User Reviews (1 - 11 of 57)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Amazon will rob you on pre-orders for this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 15
Date: June 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you pre-ordered this game back in April when Amazon had it priced at $29.99, Amazon and Toys 'R Us decided to screw every person that did so. They charged me the original $29.99 even though Rockstar priced the game at $19.99. I'd advise all that were ripped off like this to return your game and buy it elsewhere. It's very sad that Amazon would do this and I'm sure there are several more out there that they did the same thing to. Beware!

Would NOT recommend

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 18
Date: July 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I recently rented this game because i thought it looked fun. i am 14 years old. when i started playing it i was very disapointed. i was hoping for it to be as good as/better than san andreas but it is terrible. it is pretty much a remake of GTA 3. i hope this helped you.

Read This

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: November 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When I ordered from here they took my money and did not send me anything I had to go to Amazon to get my money back. They did not even respond to the E-Mails I sent them trying to find out where my stuff was at. I would advise that unless you like being ripped off that nobody order anything from this place.

Its like an update from gta3

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game was like the same as part3, but just some new stuff, i gottan board of this game. GTA is has the same stuff just beating up people, shotting, stealing cars, and the police chaseing after you thats real old and boring, so this game was just the same nonsense.

Just wait till GTA 4

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: August 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is a step backwards. I bought it because it was only $20, and I didn't want to pay for shipping on my Gnarls Barkley CD. I got it, turned it on, got 3 stars, ran my car off a bridge, jumped...and drowned. Ugh, back to the bad old days. Bear in mind this is a game designed for PSP, not PS2. The graphics are worse than the trilogy, marginally.

The main problem for me is that this game didn't have The Magic. I've already seen this map, and I know these characters. I'm waiting for GTA 4.

One filan caveat, my rating of this game is based only on the GTA series. If you wish to compare it to other games, add one point.

PSP Version to PS2 platform, beware...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Two star game, five star fun? How does that work? Now, to begin, the ONLY reason I'm giving this game two stars is because it is warning to people who have NO clue (like I didn't) what this game is. I was at the store looking to buy San Andreas, but they didn't have it, so I opted for this one title, now, don't get me wrong, this is still GTA material, but, this (and Vice City Stories) is a remake of the PSP version into the PS2 version, which, to me, it doesn't quite work. The fun is still there but the graphics aren't as good and the movement aren't as crip, which, after playing Vice City I had raised the bar high for GTA. Like I said, this game isn't bad IF you know what you're buying, but if you don't have a clue, I'd suggest you rent it first to see what you're getting.

As soon as the fun starts its over

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 13
Date: January 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is like making a Ring 2 just because the last one is a hit doesn't mean make more this is pretty much driving a dead horse in the ground

LCS

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: June 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Liberty City Stories takes place roughly two years before the events that unfold in GTA 3. Instead of playing an unknown, however, you control Toni Cipriani - a member of the Leone family mafia who's working his way up the ranks. Even when I approached the game understanding that it wouldn't be as fully fledged of a GTA as its predecessors, I was still somewhat dissapointed with this offering.

I immediately noticed the slower frame rate in the game. While GTA games have never been known for having exemplary frame rates, Liberty City Stories handled it somewhat worse than even GTA 3 did several years ago. The city, Liberty City, is mostly the same although it's fun to explore certain parts of it to see how they later change in GTA 3. A huge flaw that the game has, however, comes in the targeting system. The targeting system is actually worse than the one found in San Andreas and even though the GTA series has always been criticized for a poor targeting system, I didn't share the same experience until I played Liberty City Stories. More often than not you'll target an innocent civilian multiple times before you finally lock on to the nearest antagonist. And while the targeting system now features the manual aiming feature found in San Andreas, it proves often times to be too slow to use effectively during heated gun fights.

The missions also feel more redundant than ever. Again, this has never been a strong feaeture in the GTA series, but Liberty City Stories lacks the diversity that its predecessors had. Even after beating the game, I can't easily recall a mission that stood out to me either in difficulty or variation. It simply involves the "drive here, shoot this guy" or "drive here, bring this back to me" formula. Unless this is your first GTA outing, it'll get redundant before you know it. And I say this as a true GTA fan who has been happy with the series' previous offerings and isn't trying to belittle the franchise in any way. Whereas GTA 3 had memorable missions like sabotaging members of a crime family using an ice cream truck or picking up porn magazines as they fell out of another truck, Liberty City Stories lacks both the creativity and humor in this department that other GTAs had.

The voice acting is still as good as it always is and the story is engaging enough to keep you interested throughout, although it still pales in comparison to the previous titles. A lot of this is due to the lack of a central antagonist. Throughout the game, you're fighting against various gangs and political officials without a true target in mind. This leads to a lackluster final battle and a lack of conviction to seeing things through. You don't have the same determination to hunt down your backstabbing girlfriend as you did in GTA 3 or killing the corrupt, sleazy police officer as you did in San Andreas. Because of this, Toni never really achieves a higher status than errand boy.

