On Kazuo Murakami's ga review website, GTA: Liberty City Chapters is currently pinned at the top as the featured article.
The article begins with an overview of the ga's chanics.
Murakami describes it as a title that once again leaps across a generational gap.
A level that ordinary companies can hardly catch up to anymore.
Take AI computing, for example.
Gastar Electronic Entertainnt had already laid out the groundwork early on, and through strategic investnt, AI-related industries had begun to feed back into Gastar's ga developnt pipeline.
Whether in programming or art, the efficiency improvents are not just minor—they're massive.
This isn't sothing just any company can pull off.
If you want to use AI in ga developnt, you'd first need to make investnts comparable to Gastar's and build your own AI-powered production ecosystem.
...
...
Only then could you start saving significant developnt costs in future titles.
Right now, Gastar can achieve with $1 million what would have originally taken double or triple that amount.
This gives Gastar trendous flexibility.
They can choose to lower developnt costs and boost profits.
Or they can reinvest the savings into more content, richer details, and deeper gaplay—keeping players hooked.
Additionally, Gastar's Unreal Engine developnt team has publicly announced that AI-assisted developnt tools will be built directly into the engine in the future. However, this will take ti—the Unreal team can't just conjure up such features overnight.
As for how long it will take, that's hard to say.
If Gastar wants Unreal Engine to retain its dominance, it's likely they'll integrate AI developnt features within six months to a year—before any other engine developnt companies can catch up, maintaining their technological monopoly and forcing others to accept it whether they like it or not.
Murakami explains Gastar's dominance in simple terms, then shifts focus to the ga's core chanics.
He begins by praising GTA: Liberty City Chapters' performance on the new console.
While AI was already expected, what surprised him most was the controller.
He had assud modern controllers had reached their peak—but Gastar surprised him again with improved vibration features and linear trigger feedback, delivering realistic sensations during shooting or driving. This feature was a huge plus.
He strongly urged companies like Surei Electronics and Microforce to catch up quickly with this new controller technology—or risk falling behind an entire generation.
In GTA: Liberty City Chapters, the ga world feels truly alive.
Gastar could easily recreate a 1:1 copy of a real city if they wanted to.
But for the sake of gaplay and player comfort, so tedious elents were streamlined.
They simplified mundane real-life tasks while adding more engaging ones.
Common open-world activities like fishing and delivery jobs are all present.
Unconventional ones, too.
In short, anyone with a real-life hobby can find a matching activity in the ga.
You can paint street art and sell it.
Although AI NPCs have questionable taste—often buying anything with enough color as a "masterpiece"—so clever players even discovered a way to farm money through painting.
Gars are always eager to find exploits.
You can be a taxi driver, barely scraping by in Liberty City.
Or a construction worker doing manual labor at building sites.
All of these jobs are legal—though you can still be scamd.
Of course, big money cos from less-than-legal work.
Like Niko's old smuggling gigs, or muscle-for-hire jobs.
But those co with real risks.
Since it's illegal, if you get double-crossed, no one will save you—not even law enforcent.
And sotis the IRS cos knocking. They don't care how you made your money—if you earn it, you owe taxes. Don't pay, and you might find the military at your door. Brutal.
Murakami says this is the first ti he's ever truly "experienced" the Arican Dream in a ga.
And his conclusion?
"To hell with the Arican Dream."
He writes that if he were really Niko, he would never have gone to Arica. Even for revenge, he would've found another way rather than diving into this swamp.
But, he admits he isn't Arican and doesn't fully understand the real Arican Dream—so he uses gas to express his emotions.
He then gives the ga's story his highest possible rating.
Every story that unfolds after Niko arrives in Liberty City is absurd on the surface—but makes perfect sense on reflection.
Step by step, Niko is dragged deeper into the mud, unable to escape.
And in the end, he must make a choice.
He can listen to his girlfriend and refuse the gang's final deal—storm in with weapons and eliminate the gang instead.
But doing so leads to her death in a retaliatory attack.
Consud by grief, Niko executes the gang leader beneath the Statue of Liberty, and becos a hollow shell—lost and directionless.
The other ending?
He listens to his cousin and completes the final deal.
But during the wedding that follows, his cousin is gunned down, leaving a widow and fatherless child.
In rage, Niko still takes out the enemy under the Statue of Liberty.
Both endings result in the death of soone close to him.
There is no happy ending.
And that, Murakami says, gives the story its power.
He notes the final battle beneath the Statue of Liberty carries a heavy sense of irony—mocking the very idea of the so-called "freedom" of the Arican Dream.
And that, he writes, is his full review of GTA: Liberty City Chapters—one of the most sincere reviews he's ever written.
Reviews
All reviews (0)