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Additionally, all discs at NexWave Games are carefully inspected and assessed for quality. When discs arrive, we do not accept any that are so badly damaged that they are unlikely to work. We only accept discs with light scratches at most. Discs with scratches are then treated in our professional disc repair machine. By warming the disc and polishing it with soft brushes, these machines can remove a very thin layer from the disc. This removes the layer containing surface scratches and improves the disc’s readability. This ensures the disc works properly, even on consoles with ageing lasers that have difficulty reading games! Great news for the player.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PlayStation Portable
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PlayStation Portable follows Toni Cipriani, who returns to Liberty City in 1998 after a period away. He starts working for the Leone family again and finds himself caught between competing Mafia gangs, corrupt officials and dangerous employers. You explore Portland, Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale as the campaign unfolds. Between appointments you can steal cars, ride motorcycles or look for another activity yourself. The camera follows Toni and his vehicle through the three-dimensional city.
Missions regularly blend driving and shooting: reach a contact, escape pursuers or protect a transport. The radar helps you find destinations, but a shorter alley or another car can make the difference when time is tight. Outside the story there are taxi, ambulance and vigilante jobs, among others. Radio stations fill car journeys with music, conversations and advertisements that poke fun at Liberty City's residents and powerful figures.
You play the story campaign alone. For separate local matches, two to six players can connect wirelessly, for example in races or Liberty City Survivor. In the latter, you fight individually or in teams to reach the selected target first. Every participant needs their own PSP with wireless support and their own copy of Liberty City Stories; sharing one UMD is not enough. Extra systems and games are not included. The ad hoc connection operates between nearby handhelds and is not an internet service.
Region and language
Our PlayStation Portable games are European editions and come with a Dutch or English box, unless stated otherwise. By default, you receive the version for the European market. We note it in the product details if the region is different or the box is in another language. In almost all cases, the game is playable at least in English, and often in the other five common European languages too.
You receive the physical UMD edition. You need a PSP with a UMD drive to play it; a PSP Go cannot play this disc.
Manual
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PlayStation Portable includes the manual unless the product title states otherwise. If the booklet is missing, the title says “No Manual”. This lets you see before ordering whether the game comes with a manual.
The manuals included with our games usually contain at least English and often around six European languages. The exact languages vary by edition, so Dutch is not always included. The booklet explains the controls and the main rules. You can use it to check how to control the game, which actions are available and how its different features work.
The history of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Liberty City Stories appeared in 2005 as the first three-dimensional Grand Theft Auto adventure for PSP. Rockstar Leeds developed the game together with Rockstar North. The city was familiar from 2001's Grand Theft Auto III, but the new campaign went back to 1998. Toni Cipriani, previously seen as a mission-giver, now became the playable protagonist. The handheld thus received a new story within an existing city, rather than reusing the same sequence of jobs from GTA III.
The makers rebuilt Liberty City for PSP and adapted the controls to one analog stick and the available buttons. Motorcycles provided another way to move through the familiar streets. The earlier setting was also visible in buildings and infrastructure that had not yet taken the same form as in GTA III. The paper manual took the form of a Liberty Tree newspaper, placing practical instructions among fictional news and advertisements from the game world.
A PlayStation 2 adaptation followed in 2006. It carried over the solo story but not the PSP's local wireless matches. Later in 2006, Vice City Stories built on the idea of a new handheld story in a familiar GTA city. Phone versions of Liberty City Stories only followed years later, with adapted controls. The original PSP release therefore retains its combination of UMD, physical buttons and separate local matches alongside Toni's campaign.
Similar games for PlayStation Portable
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on PSP shares the three-dimensional open city, freedom between story missions and alternation between driving and shooting. It moves the action to Vice City in 1984 and follows Vic Vance rather than Toni Cipriani. Taking over, expanding and protecting businesses also gives Vice City Stories a business system that Liberty City Stories does not have in that form. Toni's adventure focuses more on work for the Leone Mafia in a densely built city.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on PSP also lets you drive around Liberty City, take criminal jobs and evade the police. Its city and story concern Huang Lee and the Triads, with trading and small interactive actions as regular elements. Liberty City Stories usually shows Toni from behind and tells its story through voiced scenes. Chinatown Wars uses a high, angled camera and illustrated story panels with text, presenting the same combination of traffic and crime very differently.
Driver 76 on PSP, like Liberty City Stories, combines a freely explorable crime-filled city with action behind the wheel and on foot. New York in 1976 gives it a different period atmosphere from Toni's Liberty City of 1998. Driver puts more emphasis on car chases and improving collected vehicles with side-job earnings. Liberty City Stories spreads its attention across Mafia jobs, firearms and varied street activities, without a comparable emphasis on modifying your car.
Gangs of London on PSP also brings together criminal organisations, vehicles and recognisable city streets. You choose a London gang and also direct fellow gang members during jobs. Liberty City Stories follows one fixed protagonist who handles work for different contacts. Whereas Gangs of London builds its story with illustrated interludes and different gang perspectives, Toni's adventure uses voiced scenes and a continuous open world that you can explore yourself between appointments.
The Warriors on PSP shares the atmosphere of violent urban gangs and a story in which friendship and betrayal matter. It follows a group from New York in 1979 and emphasises fighting with fists and objects from the surroundings. Liberty City Stories uses a broader open-world structure with stolen vehicles, firearms and side jobs. The Warriors mainly pass through individual combat situations; Toni can head back into the city between story missions for a taxi run, chase or his own exploration.