Still, for $20, the game is pretty solid. LCS has some of the best cars in the series so far and while the humor isn't as good as it used to be, it's still pretty solid and entertaining for the most part. It's no GTA 4 (nor was it ever meant to be) and lacks the multiplayer functionality of its PSP counterpart. But if you're looking for a GTA game to add to your library, LCS is a perfect fit for a cheap price.

The Seams are Starting to Show With the GTA Engine

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: July 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The latest PS2 chapter of the Grand Theft Auto legacy arrived amidst startlingly slim fanfare this summer in the form of Liberty City Stories, a PSP original ported over to its immediate predecessor. Rockstar didn't make any bones about this release - realizing that not only were they releasing an old game on a new system, but that they were actually taking away functionality, rather than adding to it, LCS was introduced at an original price point of $19.99 amidst much rejoicing from the general public. Speaking personally, that move alone changed my "wait and see" attitude about the title into an immediate purchase on launch day. Kudos to Rockstar - you probably could've gotten away with releasing this thing at full price, no doubt to great profits considering the completely recycled gameplay engine, maps and vehicles contained within, but you took the more honorable route and delivered a midsummer gift to your hardcore fan base.

Yep, aside from the storyline, the audio selections and a few very minor gameplay tweaks (the inclusion of motorcycles, for instance) this is an entirely recycled game. Top to bottom, it's the sights, streets and sensations of Grand Theft Auto III wrapped around a new set of missions, newly distributed hidden packages and a strangely familiar new protagonist. Toni Cipriani should be familiar to anyone who played through GTAIII - he's the momma's boy who handed out odd jobs from his family restaurant midway through the first section of the game, and Liberty City Stories is the tale of his short, deliberate rise to that small semblance of power. Seeing as how this is meant to be a direct prequel to GTAIII, you'll find dozens of little hints, nods and foreshadowing to the events that transpire in the series' first PS2 jaunt, which really made me ache to go back and play chapter three again.

However, aside from a few recurring characters and (obviously) locations, the direct links to the activities in III are few and far between. In my eyes, that's a big missed opportunity - I would've loved to have seen not only the backstory and events leading up to that epic first story, but also some of the things that went on elsewhere in the city during the course of the game. How cool would it have been to bump into the nameless lead character from GTAIII, exchange a few words, and then hear about his successes elsewhere in the city while your own fortunes turned for the worse? LCS was in the unique position to not only deliver a solid standalone tale, but to also expand upon an earlier yarn, perhaps even casting it in a new light. Instead, its storytelling wraps up several years before the explosive arrival of the nameless one, serving as only a traditional prequel with absolutely no overlap. Hopefully this is an area they can address in the future, as the teasers for Vice City Stories have already begun to circulate and one can only imagine that San Andreas Stories won't be far behind.

Despite the outstanding source material and superb pre-existing characters it had to work with, the actual storytelling of Stories does stumble from time to time, which is something that had never been a problem for the series beforehand. Both the pacing and the personality of the story don't quite match up with what had come before, which isn't to say it's a bad story by any stretch of the imagination, just that it's not quite up to the level of the preceding stories. That trademarked unforgiving, sarcastic GTA world view seems tamer this time around, and I'm not sure if that's because I've grown used to the approach or because the tale is actually much thinner than those that came before.

Those same comments could apply to the gameplay system in use with LCS. At its heart, it's the same old GTA - same free-roaming capabilities, same methods of transportation, same theme - but there's something missing that I can't really put my finger on. When I stole my first police car in GTAIII, hit R3 and went on my first vigilante search-and-destroy, it was an almost magical moment. The sky had truly become the limit. I didn't get that same sensation when I boarded a garbage truck and started collecting specially marked dumpsters.

A few of the innovations and new gameplay mechanics from San Andreas are put to use here, specifically the non-numeric health indicator (it's been replaced by a standard life bar) and the ability to change your wardrobe. I was glad to see that some of the more ambitious mechanics had been removed, mostly because I wasn't a fan of the dance levels, long afternoons in the gym to build endurance, or dating levels of GTA:SA, but sorely missed the ability to swim and the inclusion of functional aircraft. Driving your car into a pond of knee-deep water and watching Toni slowly drown is twice as bitter now as it was in Vice City or GTAIII, because you know that the capability was there and it merely didn't make the cut for the handheld release.

