It’s finally here. The rumors were true. Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PSP, and PSP owners around the world rejoice.

There’s a lot of reason to celebrate. Though the PSP has been out for several months now, games (not surprisingly) have been somewhat lacking. Sure, solid gameplay can be found in Wipeout, Metal Gear: Acid, and Lumines, but none of them have been the must have game for handhelds. (Well, Lumines was pretty close, with its flashy graphics, great music, and addictive fast-paced gameplay.) Enter Rockstar with currently the most desired handheld game on the market, the next in the Grand Theft Auto line.

No game bolstered the sale of PS2s so much as the Grand Theft Auto line, which makes it a fitting addition to the PSP line. How does it compare? Is it everything you’d expect and hope? Will it make the PSP a viable gaming platform?

In a word, yes. This game is a joy to start up. Grand Theft Auto, portable. The first time you hear someone drop an F-bomb, you’ll know Rockstar isn’t pulling their punches. Plus, with the PSP’s sleep feature, you can move a little in the real world, play a little GTA, then just put your PSP to sleep; come back later, and pick up right where you left off. The quick run down:

• Graphics: Very good. Those already familiar with GTA-styled graphics should feel right at home. My first impression was wow — these graphics were as good as on GTA 3. I did see some tearing in animations, but overall, quite good. It’s obviously not quite as good as on the PS2, but hey — it’s handheld. The GTA engine translated quite nicely to the PSP platform.
• Music: Good. ten stations are provided for your listening enjoyment, ranging from gangsta rap of The Liberty City Jam (my personal favorite right now), to the strangely nebulous alternative selection on Lips, and, of course, the talk radio station. The Liberty City Jam appears to be the only one with actual names pulled from popular albums, oddly enough. I was kind of surprised to be playing, and suddenly thought, “Wait, is that DMX?” Welcome to 1998, baby! Also interesting: looking for a little listening music? Pull up the pause menu, go to audio, and you can listen to the stations at your leisure! Great as a soundtrack to your workday, or to listen to on the commute. I would have liked more popular licensed music, but what they provided was decent. You can also upload your own MP3s, for your own station mix.
• Controls: Okay. What can you do with the limited control set of the PSP? There are two fewer shoulder buttons, one less analog stick, and the one analog stick that was provided is a little nub, making fine tuned adjustments difficult. Rockstar obviously has no control over what buttons are available, and make good use of what they have. I found myself doing all the taxi missions just to get used to driving with the analog stick. They definitely made some compromises here, and while it mostly works, some of it, like camera control, just remains cludgy at best.
• Plot: Okay. You’ve done this sort of thing before: enter the city as a low level punk, and work your way up the criminal organization. Expect the normal back and forth, playing multiple sides, etc. The cast of characters is varied and detailed, so you’ll be entertained, nonetheless.
• Voice Acting: Good. Rockstar has always done a decent job at voicing the GTA line, and this game is no exception. Decent, believable character actors run their lines well.
• Gameplay: Good. Solid GTA-style action carries you through. Though the controls take a little bit to get used to, you can quickly pick this up and get right into the action.

Being that this game takes place a few years before GTA 3, it’s interesting to see what changes they made to the city. Driving through this city is a nostalgic activity; those who played GTA 3 will recognize all these streets. They’re all there. Sadly, so are the spike strips that made their appearance in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. One of the missions early on will have you cursing those spike strips as you try to take a Banshee through the city while being chased.

The old game modes of vigilante, taxi driver, and ambulance missions return this round. I didn’t find the firetruck, though, which makes sense, because you can’t really aim a firehose nozzle with just one analog stick.

New game modes also make an appearance here. Try the car selling minigame, where you have to try to drive in the style that the customer appreciates. Do the driveby shooting mission off the back of a motorcycle.

This game is eminently familiar, quite good in terms of gameplay, and just the thing to get in your rampaging fix of action while on the go. I had the odd experience of walking through a convenience store, looking through the aisles while simultaneously trying to drive a car through the GTA city.

Multiplayer modes are also a new addition. That’s right, I said multiplayer. Through ad hoc mode, you can get together with a group of friends and play against each other in a few different scenarios. Liberty City Survivor is a lot like any other deatch match. Protection Racket has you by turns attacking then defending four limos. Get Stretch is a capture the flag style game where you try to steal the opposing team’s limo, while defending your own. Tanks For the Memories has you trying to survive while in the tank, while others try to take you down. The Hit List has all players try to take down one player in all against one action. Street Rage let’s you do checkpoint-style racing through the city against others. The Wedding List is a car theft game, where you compete against each other to steal dream cars. Provided you have friends with PSPs and GTA, you can extend your gameplay of this long after you’re done with the single player for quite a while.

This game is a healthy blend of old and new, under a new control scheme, but definitely provides the GTA experience in good, portable form. Now you can act out on those violent tendencies while in public and not get arrested!

One hopes that this is a sign of a new age of handheld games. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a must-have game for the PSP. Rockstar just raised the bar on handheld games, and hopefully other game developers will take notice. Portable GTA is here, and shows that there’s a lot of power in the PSP. Let’s hope other developers take advantage of it and give Rockstar a run for their money.

Over the weekend I decided to check out the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Museum Of Fine Arts here in Boston. Apparently, so did a lot of other people. Fortunately, I didn’t have any trouble getting a ticket, unlike apparently some later arriving folk.

Ansel Adams is an iconoclastic figure in Americana. His amazing capture of the beauty of the American landscape in stunningly detailed black and white photos is unmatched. The current exhibition (on display through December 31, 2005) is the world’s largest private collection of Adams’s work, from his early 1920s work to his more recognizable recent offerings.

The first thing that strikes you is how different an impact the pictures make on display. My wife noted how we usually see Ansel Adams photographs in one format: large. Like giant coffee table book or poster-size large. To see things in a more photograph-sized environment definitely didn’t have quite the same impact.

What’s interesting is that his early work was done in the style of the day, which is to use a soft focus, printing on textured paper. Hence, all of his old work looks like fuzzy postcard or newsprint graphics. Two pictures of essentially the same location are on display in the first room, showcasing his early work as opposed to his later, and the results are striking.

You can thank one Paul Strand for that change. After seeing Strand’s work, Adams knew that the high focus, high contrast style was what he wanted, and the rest is history.

What I also found surprising was that Adams does interesting character studies as well. He’s obviously known for his nature scenes, and his character studies are few and far between, but images such as Trailer Camp Children evoke poignant emotions, leading the viewer to ask, “What do I see in this picture?” This photo was actually a quick, spur of the moment snapshot, taken on a borrowed camera.

One wonders what would have happened if Ansel Adams decided to pursue his career as a concert pianist. What would have happened had he given up when a fire destroyed a third of his negatives in the 1930s? Would someone else have stepped up to become this monumental figure in national imagery?

Overall, it was a decent exhibition, but like I noted before, seeing the pictures in smaller format is somehow anticlimatic. Expect a crowd as well — Ansel Adams has great general popularity, so lots of folks are angling to check it out.