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Take A Return Trip To GTA's Chinatown On The PSP

Just how is Rockstar porting a DS game to the PlayStation Portable, anyway?

With today's release of the PSPgo, perhaps you're looking for some new PSP games to anticipate. How about Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars? The acclaimed DS game from earlier this year is on the way to PSPs of all stripes later this month, and, believe it or not, it seems to have smoothly made the transition between these two very different handhelds.


That's probably because at its heart, the DS iteration of Chinatown Wars followed the overhead, d-pad-driven gameplay model established by the original Grand Theft Auto games eons ago (in the '90s). So the core of Chinatown Wars transferred easily to the PSP and its similar control layout, and I can report from playing through a couple of missions in the PSP version that if you ever played any of those original GTA games back in the day--or heck, if you think you can handle driving cars and running little criminal dudes around from an overhead perspective--you'll be able to get down with Chinatown Wars on the PSP.

Of course, the DS did have some touch-controlled elements, including a number of minigame-like challenges when you wanted to do things like hotwiring a car. Those have all been brought over to the PSP and adapted to the more traditional control scheme, save the tollbooth bit where you slid money over to the agent with the stylus. So you aren't really missing out on any content here by playing the PSP version of the game.

On the contrary, you're gaining better visuals, since Rockstar Leeds has used the PSP's extra horsepower to beef up things like texture resolution and lighting effects. It didn't look like a whole new game from what I played, but it did look a bit sharper. Here's a few new shots so you can take a gander, and Rockstar says some video of the PSP version is on the way soonish. Game is out on the 20th of October, so you won't have long to wait on this one.  
 

Brad Shoemaker on Google+