One area that I had a hard time coming to grips with was the graphics. I'm not sure if it's the limitations of the engine, the hardware, or the original target console, but the visuals of Liberty City Stories really don't look all that hot. It suffers from what I'd call Final Fantasy: Origins syndrome, in that they've delivered a precise translation of a game that was developed for a less visually intensive system. Origins would've been right at home on the SNES, but fell a little flat on the PSone. Likewise, I'm sure LCS looks outstanding on the PSP, but on the PS2 it's lacking. With that drawback, however, is something of a blessing: load times are significantly smaller in this chapter than they have been in the past. Where a three minute wait after loading a saved game wasn't a big deal for Vice City, you won't wait more than a minute to get into the action with Liberty City Stories. That's a nice tradeoff if you're looking to sit down and goof off for half an hour in between classes or on a lunch break, but if you're a serious player, I'd imagine you'll trade a longer initial load time for a better picture any day of the week.

Hand in hand with the disappointing delivery of the graphics in LCS is the strikingly downgraded quality of its audio selections and radio stations. Liberty City's airwaves feature a substantially smaller selection of recognizable artists and tracks, which may or may not speak to the need to get it out onto store shelves shortly after the PSP's release. Where Vice City and San Andreas were watershed moments for the integration of great music and pop culture references within the confines of an elaborate video game, Liberty City Stories feels like a pale impersonation. Of the in-game radio's selections, only the rap and classical tunes seem to have been given any kind of real attention, and even those broadcasts seem much more shallow than in previous installments.

Probably my biggest gripe about Liberty City Stories is the lack of multiplayer functionality that was built into the game's PSP release. Upon reading reviews of the title, I couldn't wait to try out these first forays into online play within the GTA universe... it sounded like Rockstar had covered all their bases, introduced a little something for everybody and, more importantly, hinted at what might be coming in GTAIV. One would think that continuing this functionality into the PS2 release, maybe even including cross-platform play between PSP owners and PS2 owners, would be a boon for both the portable system and for the in-home console's meager online offering. Instead, any kind of multiplayer functionality was completely removed from the game's home delivery, as developers claimed it "wasn't in keeping with the spirit and story of Liberty City." Why it was included in the PSP version, then, is still a mystery... and the end result is a disappointment for gamers who know the functionality is there, merely commented out of the PS2 translation.

It's that kind of "wow" factor that I think is missing from this entire package. It's a solid game, a continuation of a proven formula, but lacking in that one big punch, one big moment to push it over the top. This felt like a much more shallow, shorter game than Vice City or GTAIII did, when in actuality it took me exactly as long to finish 70% of Liberty City Stories as it did to break 90% on Vice City. I've got to attribute that perceived shortness and incompletion to that same lack of "wow." Even the ending seems anticlimactic and lacking in punch, which was one area that I distinctly remember as being wholly satisfying and exhilarating with San Andreas. This is a really fun game, sufficiently lengthy, with plenty of replay value and some outstanding voice acting work. What it isn't, however, is great. And, considering the lineage that came before, that's a disappointment. It would appear that ongoing greatness, like all other things, is not eternal.

Both past our primes....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When GTA 3 was released,it was a revolution in video gaming.Go anywhere,do anything,interact in pretty much anyway you want.
All of the extras being unlocked,and straying from the norm of the video game hero (doing moraly right things) was also a breatkthrough.

I played through and enjoyed GTA 3 and Vice City,and quite frankly,that's enough for me.I didn't care much for San Andreas because I felt Rockstar made it too ghetto storyline wise.Sure there is some cool stuff added here and there,but in the end this is just the same thing over and over.

Liberty City Stories is a pretty cool game,but to me personaly,
I just can't get excited over this series anymore.I find it hard to get psyched over finding those 100 secret packages yet again.One of the major kisses of death to the GTA series was how they changed the firefighter,vigilante,and paramedic missons.In GTA 3,all you had to was meet 50,60 goals (can't remember the exact number,it's been so long) BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE TO BE IN ORDER WITH A STUPID TIME LIMIT!!! Of course Rockstar cuts us a break with the taxi cab missons,but THAT "reward" is far from "rewarding".

Lastly,the radio station is there,but again,it's just not unique anymore.Also all the little verbal stabs and insults become annoying;one ad boasts "become a cop and beat people whether they're getting on your nerves,or you're just drunk!" Also the stale Lazzlo is back yet again,and one of his
quips is "I just don't get as good of ratings as self-righteous rednecks" Ha ha ha hee hee ho hum blah.

Ah yes,and the story!You guessed it! It's pretty much the same.
In a nutshell,gangster/thug/criminal comes into town and wants to place himself high on the dark underworld ladder.Kill, destroy do whatever to achieve this.That's fine and all,but so very unoriginal by now.Oh,and the hookers are back too and they're just as willing as ever.Yes,you can sleep with them for lack of a better term.-YAWN-

I guess I'm just getting too old for this leisure now and it's time to start hanging this hobby up;these games are quickly losing their luster.If anything else,I'll stick with the classics and cherish those fond memories.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next 

Actions