PS2 | Jack Bauer vs Toni Cipriani

I rented two games from United Video this week, 24 and Liberty City Stories. I used a two for one voucher and figured that if 24 turned out to be a suckfest like Commandos, I could at least rely on GTA’s Liberty City to fulfil my gaming needs….

Of course, with 24 having been developed by one of Sony’s European game studios, in partnership with Fox and just about everyone involved in the actual TV programme, I didn’t really need to worry. Or did I?

The game is set between Seasons two and three, which is handy as that’s about the time I gave up watching 24, and uses the same style and formula that the TV show does.

I’m pretty much just over halfway through the timeframe of the game and already I’ve played most of the main characters, as well as trying out many different forms of game play.

The game is played primarily in 3rd person, and the first mission has you playing Jack and dispatching numerous bad guys while running through a container ship trying to find a bomb attached to a cache of deadly nerve agent.

On completion of the mission, once you’ve found and secured the area, in come the bomb squad to diffuse the bomb. This is where one of the games many puzzle like challenges comes into play as you suddenly become the bomb disposal guy and have x amount of time to diffuse the bomb.

It’s this variety that gives 24 it’s legs – along the course of the game so far I’ve played numerous characters, killed an unknown number of bad guys, chased, followed and been chased in a car, hacked into someone’s PDA, interrogated some poor fellow and used a sniper rifle to kill a host of snipers.

Graphically the game is good; the likenesses of all the key characters, and the voices are spot on. The problems are with the handling. Third person mode on foot took a bit of getting used too, and even though you soon get into the groove of it, I’m still having occasional issues. The driving was pretty ho-hum. Sure taking the corners with hand break assistance is fun, but as with most games of this type, driving isn’t its strength. And then there was the sniping – not the most memorable sniping experience in the world.

But these are minor gripes and don’t really bring the game down.

Overall, 24 is a good solid game that’s going to keep you playing. The odd thing is that I don’t recall being given the option on a difficulty level, which is unusual.

So if 24 was this good, just imagine how great Liberty City Stories was going to be…

Liberty City Stories was GTA’s foray into the PSP market, and due to it’s success (and the need for revenue in the wait for the PS3 to be released) it got ported over to the PS2.

Toni Cipriani returns to Liberty City, the city made famous by GTA3. GTA3 in my eyes is the best in the GTA franchise. It took the game from a top down 2D game to a fully realised 3D environment. It was set pretty much in the present day, and it just blew the socks off anything you’d ever played before.

Then came Vice City. It was an ok game, but the 80’s just didn’t do it for me. GTA3 was still king in my books.

Then came the much-anticipated San Andreas. It was cool. It had some really cool features, but two things let it down: The sheer size of the game play area was frustrating for anyone having to drive from one place to the other. And then there was the flight school – you had to master flying a plane before you could go onto the last third of the game. The flight mechanics were not GTA’s strong point, and flying wasn’t mine. GTA3 was still King.

So Liberty City Stories would be like visiting a dear friend and having a ball right?

Wrong.

I still love Liberty City, but playing Stories was just like going through the motions. There was nothing new. It was stale. I was certainly glad that I had Jack Bauer to play with, cause Toni certainly didn’t fulfil my needs any longer.

Having said that, it will be interesting to see what the GTA franchise bring to the world of next gen gaming.

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