The Impact Of GTA Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, And Chinatown Wars

Once upon a time in the year 2005, a silly newly minted 13-year-old boy spent his birthday money on wrestling DVDs and VHS tapes, as well as the latest sports games that he only enjoyed for pitting the AI against each other. This boy had no awareness that the very next day on September 1, 2005, the PSP was released. Oblivious to this, the boy was getting ready for another school year, only to eventually glance at the cover of a games magazine, where he saw an animated Don Salvatore Leone smoking a cigar, provoking curiosity in this puzzled teenager. Flicking through the magazine, it became apparent that not only was there a brand new Grand Theft Auto game, but it was tied exclusively to the PSP and that the boy could not receive this glorious new Sony portable until his birthday the next year, and was unable to play this new GTA experience until it arrived in June the following year as well on PS2.

Of course the silly boy in this story is yours truly, but you can imagine how hot the excitement was a scorching hot GTA game shrunken down into a portable device in a way that mimics the groundbreaking GTA 3 from four years earlier. The ultimate portable system seller, GTA: Liberty City Stories was a full GTA game in the palm of your hands, and as it turned out- a truly sensational and still mind-boggling achievement to this day.

A Portable Crime Spree Caper

Liberty City Stories aptly tells the story of Toni Cipriani, the reliable right hand man to mafia boss Don Salvatore Leone. Recently returned from hiding after taking out a high-ranking member of a rival crime family, Toni tries to settle back down in Liberty City like he never left in the first place. Unfortunately for Toni, Salvatore Leone recruited a new right hand man during his absence named Vincenzo “Lucky” Cilli, and now Toni has seemingly been demoted to underling status. Toni obviously doesn’t like this, but needs to try and play nice with his new underboss if he is to restore Salvatore Leone’s trust.

The set up of Liberty City Stories may appear lighter than predecessors in the franchise, but whether the story seems like a step back or not, there is no denying the sheer pleasures of playing a GTA that in some ways rivals both GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City. For example, in GTA 3 you couldn’t ride two-wheeled vehicles, but in Liberty City Stories (set three years before the events of GTA 3, mind you) allows you to ride motorbikes, dirt bikes, and mopeds, just like you can in Vice City. Boats are more prominent in Liberty City Stories too, and the waters of Liberty City look more impressive than they do in GTA 3 — oh and those on-rails boat missions in LCS are awesome!

Diversions are really cool too, such as the Car Salesman odd job, where you need to take customers out for a test drive while driving in accordance with their specifications, such as driving slow and carefully, or becoming the ultimate speed freak. You can deliver pizzas as well, just like you can in Vice City, though there’s a new Noodle Punk delivery mission-which is a nice new addition to the timed delivery mission format. Slash TV is great, which you’ll know more about when you’ve played through Vincenzo’s missions early on in the game, but it is about surviving waves of enemies on a container ship, and that sounds awesome enough, doesn’t it! There are many other side missions and challenges that make Liberty City Stories very meaty, and this is why it is every bit as good as its console counterparts.

Vice In A Portable Paradise

As for the successor to Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, it went even further with new ideas and is arguably a better GTA experience than Liberty City Stories. In Vice City Stories you play as the slick-suited Lance Vance’s brother Victor Vance-you know the guy who was gunned down during the botched deal at the beginning at Vice City. Vic is an army corporal who is trying to accrue funds for his poorlys brother Pete. Vic wants the help of his superior officer Sergeant Jerry Martinez, who is obsessed with drugs, prostitutes and porn. Martinez is a right sleaze ball, but Vic really needs the money and Martinez is the only man who can help him. However, after a drugs deal gets messed up, Martinez decides to hide drugs and prostitutes inside Vic’s barracks, and as a result he is dishonorably discharged from the army.

