Price: £19.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes 60Hz: No DTS Sound: No Last November, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories took the long-running series to a place it's never been before - Sony's new handheld portable machine, the PSP, and it was a fantastic piece of entertainment to take with you wherever you go, but then it does help that the series in question has been the absolute dog's bollocks with longevity that pays off if you stick with it. Although you're returned to Liberty City, the setting for 2001's ground-breaking Grand Theft Auto III, you don't play the same character, the clock goes back three years to 1998 and you take on the role of Toni Cipriani, who has come home after four years in exile. He left town after murdering a made man courtesy of your boss, Don Salvatore Leone. Cipriani was previously voiced by Reservoir Dogs' Michael Madsen but he turned this one down, allegedly because he now deplores violence (go figure!), so instead we have the similar-sounding but no-one's-heard-of-him Daniel Mastrogiorgio. In fact, there's no big names in Liberty City, this time round, but some voices from GTA 3 do make their comeback. Still, no matter because although there's still a few of the niggles that have always turned up in each release as the series has gone on, this latest release has also learned a few things along the way to make it feel more polished than the average trip back to Liberty City would've done.

Your aim is simple - You're back working for Salvatore Leone and have to protect his family who have become a prime target for all baddies concerned and you'll have to do his bidding in order to progress as well as encountering other characters who, early on, include Vincenzo Cilli and J.D. O'Toole. Firstly, whether you played this on the PSP or haven't been back since GTA 3, I will say that it feels good to be back in Liberty City. It's been nearly five years since that game and as I played through that one I can now see places I remember flashing back into my memory. All the SFX and style is there in this release, as is the brilliant physics that make this series such a joy to tuck into. The downside, visually, is that Unfortunately it's not the same story translated into the PS2's environment, it's a direct port from the PSP so the graphics suffer, meaning they're a bit jerky as you move around. I'm sure Rockstar could've tweaked them a bit to make them a bit sharper as the PS2 was only a year old when GTA 3 was released and now it's about to be pensioned off to make way for the PS3. As ever, you can complete the missions in any order that they're presented to you although it does have a slightly linear edge to it in that some have to be done in order to reveal the next one in the storyline so this can't be helped and isn't really a problem as such. That said, I found that after completing the missions requested by my mother, she finished by calling a hit on me! Hence, every so often if I hang around someplace I start getting chased by baddies who just won't stop until one of us is dead. There's far better music in GTA here than there was back in San Andreas, but that's only because I didn't like much of the rap stuff as while I'm primarily an '80s man, so that's why Vice City tops the bill on the audio front, Liberty City Stories returns the one thing I've not been able to listen to in four years - Double Clef FM. You simply cannot beat a screaming car chase to the strains of Maria Callas' O Mio Babbino Caro blaring out the speakers.

The first three 3D Grand Theft Auto PS2 games.

Grand Theft Auto III	Grand Theft Auto: Vice City	Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

There are a few niggles with this release which aren't things that would make any fan turn away from it but are as follows: Swimming is no longer possible - yes, I know it wasn't in GTA 3 either, but we've moved on since. Bikes are present here, but as you learn in the mocked-up newspaper that comes with this game, bikes were set to be banned by the time GTA 3 came round and, also here, the ferries are on strike. Why? Well, due to the underground tunnels and bridges being built between islands, ferry ports such as the one at Portland were effectively closed due to striking dockers. Also, as has happened in all previous 3D incarnations, the graphics can go a bit funny when you're close to a wall or door and then turn around, as you can appear to partly walk 'through' it. Still, this has been happening for a long time now so it's easily ignorable if it means the frame rate doesn't suffer (look what happened when they tried to tart up Lara Croft for Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and the game was appalling for trying too hard with a new game engine, although at least that was fixed for Tomb Raider: Legend. The cutscenes are a little too bright, and this isn't because I adjusted the brightness myself but because they must've been done that way for the PSP - again, something that hasn't been tweaked for this port. Multiplayer fans will also find that aspect of the PSP release has been removed here, although I could never get my PS2 Network Adaptor to work with Pipex's broadband service and got more into Xbox Live, although with the single-player version of games like this being great fun I don't resent not having as much time to play on there as I'd like.

Back to the positives, because these far outweigh any problems, and there's a fair few unique stunts to be found and attempted, it's still just as much fun to race around, such as with the Vigilante Missions, go on rampages and collect hidden packages - all of which is made easier on the PS2 than the PSP because you can see what you're doing a bit more clearly. Motorbikes are present in Liberty City now, as is the ability to change your outfit. Overall, I was very impressed how much Rockstar had crammed into a PSP game, while on the PS2 the enjoyment isn't as great because, not only was I led to believe that this would only ever be appeared on the PSP and not on the PS2 later on, there's only so many times you can return to the same location (I've played the original PS2 game on that and the Xbox, plus this one on the PSP and now the PS2) and it would sound daft to say it's all getting a bit samey but it's really a combination of it seeming a bit too repetitive and also that we don't have improved graphics or the ability to perform actions that have been made available in later GTA games, as described earlier. However, any new GTA game is still worthy of a large round of applause because the basic concept and the game's physics make it a delight and, as alighted to earlier, it gives you a chance to revisit the scene to carry out PSP tasks with the ability to see more of what you're doing because it's on the PS2. It's also been released at a budget price rather than full, which further necessitates it as a purchase. Next up to come is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City stories this November on the PSP - presumably with a PS2 port the following summer - and then Grand Theft Auto 4 in October 2007 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 and I'm very much looking forward to both of those.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.