Just finished GTA: LCS. Tearing up your back gives you all sorts of time to lay in front of a TV. This is my third GTA game; I started a couple years ago with Grand Theft Auto 3 and then played Vice City about a year ago. I tried San Andreas a couple of times but haven't been able to get into it. Played the PS2 version, btw.
I was actually pretty excited about LCS. I enjoyed playing in Liberty City in the first game a lot more than Vice City, although Vice City of course did have much better control and many more game options. LCS gives you even better control than Vice City, but fewer gameplay elements. Plus, I really liked the character of Toni Cipriani from the first game. LCS is a prequel to GTA III telling the story of how Toni became Salvatore Leone's right-hand man.
Whereas Claude Speed, the (originally) unnamed, voiceless hero of GTA III was a petty criminal just trying to get by any way he could, Toni is a single-minded one man army who doesn't give a damn about anything other than the money he's owed for doing a job for the Leone family, and loyalty to Don Salvatore. Claude's lack of character was compensated for by NPC's giving him explicit directions for every single mission he went on. LCS is clever enough that I felt like Toni was actually in the driver's seat at least half the time, and his answer to solving life's mysteries was to kill a bunch of rival gangsters and blow something up.
Unfortunately, the LCS story doesn't hold up quite as well overall. Despite excellent attention to keeping alternative missions from conflicting with each other, several of the missions just didn't seem to flow well with the narrative. Within several missions you run into plot-generated inconsistencies, ridiculous requirements, and even downright goofy messes (like the final mission against the Sicilians, who apparently brought around 100 speed boats to attack you.) Still, the game did what I expected and told the story reasonably well.
I skipped a lot of the optional content on this one. In GTA III I got 100% completion, which was a bastard with the much poor controls. On the other hand, there wasn't that much to do to finish it all in GTA III. I got 99% in Vice City and never did figure out what I missed. LCS has even more side quests than Vice City, and the majority of them are only for a small bit of cash and 1% towards completion. I stayed with the sidequests that give you weapons spawns, certain car spawns, and health, armor and special attribute bonuses. Even that added probably 25% to my play time.
I've got Vice City Stories, but I'm not looking forward to that one quite as much. The main character in VCS is Lance Vance's (from Vice City) older brother, whom he mentions a few times. The story in VCS seems really weak from what I've read, and the main story missions are cut back to minimum in order to focus more on the side quests. If that's true, I may end up not finishing it. Either way, I doubt I'll pick it up for a while...the GTA gameplay tends to get a bit boring after a while.
