Tuesday blogging

Now that my serious posts are out of the way for a while, i can get back to the matter at hand, Video games.

Recently I managed to unbrick my PSP. I was asking anyone if they wanted to buy any of my then redundant games before I realised I had the internet at my disposal and I could at least try to find a good website with any information. Thanks to Youtube (I feel dirty just saying those words) I managed to find a video which gave a very In-depth tutorial on how to unbrick your PSP. As long as you can get to the recovery screen, it would work. I managed to get to the recovery screen, and spent the next half hour frantically taking notes and downloading various programs. Success! It was alive again!

As I'm re-united with my PSP, I thought I'd talk about a PSP game today. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This is the first in the series for the PSP, set three years before the events of Grand Theft Auto III, but six years after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. You play the role of Toni Cipriani, and his story as he becomes Salvatore's right hand man, as he was in GTAIII. The game uses the same engine as GTAIII, which I can understand as it's set in the same place Liberty City, and uses the same characters. However, once you've played GTA: San Andreas for a while, it takes a while getting used to the controls again. And the not being able to swim thing got a little old after they allowed CJ to swim in SA. On a side note, and not to be racist or to offend, but it seems like only black characters can swim in these games. The next game to be released in the series was GTA: Vice City Stories, where the main character, Vic, is black and can swim.

Anyway, the missions in LCS are pretty easy, and minimal at times. There are a few missions where the goal is to get from point A to point B, with person C shooting at you (and missing.) After the depth of the missions in SA and previous games it seems like we're just filling in the plot holes the other games left.

The fact that it's on the PSP means modding is pretty easy. There are many sites giving you cheat devices and cheats that require minimal knowledge to put on. There is also the custom soundtrack feature which was a nice bonus, as I combined two of my favorite things. Listening to Bullets & Octane and running over old ladies.

The story mode might be pretty flawed, but the multiplayer makes up for it. My college days were spent with 6 of us constantly on multiplayer trying the different match types, and it's so fun. The player can unlock different costumes when they get to different parts of the game, some of which bring some typical 'Rockstar' humour to the game. (Rockstar being the developers.) We all had our own trademarked character which no-one else was allowed to use. Because of this, a gimp chasing a chicken in a truck became a daily sighting. The cheat device can also be used in multiplayer, much to the dismay and frustration of my opponents.

I'd recommend the game to any fans of the genre and series, or just to a first time player. The controls and lack of features may be a little dissapointing and frustrating to advanced players.