terms of the control limitations, some of which were resolved in a later port of the game to the PS2, which allowed for improvements to free aiming in particular that were introduced with San Andreas. This makes the PS2 version a substantial improvement over the original PSP release in terms of playability, as some of the button combinations required on the limited PSP controller needed more finger dexterity than was ideal. Missions were also correspondingly simplified in order to make things easier to digest on the portable platform, generally losing much of their complexity when compared to other games in the series. This was particularly noticeable after some of the more memorable moments players already experienced with San Andreas, though it made the game more viable as a portable experience since there were fewer mission objectives to contend with at any given time.

Despite losing some of the trademark story and mission complexity, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories remains a beloved entry in the series, so much that Rockstar released it on mobile devices in 2015 and 2016 as well, where its already portable-friendly nature made it a solid choice for anyone looking to take GTA on the go.

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