The Mobile Gamer

GTA Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories are spinoff games from the Grand Theft Auto franchise, set in its 3d universe (same as GTA 3, San Andreas, Vice City and Advance) and released on the Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable, also known as the PSP. Thanks to emulation, it is now fairly easy to run both of these games on phone, even though VCS was never officially ported to android (and LCS port is pretty broken on newer devices). First I will talk about the emulator required to play the games, then about the games themselves.

PPSSPP

ppsspp is a PSP emulator for android, windows, linux, recently iOS and I believe MacOS too. It’s free on google play, don’t use other emulators as they’re only stolen reskinned ppsspp with ads. There is both free and paid version, the only difference is that the paid one supports the developer of the emulator.

The emulator supports a lot of menu languages, choose the one that fits you. There is the “how can I get games?” button in the lower left corner, it will redirect you to the emulator’s site and explain how to dump your own copies of the games. If you don’t own the games you can search various internet archives and websites to find digital copies, but be very VERY careful if you do that and don’t click suspicious links. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

After you get the game or games, tou want to move them to your desired folder. THE GAMES NEED TO BE IN .ISO FORMAT, OTHERWISE THEY WON’T WORK, YOU CAN UNPACK THEM WITH FILE MANAGERS. Make the folder wherever you see fit. I use Zarchiver file manager to do this, you can use any file manager you want, this one is just my personal favourite. Then you open the emulator and locate your games folder in it and play. You can use both touch controls and a gamepad, but gamepad is the better option. Now it’s time to talk about the games.

DOWNLOADS:

GTA: LCS

Libery City Stories is a prequel to GTA 3, taking place 3 years before it. You play as Toni Cipriani, if you played GTA 3 you probably remember him, he works for the Leone family.

The game offers various story missions, my favourite is the one where you run a mayor election campaign and drive around in a van with megaphones shouting that “O’Donovan is a communist!” and you compete with rival vans doing the same. Multiplayer is also present in the PSP version and it actually works on the emulator, so you can play with your friends (not story, just online modes, also you need to set up the emulator to do so).

Price depends on many factors, like if you own the game already or how expensive copy you find or if you try to obtain it by more shady means.

PROS

• playable with or without gamepad
• multiplayer
• varying missions
• better than GTA 3
• side activities

CONS

• might be difficult to get a copy
• touch controls are not very good
• buffs from side activities are unbalanced compared to other 3d GTA games

GTA: VCS

Vice City Stories takes you way before the story of GTA Vice City, yet a lot of characters return, plus there are interesting new ones too. You play as Victor Vance, pilot of the helicopter from Vice City’s beginning and Lance Vance’s more intelligent brother.

You start as a soldier but are quickly fired, because your superior made you run several of his not very acceptable errands and you are caught doing them. Vic then slowly starts taking out the gangs of Vice City and builds a crime empire. The rival gangs get more and more agressive with each bussiness you take from them, so be aware of that, it can get really wild. When you take over all of a gang’s bussinesses the gang is gone. There is a multiplayer very similar to that of LCS.

This game is my 3rd favourite game of the genre, 2nd is GTA San Andreas and 1st is Saints Row 2.

Price details are the same as with LCS.

PROS

• great map
• touch controls and gamepad support
• fun bussinesses system
• store robbing
• side activities
• multiplayer
• great story
• Phil Collins concert (yes, really)

CONS

• again, might be difficult to obtain
• again, touch controls are not the perfect solution