iOS
AndroidGTA: Chinatown Wars ©Copyright by Gamdise Do not Reproduce. By JoJo
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a GTA game that is very different from the GTA games you are used to playing. This is a very good thing. Instead of trying to capture the essence of the GTA console experience on a handheld device like Rockstar tried on the PSP-DS's Grand Theft Auto is its own thing, customized from the ground up, so it's on a Nintendo handheld device It makes sense. This means that you will get a different story and ratio of irony to gameplay than you expected, but despite the different formulas, the Chinatown War will win.
STORY
You play Huang Lee, a 25-year-old Liberty City native returning from Hong Kong with his family's heirloom sword. As the story opens we learn that Huang's father, a Triad boss, has been killed and you must avenge his death. It doesn't take long to get the story rolling, especially when your welcoming committee is made up of a bunch of murdering scum who ambush you, shoot you in the face and then leave you for dead in a car sinking into the Liberty City waterway. Thankfully you can escape from what looks like certain death, but not before the ancient sword is stolen and passed to every crime boss with a foreign-sounding name.
ENVIRONMENT
Liberty City, a fictional American city in the Grand Theft Auto series, is located on the East Coast of the United States in the Liberty City District, based on the real-life New York City. Liberty City has a well-developed transportation network: roads and railroads. Geographically, the waterfront and the island are set close to the realistic New York City. The city is full of crime and corruption. Organized crime, gangs, criminals, city officials, and judges who do not follow the law. The weather in Liberty City is unpredictable. Fog, day, night, rain, thunder, lightning, and other such regular natural phenomena change from day today. The weather does not affect character activities, plot. The distribution of NPCs and items in the city is the same.
PERSPECTIVE
Changing the perspective to more of a top-down view makes the controls in Chinatown Wars easy to grasp. For the most part, you're using the D-pad to move around and steer, the face buttons for fighting when on foot or driving when behind the wheel, and the triggers are used for camera control and targeting. The touch screen comes up fairly often, though, as it's used to select GPS routes, check your e-mail, and all sorts of other little things that require your in-game PDA. While the top-down perspective may be beneficial in some ways, there are many downfalls. If one were to go under a building or other structure, the character would be unseeable.
MISSIONS
The missions in GTA: Chinatown Wars include many missions about the main character. There are main missions and optional side missions that add to the playability and freedom of the game. Some of the details before the mission may not seem important, such as whether to go to the weapon store to buy some weapons to be fully prepared before starting some missions, however, these detailed decisions may determine the success or failure of the mission. The decisions made by the protagonist are not important for the game, but these decisions are also likely to affect the outcome of the mission. The protagonist needs to go to the mission point to trigger the mission, which can be completed in only one way. The task is a fixed difficulty, mode, can not be selected or changed.
VERDICT
The narrative of Chinatown Wars is strong, full of humor and real drama, and benefits from excellent writing. Rather than a 3D behind-the-shoulder view, Chinatown Wars goes back to the top-down roots of the PlayStation 2 GTA games that preceded it. The art style is cartoonish and looks great. The story and atmosphere are perfect, and the controls take advantage of the limited buttons and hardware available for portable devices. It's not perfect, but it's likely the best we could hope for on the Nintendo DS.