While the premise is straightforward, Vic’s story has him brushing with rednecks, unintentionally allying himself with a corrupt police officer, having a close relationship with a certain lady character, and embroiling himself and his brother in a dirty drugs game by rubbing elbows with the kingpins of Vice City’s drugs trade. Intrigue runs far deeper when compared to Liberty City Stories‘ story, and the ambitions of VCS were grander in scope and scale.

Vice City is such a glorious setting for a GTA game, and it’s remarkably realized in portable form for Vice City Stories. The map is as open to explore as it was in the original Vice City, the beauty of Vice City is still picturesque, and the 80s flavour permeates through it as majestically as ever. Vice City Stories is truly a step up from Liberty City Stories and anybody who really wants a shrunken down version of Vice City in their hands will find that Vice City Stories is pretty much everything they wished for.

Vice City Stories Is An Easy Lover

Much like Liberty City cribbed cool ideas from Vice City, Vice City Stories has a few welcome additions from San Andreas. Vic can swim now, which is a very good thing indeed considering that we were getting tired of our GTA protagonists drowning. Helicopters are widely available too, and taking to Vice City’s skies in portable form is flat-out amazing to experience. Hovercrafts and speed boats are in abundance too, as well as a brand new addition in the form of jet skis, which are fantastic to blast around Vice City’s crystal-glistening waters in.

Ever felt like running your own empire in a GTA game? Well Vice City Stories has you covered there. You can set-up a range of operations from drug trafficking to prostitution to protection rackets, and you’ll feel like you’re really in control of your criminal empire. Of course it won’t be easy as you’ll consistently face resistance and the need to stomp out competition, but it makes Vice City Stories seem far larger than anything you could’ve imagined from a portable Grand Theft Auto, which is just incredible.

You’ll be jovial at the fact you can tune into a slew of radio stations, many of them returning from VC. You got V-Rock for a fist-thumping good time, Wave 103 for a true appreciation of the technological advancements in mainstream music of the 80s, FLASH FM for straight-up pop goodness, Emotion 98.3 for some of the affectionate tunes, Radio Espantoso for some of that elegant Spanish-Floridian flavor, and VCPR if you want a bonkers talk show to listen to and audio broadcasts of classic fictional shows like Moorhead Rides Again and The Time Ranger-both of which are side-splittingly hilarious. Two new radio shows round up the line-up, including Paradise FM, which is essentially the predecessor to Vice City’s Fever 105 and plays Disco and Jazz music, and VCFL (Vice City For Lovers) which is another station quite like Fever 105, but on top of Disco and Soul it contains several R&B songs which are welcome for Vice City Stories and congeal well with some of the goings on in the game’s story.

On the subject of music, British soft-rock legend Phil Collins is a a fully voiced character in Vice City Stories, and it is a truly remarkable guest appearance you wouldn’t have seen coming back in the day if you didn’t pay attention to the previews and reviews before playing. Besides his presence in the story, you can also see Phil perform In The Air Tonight at the concert venue in Downtown, you know the same venue where you helped Love Fist in Vice City.

Vice City Stories upped the ante on what Liberty City Stories accomplished, and in many ways it is a better game. You wouldn’t be able to ask for a more entertaining portable GTA game than Vice City Stories, and while it isn’t perfect, you won’t really care for its blemishes because it’s that damn good. And yes, this time yours truly was there to play VCS on its release date on PSP and it was a marvelous load of utter brilliance.

A Chinese Dragon’s Delight

To round out this trilogy retrospective of GTA, we land on an entry that initially launched on the Nintendo DS. You read that correctly, a GTA game launched ON A NINTENDO SYSTEM!!! It’s madness when you think about it because Nintendo loves its cuddly and gentle game, but Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars launched in early 2009 on the Nintendo DS, and while it reverted GTA games back to a top-down style and the presentation was pared back (animated cutscenes with scrolling text in place of dialogue and backdropped with music), Chinatown Wars was still considered a great GTA game. But hold up, PlayStation wasn’t left out of this party because later on in 2009, the PSP version came out and featured a new character and extra missions, huzzah!

