Screenshots :.
GTA: Chinatown Wars
DS
Matt
16-04-2009
"Familiar style, yes?"
"Huang Lee, your main dude."
"The game looks great, and runs well too..."
"... allowing for all sorts of mayhem."
"Ouch... I'll fetch a tissue."
"Never find these in my outside bins!"
If you'll pardon me the Tears for Fears reference here, it really is a bit of a mad world at times. Some eight years after I sat before my PS2 and marvelled at how wonderful the transition from two dimensions to three had made the new Grand Theft Auto game, I find myself sitting huddled over my DS feeling amazed at how well the series had made the backward leap from the third dimension back into the original top-down style. Three cheers for going full circle, eh?
I make no excuses for my love of Nintendo's little handheld machine as you may have noticed, and I certainly love me a bit of GTA now and again. Even taking that into account, GTA: Chinatown Wars has exceeded expectations not only in terms of how well it plays, but how much they've been able to cram into the damn thing. Those familiar with playing the series and spending most of their time away from the main story completing various sidequests and exploration tasks will delight in finding that this slightly condensed title still packs all that in, all the time whilst using the control scheme of the native hardware appropriately and in plenty of fun ways.
It all starts off in familiar style, with your lead character coming to Liberty City to deliver a sword to his uncle, only to walk straight into an ambush and end up being left for dead in the back seat of a car headed to the bottom of the ocean. Via a quick escape (smashing the rear window by hammering on it with the stylus, no less) you set off on a whistle-stop tour of the city as you try to hunt down the sword and gain respect and power for yourself and your family. It is, as said, classic GTA fare, as are the ragtag bunch of characters you meet and the missions you undertake.
If you're one of the rather large number of folks who played GTA 4 last year and are groaning at the statement a little, hold your horses. I might have slapped a perfect 10 on the adventures of Niko Belic last year, but as time went on it became something that I started to regret in retrospect. Whilst it was undoubtedly a vast game with as much freedom and choice as you'd think possible, it often weighed itself down with pointless social responsibilities and by toning down the colourful, over-the-top nature of the series in favour of a more gritty, realistic setting. In time, this began to detract from the fun.
Thankfully, Chinatown Wars feels something of a reboot. Shorn of the need to keep your associates happy with bowling, pool or whatever and being forced into a more simplified, colourful style, the game feels leaner and more concentrated, which it certainly benefits from. The heart of the game – stealing cars, committing crimes, shooting enemies – remains the same, but it feels much different to last year's big console effort and, as far as I am concerned, is all the better for it.
Don't go getting the impression that this is GTA Lite, mind. Liberty City has been cut down to two islands from the original three, but each is still vast and packed full of nooks and crannies to explore. In fact, it's perfectly possible to lose whole hours just travelling around hunting down security cameras to blow up, drug dealers to trade with, scratch cards to try your luck on and optional missions to undertake. Once you get your claws into it, the thing unravels and reveals itself to be really very dense indeed.
The basics, i.e. the controls and the way the game delivers missions and allows you to travel, all work fantastically well. Most of the control is via the d-Pad and face buttons, and pelting around shooting things with target lock-on and jacking cars by tapping the X button all being natural and easy to carry off. Driving the cars is also helped by a gentle aid that sees the game line your car up so it's straight after turning, and despite initial worries that it might take some of the instinctive nature out of the driving it ends up allowing you to skid around corners, dodge through traffic and zoom around town without as much as a second thought. Given the relative restraints of the viewpoint and camera angle, this is a bit of a godsend, and it's made all the better by the new police chase system, whereby you must try to destroy or disable chasing cop cars in order to buy yourself anonymity and escape. It's a thrilling mechanic, and one that is rather more fair and understandable than previous efforts.
As with 4, the game's main centre of activity is your character's PDA on which you receive emails, check on contacts and use GPS to map out your routes through the city. It allows you to not have to remember the complex road layouts and such and instead keep your mind focused on whatever task you're undertaking, and it's seriously useful at keeping little notes such as locations and particular preferences of certain dealers with whom you can trade drugs to gain cash. It also keeps tabs on your mission status and can be referenced should you lose track of what you were doing, which is another arrow in the game's quiver.
