classicswim | [Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

I’ve been playing through the story again every day since the night of the actual anniversary, and for some reason this is the most fun with LCS I’ve had it feels like.

I’ve had the original PSP copy as well as the PlayStation 2 port for years. I’m obviously playing the port since it handles better, but to think this was the first big GTA game you could have handheld on the go. We’ve gotten so spoiled with technology since.

When I talked about Vice City Stories last year I kinda went off about how VCS underwhelmed with the plot.

This one and The Lost And Damned are the GTA campaigns that people don’t talk about as favorably. And for valid points.

I’m guess I’m more accepting of what this is while also acknowledging the flaws.

They did a good job not only making a version of III that plays better (GTA III with San Andreas engine) but giving you a prequel to III that decently maps things out and adding previous context from the last of the trilogy.

It doesn’t have all the features of San Andreas and quite frankly never needed to. Just an okay segway into the near end of the 3D era when GTA IV was the one to make a Liberty City the likes of which outclassed this.

With the protagonists of the Stories titles, Toni Cipriani gets more gripe than Vic Vance for being a yes-man with a gun.

I think what they get wrong with Toni was that Cipriani was a mere parody character in III, played by the late Michael Madsen. When you have a character who was a deliberate lampoon from the start, you’re just not going to make a believable badass protagonist out of that with any merit.

But I go back and I see that LCS itself doesn’t even treat Toni that seriously. LCS was really going with the flow of the shock humor from GTA San Andreas, and this rendition of Toni somehow blended into that well after having the infinitely more popular Carl Johnson.

When they made Vic they just retconned a minor dead guy into something very different personality wise.

With Stories, the sidekick characters are more developed than the protagonists, and it’s a no brainer that Salvatore Leone would be the highlight of this.

It’s great too because Frank Vincent had then started appearing in Sopranos. You also can’t thank Vincent enough for jumping directly into LCS after III & San Andreas. Michael Madsen in contrast did not come back to voice Toni.

They show how Luigi’s Sex Club 7 came to be. The Leone club had previously been Sindacco owned with a completely different name. I think the change of that building over the course of the plot would lend itself later to how you’d build your empire in Vice City Stories. The change of assets was actually pretty cool for this.

Despite LCS not having the same gang warfare layout as San Andreas, it still continues on that idea of territory ownership with the Leones even if you can’t personally control it.

Toni tells Sal that they’re losing Hepburn Heights to Diablos and... no shit. That’s what happens in GTA III. You can’t rule *everything* like CJ did as III’s events are the plot armor, but GTA III started with establishing Leones still had a good advantage in Liberty City.

The LC gangs also look sooooo much cooler than they did before. The Triads in III wore their fish factory gear and talked in the Mickey Rooney voices while the Triads here are more relative to San Andreas. The Yardies also look the most badass, even sporting K-Jah directly!

Never too fond of who replaced Kyle MacLachlan for Donald Love but eh, can’t win ‘em all.