I found myself remembering several of the segments almost verbatim The talk-show parody of Heartland Values with Nurse Bob, the forward-thinking technology magazine format of The Electron Zone, the violently gruesome cooking show Coq au Vin - skits that I haven't heard for almost half my life all came back to me as clear as if I'd last heard it only yesterday. From the first moment I hopped into a vehicle with the radio tuned to talk station LCFR, something awoke deep in my mind. Where pretty much the entirety of LCS's original content triggers no deeply buried memories whatsoever, the radio chatter is another matter entirely. What makes the familiarity unsettling, though, is the game's radio stations. Even LCS's protagonist Toni Cipriani was himself a mission-giver in GTA III, and while he may not be voiced by Michael Madsen this time around, his interactions with those around him (particularly his perpetually disappointed mother) make him feel consistent with his original rendition. I don't remember most of the specific interactions I've had with them in this game, but their roles in GTA III and the wider "3D Universe" canon make them feel like old friends nonetheless. Another aspect of that familiarity may come from the game's handful of returning characters, like mob boss Salvatore Leone and media mogul Donald Love. Consequently, while the missions themselves feel unfamiliar to me, the locations in which they take place are practically home at this point. I know the road layouts of Portland, Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale almost as well as I know my own hometown. LCS uses the same rendition of Liberty City that debuted in GTA III, a game that I have spent a cumulative total of hundreds of hours with over the past twenty years. Some of that is certainly down to the game's open world. I'm not sure how much of this can be attributed to the fact I played through this game just once over fifteen years ago, and how much of it boils down to most of these missions being short in length and wholly unremarkable in their design, likely due to the game being developed for short play sessions on a handheld console.Īnd yet, there is an almost unsettling sense of familiarity I get when playing Liberty City Stories. O'Toole or Leon McAffrey, and pretty much every single mission has failed to trigger any sense of déjà-vu, the only exception so far being the very unique set-up of The Portland Chainsaw Masquerade. I don't remember dealing with characters like J.D. Consequently, of the fifteen or so hours I've played of it thus far, very little of it has rung bells in the deep recesses of my memory. I say slightly less familiar because where I've played Grand Theft Auto III to completion at least half a dozen times in the last twenty years and can recall pretty much every one of its main characters and pivotal story missions, I've only ever played Liberty City Stories once, all the way back in 2006 when the PlayStation 2 port was released. My solution was to boot up my PS Vita and hop into 2005's Liberty City Stories, allowing me to return to the familiar streets of Rockstar's first three-dimensional approximation of America through the slightly less familiar eyes of a different playable character.
#Superluminal vagrant twin worlds ps2#
I've played all three games in the core "3D Universe" canon in recent years, most recently earning 100% completion and the Platinum Trophy in the now-delisted PS2 Classics version of San Andreas back in the summer. Selecting a game to play proved difficult, however. They are ostensibly the video game equivalent of comfort food to me at this point. News on the release of (and subsequent negative reaction to) the remastered " Definitive Edition" of the trilogy has been ubiquitous in the games press, reigniting a desire within me to return to the games that caused me to fall in love with the franchise almost two decades ago. It's little wonder that I've found myself hankering after a classic Grand Theft Auto experience recently. Some Thoughts on Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
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