Whilst all this is going on, the game often throws you missions and little side tasks that make great use of the touch screen. From tattooing new gang members to playing the scratch card lottery, whether it be unscrewing a car's panel and twiddling two wires together to fire it up or cutting wires on car bombs to prevent them exploding, each new use is brief enough and easy enough to achieve (although still tricky if under pressure) that it's always enjoyable and well-timed. It also provides a great way of aiming grenades or Molotov cocktails, with a simple extended tap and aiming gesture enough to send your explosive in the intended direction.
The missions themselves are a pretty enjoyable bunch too, as although quite a few of them follow the same fetch-and-carry or hunt-and-kill/destroy theme there are some subtle variations – aided by the touch screen - that make for some great entertainment. A particular favourite of mine was a mission in which you must hijack an ambulance with a weak-hearted criminal in and escape, all the time having to avoid as much collision and speed and possible in order to stop him flat-lining and you having to tap the touch screen to revive him.
Of course, what with the limits of the console the game was never going to be blockbusting in terms of visuals, but what Rockstar have done with the game is still remarkable. Whilst being viewed from a slightly isometric viewpoint, the game runs smoothly and packs in a great amount of detailing and charm. Likewise, the loss of voice-acting and the progression of key parts of the story via comic-styled excerpts could have threatened the drama of the thing, but it's all so well-written with plenty of humour and over-the-top characters and situations that it still comes up smelling of roses.
The other main point that should be commended with Chinatown Wars is that Rockstar have been very careful in understanding the nature of the system the game is on and as a result have made the game pretty much impossible to get frustrated with. You can save via the PDA at any point as well as the game allowing you to save from your safe houses and auto-saving after every mission anyway, whilst the game also allows you to instantly restart your mission should you fail it. It almost falls over itself trying to help you enjoy it whichever way you wish, be it in short sharp bursts (for which the missions are ideally sized) or in longer stretches.
Hence, you quite quickly get sucked in. Whilst it is a slightly cut-down version for obvious reasons, Chinatown Wars allows you to explore, undertake the usual taxi, ambulance and race missions and to get involved in a quite addictive (and slightly controversial, granted) drug-dealing mini game whilst also digging through the enjoyable main story. With all that noted alongside the fantastic missions, great use of the system's unique control system and the way it allows even players short on time to get involved, you end up with not only one of the best games on Nintendo's little handheld, but one of the finest gaming achievements on any machine. Anyone still sitting on the fence need no longer stay there – this one's a sure-fire candidate for game of the year.
I make no excuses for my love of Nintendo's little handheld machine as you may have noticed, and I certainly love me a bit of GTA now and again. Even taking that into account, GTA: Chinatown Wars has exceeded expectations not only in terms of how well it plays, but how much they've been able to cram into the damn thing. Those familiar with playing the series and spending most of their time away from the main story completing various sidequests and exploration tasks will delight in finding that this slightly condensed title still packs all that in, all the time whilst using the control scheme of the native hardware appropriately and in plenty of fun ways.
It all starts off in familiar style, with your lead character coming to Liberty City to deliver a sword to his uncle, only to walk straight into an ambush and end up being left for dead in the back seat of a car headed to the bottom of the ocean. Via a quick escape (smashing the rear window by hammering on it with the stylus, no less) you set off on a whistle-stop tour of the city as you try to hunt down the sword and gain respect and power for yourself and your family. It is, as said, classic GTA fare, as are the ragtag bunch of characters you meet and the missions you undertake.
If you're one of the rather large number of folks who played GTA 4 last year and are groaning at the statement a little, hold your horses. I might have slapped a perfect 10 on the adventures of Niko Belic last year, but as time went on it became something that I started to regret in retrospect. Whilst it was undoubtedly a vast game with as much freedom and choice as you'd think possible, it often weighed itself down with pointless social responsibilities and by toning down the colourful, over-the-top nature of the series in favour of a more gritty, realistic setting. In time, this began to detract from the fun.
Thankfully, Chinatown Wars feels something of a reboot. Shorn of the need to keep your associates happy with bowling, pool or whatever and being forced into a more simplified, colourful style, the game feels leaner and more concentrated, which it certainly benefits from. The heart of the game – stealing cars, committing crimes, shooting enemies – remains the same, but it feels much different to last year's big console effort and, as far as I am concerned, is all the better for it.
