Liberty City Stories to feature Multiplayer
Leave it to Rockstar to save the best surprises for the very end. The company announced today that the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories will include perhaps the most significant new feature to the series since it went 3D: multiplayer.
The series has experimented with multiplayer ideas before, such as the limited mini-games in San Andreas. And thanks to the PC mod community, there have been user-created adaptations of the game with various multiplayer elements, but with Liberty City Stories, Rockstar itself is putting together one of the most extensive multiplayer games yet seen on a portable system.
LCS multiplayer will include seven gameplay modes, with up to six players battling it out on their choice of the three islands unlocked in the single-player game. Both the islands and character skins will become unlocked in multiplayer as you come across them in single-player, so you'll start off with one island and nine character skins but by the end of the game you'll have three islands and over 60 character skins available.
Of the seven modes that will be available, we had to opportunity to test out two of them: Liberty City Survivor and Get Stretch. Liberty City Survivor is essentially deathmatch, available in both every man for himself and team modes, where players select from the different player skins and run around picking up power-ups, shooting at each other, and getting in the various cars to run each other over. Like in the single-player game, there are plenty of civilians driving around, giving you a good number of vehicles to hijack. Naturally, the bullet-proof vest power-ups are extremely valuable when it comes down to a head-to-head face-off.
The other mode we tried, Get Stretch, is essentially GTA's version of capture-the-flag, but with limousines instead of flags. Each of two teams tries to get to a limo in the opposing team's base, and then drive it back to their own base. If the other team has your limo, you will not be able to deliver theirs to your base, and if you damage the limo enough (such as flipping it over -- as we did in one unfortunate incident), it will reset back at the original team's base. Get Stretched was the highlight of our time with the multiplayer, since it provides an excellent sense of teamwork and doesn't rely as heavily on twitch shooting movements.
Read more over at 1up.
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