Battle of the GTAs

News
By published

We've rated the clones - now let's see how the originals stack up against each other

The town: Liberty City, two-dimensional once again but this time based more or less on GTAIII's map.

The music: Forgettable 16-bit techno, jazz and rock arrangements with garbled vocal samples. Once again, the music is tied to the car you're driving, rather than to specific radio stations.

The violence: Bloody, but relatively tame. The characters are tiny and low-res, so it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on, but when fights break out it's easy to bust out the guns and open fire. We especially like playing around with the flamethrower and shotgun, just for their raw destructive capabilities.

Latest Videos From

Why it's the best: It was the first GTA made specifically for a handheld system, and in the days before Liberty City Stories, it was the best way to get your GTA fix while out of the house.

Why it isn't: Frankly, it sucks balls. The story is flat and the characters are uninteresting, and the graphics and raw action are actually less interesting than the original GTA's. Plus, it's not easy to find your way around when Liberty City's just one flat, misshapen block after another.

Does it hold up? No. But if you absolutely have to play a portable GTA and you don't own a PSP, then still no.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.