Don't go getting the impression that this is GTA Lite, mind. Liberty City has been cut down to two islands from the original three, but each is still vast and packed full of nooks and crannies to explore. In fact, it's perfectly possible to lose whole hours just travelling around hunting down security cameras to blow up, drug dealers to trade with, scratch cards to try your luck on and optional missions to undertake. Once you get your claws into it, the thing unravels and reveals itself to be really very dense indeed.
The basics, i.e. the controls and the way the game delivers missions and allows you to travel, all work fantastically well. Most of the control is via the d-Pad and face buttons, and pelting around shooting things with target lock-on and jacking cars by tapping the X button all being natural and easy to carry off. Driving the cars is also helped by a gentle aid that sees the game line your car up so it's straight after turning, and despite initial worries that it might take some of the instinctive nature out of the driving it ends up allowing you to skid around corners, dodge through traffic and zoom around town without as much as a second thought. Given the relative restraints of the viewpoint and camera angle, this is a bit of a godsend, and it's made all the better by the new police chase system, whereby you must try to destroy or disable chasing cop cars in order to buy yourself anonymity and escape. It's a thrilling mechanic, and one that is rather more fair and understandable than previous efforts.
As with 4, the game's main centre of activity is your character's PDA on which you receive emails, check on contacts and use GPS to map out your routes through the city. It allows you to not have to remember the complex road layouts and such and instead keep your mind focused on whatever task you're undertaking, and it's seriously useful at keeping little notes such as locations and particular preferences of certain dealers with whom you can trade drugs to gain cash. It also keeps tabs on your mission status and can be referenced should you lose track of what you were doing, which is another arrow in the game's quiver.
Whilst all this is going on, the game often throws you missions and little side tasks that make great use of the touch screen. From tattooing new gang members to playing the scratch card lottery, whether it be unscrewing a car's panel and twiddling two wires together to fire it up or cutting wires on car bombs to prevent them exploding, each new use is brief enough and easy enough to achieve (although still tricky if under pressure) that it's always enjoyable and well-timed. It also provides a great way of aiming grenades or Molotov cocktails, with a simple extended tap and aiming gesture enough to send your explosive in the intended direction.
The missions themselves are a pretty enjoyable bunch too, as although quite a few of them follow the same fetch-and-carry or hunt-and-kill/destroy theme there are some subtle variations – aided by the touch screen - that make for some great entertainment. A particular favourite of mine was a mission in which you must hijack an ambulance with a weak-hearted criminal in and escape, all the time having to avoid as much collision and speed and possible in order to stop him flat-lining and you having to tap the touch screen to revive him.
Of course, what with the limits of the console the game was never going to be blockbusting in terms of visuals, but what Rockstar have done with the game is still remarkable. Whilst being viewed from a slightly isometric viewpoint, the game runs smoothly and packs in a great amount of detailing and charm. Likewise, the loss of voice-acting and the progression of key parts of the story via comic-styled excerpts could have threatened the drama of the thing, but it's all so well-written with plenty of humour and over-the-top characters and situations that it still comes up smelling of roses.
The other main point that should be commended with Chinatown Wars is that Rockstar have been very careful in understanding the nature of the system the game is on and as a result have made the game pretty much impossible to get frustrated with. You can save via the PDA at any point as well as the game allowing you to save from your safe houses and auto-saving after every mission anyway, whilst the game also allows you to instantly restart your mission should you fail it. It almost falls over itself trying to help you enjoy it whichever way you wish, be it in short sharp bursts (for which the missions are ideally sized) or in longer stretches.
Hence, you quite quickly get sucked in. Whilst it is a slightly cut-down version for obvious reasons, Chinatown Wars allows you to explore, undertake the usual taxi, ambulance and race missions and to get involved in a quite addictive (and slightly controversial, granted) drug-dealing mini game whilst also digging through the enjoyable main story. With all that noted alongside the fantastic missions, great use of the system's unique control system and the way it allows even players short on time to get involved, you end up with not only one of the best games on Nintendo's little handheld, but one of the finest gaming achievements on any machine. Anyone still sitting on the fence need no longer stay there – this one's a sure-fire candidate for game of the year.
10/10
