Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

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Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is an installment of the Grand Theft Auto series, and is the best selling game so far for the PlayStation Portable. It was released in the United States (U.S.) 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.^[1]

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 23 2006 in the UK and the rest of Europe for GBP £19.99 or EUR €29.99, respectively.^{[2] [3]} 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 multi-player mode or custom soundtrack ripping capability of the original PSP version.

General

Story background

The game is set in Liberty City (seen in Grand Theft Auto III). However, it takes place in 1998, three years before the events of Grand Theft Auto III. Toni Cipriani is fresh back in the city after laying low for several years, having offed a fellow mobster 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 "Lucky" Cilli, and even Toni's own mother.

At this earlier time in the GTA lineage, Liberty City is slightly different. For example, Luigi Goterelli's Sex Club Seven is called Paulie's Revue Bar, and is instead owned by JD O'Toole, a pervert working for the Sindacco Mafia family (from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), although the player sees how it becomes Sex Club Seven. There is also a Little Italy section of town that does not exist in the Liberty City from Grand Theft Auto III, although its fate is explained in this game. The way to get from island to island has 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 in Grand Theft Auto III) has also not been fully constructed yet. Only after the mission "Driving Mr. Leone", which occurs at around 19% completion, you can actually traverse the bridge as its construction progresses. In addition, motorbikes were previously permitted in the city. The official Liberty City Stories websites reveals that motorbikes were no longer in Grand Theft Auto III due to a public ordinance that banned them that was supported by the Zaibatsu Corporation (which marketed the oversized Maibatsu Monstrosity in GTA III) in order to promote the use of automobiles in the city.

Characters

Main article: List of characters in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Weapons

• Slot 1: Fist; Fist, Brassknuckles.
• Slot 2: Melee Weapons; (Knife, baseball bat, Chisel, Fire Axe, Katana, Chainsaw, Hockey stick, butcher's cleaver.)
• Slot 3: Pistol; 9mm pistol (GLOCK 17),.357 Magnum (Colt Python.)
• Slot 4: Shotguns; Shotgun , Stubby Shotgun (sawn-off shotgun), Combat Shotgun (SPAS-12.)
• Slot 5: Sub-Machine Guns; TEC-9, MAC-10, Micro-SMG (IMI Uzi), H&K MP5K.
• Slot 6: Assault Rifles; AK-47, M4 carbine.
• Slot 7: Heavy Artillery; Rocket Launcher (RPG-7), Minigun, M60 machine gun, Flamethrower.
• Slot 8: Explosives; Grenade, Molotov cocktail, Remote Satchel charge.
• Slot 9: Sniper Rifles; PSG-1, and a basic sniper rifle.

Radio stations

Main article: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories soundtrack

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 followed:

Graphics

• The draw distance and graphics are much improved from GTA III, with minimal pop-up and nearly no fog.
• In-game resolution is significantly lower than in GTA III
• Cars now have even better reflection modelling than they did in San Andreas.
• The onscreen HUD is semi-transparent, giving a better view of the action on PSP's smaller screen.
• The particle effects are vastly improved over those in GTA III
• 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".^[4]

RenderWare has been the game engine behind every GTA since GTA III (which includes GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas). However, it is revealed that the graphics engine contains elements of that used in Vice City, suggesting that Liberty City Stories runs under a modified Vice City engine. ^{[citation needed]}

Controls

Character movement is controlled using the analog stick and the D-Pad being used to cycle through the available weapons. The Select button changes the camera mode. To target an enemy, the player holds the right trigger and can then cycle through targets using left and right on the D-Pad. Whilst in a car, the trigger buttons can be used for drive-by shootings. While in the midst of a mission, all enemies (that is, those directly relating to the mission) are indicated on the radar by red dots. In the game's menu, the player can choose to reverse the functions of the analog stick and D-Pad.

The PlayStation 2 version of Liberty City Stories plays like a combination of Grand Theft Auto 3(the basic controls) and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (camera controls).

Multiplayer

The PSP verison 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. Rockstar decided to remove these modes from the PS2 version, because they didn't fit in with the spirit and story of Liberty City.

The first is Liberty City Survivor, a tie-in to the radio advertisement found in Grand Theft Auto III of a fictional reality television show of the same name. In Liberty City Survivor, players fight for themselves in a deathmatch. The first player to reach a certain number of kills, or with the highest score when the timer runs out is the winner. Players can also play in teams, or "gangs". Ultimately players will be able to choose from over 60 different characters, and play on all three islands, depending on progress through the single player storyline, but from the get go, it is limited to Portland with a generous nine characters to choose from.

The second mode of play is Protection Racket, in which players attack an opposing player's gang base in order to destroy four limos while the other gang tries to protect its limos. When time runs out, or a gang destroys the other gang's limos, a new round begins with the gang roles reversed.

In Get Stretch, players try to steal the other gang's gang cars from their base and take it to their base. The game ends when a gang reaches the score limit or time runs out.

