Liberty City 1 – Gangsta Bang

[DavidN]

#815

I had a great time messing around in the first Liberty City level last night! I used to play the demo of this game over and over when I was about fifteen (which was illegal, so I was getting into character early) so I’m pretty familiar with the missions – while playing through the game this time I wanted to try to examine it more closely and find things that I might not already know about.

The game is still a lot of fun! It took me a while to find a configuration that worked (see the “Running the game” thread) but once I got there it felt as satisfyingly open as ever. However, as the level went on I recalled the familiar constant feeling of fragility even when you’re well into the level… the bonus multiplier is absolutely paramount to your ability to complete the level and if you’re caught by the police you lose half of it. Therefore carrying one of the Get Out Of Jail Free cards is vital. As an arcade holdover you have limited lives, and one stray bullet or standing too near an explosion can get you instantly – even with armour, you only have a maximum of 4 chances. In addition, cars do NOT like falling off things (like real life, arguably) – there is a secret island to the east of the map that I couldn’t get on to at all because even when I took a tough vehicle like a van, it exploded instantly when I made the jump. (I have just realized literally this moment while writing this that you’re meant to use a motorbike. I’ll report back.) All of this adds up to it being wise to stay cautious and avoid attracting too much attention, even though it’s more fun to go on an absolute rampage – particularly with the lack of a save feature, there’s too much to lose by being reckless, especially as the levels can take a couple of hours to complete.

The camera also makes me feel a bit seasick nowadays although I remember it not bothering me at all when I was younger – zooming out when you’re at high speed and in when you’re walking around makes perfect sense, but felt very wobbly and disorienting. I got used to it after a while, though.

I jotted down the missions as I found them. There are 11 in all for the first level (as counted on the F6 pause screen) – four are on the phones you’re directed to at the start of the game and seven more are hidden in cars that you’re told about through the pager. I wrote down the tasks because my memory was that “missions” are more like long strings of tasks that are sometimes unrelated to each other before you finally get your reward – they seem to be on the long side for the phone missions, but the missions found in cars are shorter more individual jobs.

MISSIONS
* South Park L
– Retrieve car
– Deliver car
– Answer phone
– Retrieve other car
– Pick up for getaway
– Deliver car and passenger
* South Park ML
– Steal drugs
– Deliver drugs
– Answer phone
– Drop off drugs
– Waste or let Tony go
* South Park MR
– Get truck and blow up police station
– Escape to meet contact
– Follow lawyer
– Waste gang
* South Park R
– Get two taxis to the crane
– Answer phone
– Waste two gang members
* Bulldog in South Tellburg
– Find car
– Respray car during police chase
– Deliver car
– Answer phone
– Answer other phone
– Deliver car again
* Beast GTS in Southwest Island Heights
– Run over a couple of blokes
– Go to a garage
* Taxi in NW Park
– Collect Skye
– Collect personal trainer
– Deliver to hotel
X Bus in Fort Law near station
– Speed
– Don’t know the rest, failed it
* Tanker in Law Island
– Deliver it to Kings to disarm bomb
* Counthash under railway in West Fort Law
– Wait for a train
– Get on it
– Then leave
* Cossie in NE Island City
– Pick up police car
– Pick up gang member
– Deliver to garage. “Hear the name Cabot, you call me”?

I experienced a couple of oddities… I did some of the car missions in between the phone ones. When I went over the million-point target at the end of a mission, I got the red arrow directing me to the end of the level, and no yellow arrow directing me back to the phones, but I was convinced that you could continue the game despite reaching the target – so I went back to the phones regardless and found they were still ringing, so I picked up a mission and proceeded as normal – at the end of that mission the arrow directing me back to the phones reappeared again.

Once I’d finished the fourth and final phone mission, the text at the bottom of the screen repeated one of the pager messages that I’d got earlier, directing me to the Beast GTS. After that mission it gave me an arrow to the Bulldog, but I’d already done that mission – the arrow was instead pointing to the bulldog where I’d abandoned it in the middle of the mission! Entering it gave no message, but when I got out again, it kept on pointing an arrow at it as if it were an objective. Eventually I chose to blow it up and the game gave no acknowledgment, but it didn’t complain either.

The mission with the Cossie in NE Island City has an unusual moment at the end – your contact in the Mission Complete text says “Keep your ear to the ground… you hear the name Cabot, you call me” like it’s a clue to something that’s going to happen later, but it never amounts to anything (and this game doesn’t have the kind of open-world features that would allow you to act on it). I wondered if it was a remnant of something else, or if it was just throwaway dialogue.

So I completed the entire mission list and secret missions (which seem to be just the Kill Frenzies), and ended up with the screenshot below 🙂 11 out of 11 missions completed… even though I failed one in the list above? Well, that was because I exploited a bug that my brother discovered way back when – if, during the last part of the Tony Dio bike/drugs mission, you shoot Tony instead of letting him go, you get an alternative Mission Complete and bonus. If you do that just as he passes under the building sign near the park (just after he starts walking instead of running), then the game accidentally counts Mission Complete twice and gives you two multiplier bonuses as well!

Looking forward to trying out more 🙂

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