You play as Huang Lee, who is tasked with delivering a sacred sword that his dad won at a card game. Unfortunately, Huang’s dad was murdered, and Huang is asked to return the prized sword to his uncle Kenny Lee, but he gets ambushed and the sword is stolen. This all leads to themes of family honor, hierarchy and a mission to find out who is responsible for stealing the precious Yu Jian sword.

The premise is straightforward and the story whilst interesting, may not fully satisfy those used to a different style of GTA game. Make no mistake though, Chinatown Wars is still a very satisfying-if-compact GTA experience.

If you think Chinatown Wars is a dumbed down and completely restricted style of GTA offering-think again! You’ll still be completing missions for associates and getting your hands dirty with law enforcement as you delve deeper into Chinatown Wars‘ criminal underworld. However, there are various improvement and quirks that make the entry unique.

Firstly you can buy and sell drugs, which is an activity that is completely new for the series, and will keep you mindful of buying low and selling high. Drug dealing is a somewhat surprisingly massive part of Chinatown Wars, and mastering the trade is certainly worthwhile. Various drugs can be sold at varying values, such as acid, coke, downers, ecstasy, heroin and weed. You’ll need to pay attention to what drugs each gang in Liberty City buys and sells, as well as the worth of each drug.You’ll be carrying a holdall which stores your drugs and you can access and manage your inventory with it. In addition, each safe house in the game contains a stash box for you to hide drugs. You cannot take the stash box out with you as you’ll need to place your drugs into the holdall in order to deal them to clients. Be prepared for drug busts and the ready presence of the police when conducting this illegal activity, but you may just find it addictive like the substances themselves.

Playing Chinatown Wars is like playing a PS1 GTA game, albeit one with more surprises and subtleties. On the surface it seems like standard fare as you can drive through Liberty City with the top-down perspective, though admittedly most of the time you may not even recognize that it is Liberty City you’re driving through because of the camera perspective. You can engage in warfare with a reliable lock-on system that targets enemies effectively, and you’re treated to an arsenal of traditional GTA weapons like handguns, assault rifles and flamethrowers. Then you’ve got uncanny additions such as minigames where you’re hotwiring cars, disabling bombs, sorting through trash to grab your stash, and filling up bottles with petrol to make Molotov Cocktails.

Chinatown Wars is a minimalist GTA game with regards to its presentation, but this doesn’t mean that it isn’t effective. The sound design is crisp because every shot from a gun and explosion from a vehicle sounds lethal, and the game’s sense of feedback is excellent for a portable game. There might not be much of a soundtrack in the game, but there are instrumental tunes that cohere brilliantly with Chinatown Wars and its themes. Maybe the most impressive thing about it is how the visuals match the cover arts of any GTA game, so it absolutely looks the part.

You really cannot say that Chinatown Wars is watered down GTA experience. Yes, the game had its technical limitations, but they’re excellently compensated for by additions that we don’t see in other GTA games and a design that’s been carefully considered and treated with a tremendous amount of respect. If you want a different kind of GTA game and a homage to the PS1 games, then Chinatown Wars is it, and unlike other Grand Theft Auto games it proudly stands on its own.

The Portable Gaming Evolution

Altogether, the portable Grand Theft Auto games were groundbreaking and pushed the envelope of portable gaming in ways that seemed unfathomable before they were made. Liberty City Stories took the 3D GTA evolution established by GTA 3 and whittled it down into a bite-sized format. Vice City Stories took that format to the next level by implementing various improvements and a fully explorable Vice City on the go. And to complete the trio, Chinatown Wars went back to basics whilst providing sumptuous new additions and a subtle but pleasing presentation.

Handheld GTA games might seem insignificant now, but they showed the potential of portable gaming like no other video game franchise could. They took the epic console gaming experiences we were used to, and turned them into portable powerhouses we could take anywhere with us. All three of these GTA games paved the way for the evolution of handheld gaming, and we cannot forget their contributions when we look back at the legacy of portable gaming.

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