In The Hit List, players have to kill the Marked player as quickly as possible. Survive as long as possible when you are the Mark. In the first round, one player will be chosen randomly as the Mark, all other players must try to kill the Marked player as quickly as possible. Once a Marked player has been killed, a different player will be randomly chosen to be the Mark. Making a successful kill on a Marked player will award you with extra time that is added to your survival time at the end of the game. Once all players have been Marked and killed, the player with the longest survival time wins. The Marked player's vehicle will take damage over time.

In Street Rage players must drive through the checkpoints to get to the finish line first. Players are allowed to change vehicles and shoot other players to win the race. Players will be automatically re-spawned in a vehicle on the track after a short period of time if they do not have a vehicle or if they have been killed. The player that finishes the race first wins. The Sticky Tires powerup improves vehicle handling for limited time, while Instant Repair is just that, an instant repair for your vehicle.

The Wedding List is a free-for-all game where players must collect cars scattered throughout the city and deliver them to shipping crates. Only players in the vehicles to be collected will know the destinations of the shipping crates. Cash is awarded based on the condition of the cars when they are delivered. Once all the cars have been collected and delivered, the player with the most cash wins this game mode.

In Tanks for the Memories players have to be the first to the tank and try to survive the target Tank Time. Other players must try to destroy your tank before the Tank Time is reached. If this happens, the player who caused the most damage to the tank will now occupy the new tank and you must destroy it as quickly as possible. First player that hits the Tank Time wins!!

Custom soundtracks

A special feature (only in the PSP version of the game) is the ability to listen to custom soundtracks.^[5] 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 didn't 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 name for Rockstar Custom Tracks is abbreviated to "RCT" to make it shorter to type, but this must not be confused with the RollerCoaster Tycoon series.

In the application, songs from a CD are ripped, compressed, and converted to files that can be read by the game. Because RCT only allows the ripping of songs that are already burned on a CD, MP3s files cannot be put directly into the game unless burnt onto a CD. This was met with much criticism among the fan community. However, fans have found a way to compress and convert MP3 files that are not burned onto CDs[1]. 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.

GTA PSP exploit

In early 2005, a vulnerability was found in the way the PSP version of GTA: LCS processes saved games. In early 2006 software was developed to execute unsigned code.^[6]

Currently, there is a "cheat device" which allows users to play with custom-made cheats, as well as make their own cheats for the game. Also appearing are a few homebrew apps-Tetris, Pong, Hello World and Snakman, with hundreds more available, as well as an EBOOT loader (eLoader) which would allow users to run homebrew that before could only work on 1.0, 1.50, or 2.00. This game save exploit exists on firmware versions 2.00, 2.01, 2.50, 2.60.

As of May 2006, the newest PSP firmware (v2.70) removes the exploit, preventing eLoader and CheatDevice from running.

Cheat device

As forementioned, the GTA: Liberty City Stories Cheat Device is a mod or trainer for the game Liberty City Stories which allows the player to manipulate gameplay in a multitude of ways, such as invincibility, or changing game constants like weather and water level. Created by Edison Carter, it can be found at his web-site^[7] and has seen frequent updates since creation. The Cheat Device menu works by triggering Functional programming in the game's source code. For example, to teleport to a certain location, the Cheat Device uses a teleport(x, y, z) function. It also includes a text file application in which the source code can be altered, allowing many different cheats to be put into the game, even going as far as to create custom buildings and islands through means of spawing objects in a GUI called "Construction Mode". It's even possible to make use of the full potential of the PSP's CPU while playing the game changing CPU speed from 222 MHz to 333 MHz providing a significant frame rate boost.

References

1. ^ Rockstar Games : Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories. Rockstar Games. Retrieved on 2006-05-23.
2. ^ Rockstar Games Announces Release Date for Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on PlayStation®2. Take 2 Interactive. Retrieved on April 20, 2006.
3. ^ $20 PS2 GTA: LCS due 6/6/06. GameSpot. Retrieved on April 19, 2006.
4. ^ Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Preview. IGN. Retrieved on September 9, 2005.
5. ^ GTA Custom Soundtrack Loader. GTA Network.com. Retrieved on October 29, 2005.
6. ^ Fanjita's Place. Retrieved on 2006-05-23.
7. ^ Cheats for Grand Theft Auto by Edison Carter. maxbot.com. Retrieved on 2006-05-23.

External links

Official sites

• Official website

Teaser sites

• Ammu-Nation – the ingame munitions store chain
• Lips106 FM – one of the ingame radio stations
• ElectronZoneRadio.com - Segment on LCFR (Liberty City Free Radio)
• Crowfest '98 - The music festival on its way to Liberty City
• Paulie's Revue Bar – the official site of the Red Light District strip club
• CitizensUnitedNegatingTechnology.org (also .com) – Citizens United Negating Technology (CUNT), an organization revealing the evils of the Internet
• BathtubGinStill.com, Beer
• PastMaster - "The Future of Education about the past is Now"
• ItsVivisection.com - Boardgame/chemistry set for kids.

Fansites

• GTAPortable.com - First and best fan site for Liberty City Stories
• LCSPS2.com - Dedicated to the PS2 version of LCS
• GTAPSP.com

Game resources

• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories at the Internet Movie Database
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories at MobyGames
• GTA: Liberty City Stories at StrategyWiki (previously hosted by Wikibooks)