What's Old is New Again
GTA CW is a game for the Nintendo DS. It retails for $39.99 and is rated M for Mature. This is the first GTA game on the DS, and Rockstar wisely chose not to follow the “Stories” formula used for their PSP outings. Instead, Chinatown Wars harkens back to the original two GTA games (and the lesser-known GBA game, which is best left forgotten). The perspective is top-down, reducing your character to a few animated pixels and victims to cartoonish bloodsplats on the pavement. Thankfully, some smart upgrades make this perspective feel new again; namely an intelligent targetting system and an optional GPS navigation that puts guiding arrows directly on the road as you drive. The semi-3D look of the game pulls off nicely.
You play as Huang Lee, a sarcastic little bastard and son of a murdered Triad boss. Upon arrival in Liberty City, Huang is hijacked, his father’s sword is stolen, and he’s left for dead in the back seat of a car sinking into the river. Unlike GTA IV, which took a very serious left turn onto Drama St., Chinatown Wars maintains a dark sense of humour and irony that I found very refreshing. The story is nothing to be taken seriously; every one of Huang’s contacts use him to do their dirty work, a fact that he’s more than happy to point out in the dialog. Even the sword of Huang’s father, the game’s ultimate goal, is revealed from the get-go to be not an ancient family heirloom but a trifle his father won at cards. Thankfully, the story sets up some interesting and varied missions. Aside from standard fare like executing rival gangs in drive-bys and firebombing local businesses, some missions find you using a boat’s sonar to find sunken crates or driving an ambulance while trying to defibrulate its dying occupant. Many of these activities make smart use of the touchscreen, with simple gestures that can be triggered with thumbs and fingers as easily as with a stylus. Even the simple act of jacking a parked car could bring up a touchscreen minigame to defeat the alarm or hotwire the car. They can get a little old after a while, until you play a new mission that has you doing something completely different (like trying to start a failing boat motor while being chased by the coast guard).
There’s the usual gamut of side content in Chinatown Wars that helps it feel like a typical GTA game. There are the standard Rampages (kill as many as you can) and Street Races, but there are also side quest, scratch card shops (seriously, you can buy scratch lotto tickets; in fact, there’s one safehouse in the game that can only be acquired by winning the lottery), and drug dealing. Drugs are given a lot of attention; you only buy and sell to street dealers, but there are about 80 of them throughout Liberty City, all with varying stock and prices. You’ll constantly be receiving email tips of dealers selling certain drugs for low prices or buying them for high prices, meaning you can “play the market” for great profit. Money never seems to be a necessity in this game; you can buy guns and armor from Ammu-Nation (which are conveniently delivered to one of your safehouses) but you’ll find plenty or armaments scattered around the map or dropped by fallen foes. Still, there are a number of “awards” available through your dealing progress that get displayed in your safehouse; I guess since there are no such thing as achievements or trophies on the Nintendo DS, this is the best one can do.
Liberty City itself is as alive and buzzing as ever. It may not look that familiar to fans of GTA IV, but it’s close as one can get on a handheld. People live & die (sometimes right in front of you, in acts of completely random violence), cars obey and disobey traffic laws, and cabs are just a whistle away (literally; you whistle into the DS microphone to summon a cab).
I cannot recommend this game enough. If you have a DS and are mature enough to appreciate a Grand Theft Auto game, then BUY CHINATOWN WARS. At the time of this writing, sales of the game are well below expectation and are really sad to see. Seriously, this is one of the best games available for the Nintendo DS and you do yourself a disservice to not play it.
