GTA: Liberty City Stories for PS2

A PSP to PS2 GTA port? Who would have guessed the well wasn't dry?

For those of you who can’t get enough free roaming carnage, GTA Liberty city stories has been ported over to the PS2 from the PSP, with better graphics, and little else. The great news is that it’s only fifty bucks, so if you haven’t played the PSP version, there’s another storyline to follow, if that’s what you play GTA for.

Visually, there is very little in Liberty City Stories that is different from GTA3. You play on the same map, and as you’d expect, the PS2 controls haven’t been changed. The characters from GTA3 are all there, as is the beautiful, dreary atmosphere of the city. The new missions in the old city bring back the nostalgia, if you haven’t played Liberty City Stories on PSP.

The GTA franchise clearly has legs, however Rockstar hasn’t added multiplayer, so you will still end up passing the controller each time you are either busted or wasted. We have seen multiplayer tacked on to various iterations of the franchise by modders who wanted to give the game some longevity, but Rockstar is yet to deliver an official version.

Liberty City Stories is a stopgap measure by Rockstar to keep millions of hungry fans at bay before a major GTA release knocks our socks off. Until then, if you haven’t played the PSP version, and don’t mind the fact that the graphics aren’t as polished as versions that were built for more powerful consoles from the get-go, Liberty City Stories will tide you over until the next major release.

If you have played the PSP version though, stick with one of the many other PS2 GTA’s we’re sure you already have on the shelf, or Liberty City Stories will feel like Rockstar trying to get blood from a stone. However, Nintendo have been doing the same thing for years and we love it, so if you need your fix of GTA mayhem, give it a shot.