Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (Nintendo DS) Released March 17th, 2009 Review

The Grand Theft Auto series has been one of the most controversial IPs in recent gaming history. Its seamlessy transistioned from top down PS1-era classic with niche appeal to mega-killer app for the young PS2, to brewing coffee far too hot for any Starbucks. Grand Theft Auto IV was widely praised last year for its gameplay, story, and multiplayer when it was released. GTA hasn't normally been on Nintendo consoles, its only been on Nintendo's handhelds. GTA Advance was the last GTA to grace a Nintendo console, and it wasn't very well received by consumers. It sported a top down camera that reminded us of where GTA 1 and 2 had taken us. This time, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars delivers a superb free-roam experience for the first time on a Nintendo handheld.

CW is set in Liberty City, a town GTA veterans know to be filled with scum and some very memorable characters. A young, spoiled Asian immigrant comes to America when his seedy father is brutally murdered. He intends on delivering a family sword, an heirloom handed down each generation. He plans on giving it to his brother so his brother can use it to become the biggest crime lord in Liberty City. Things don't go as planned (When do they in Liberty City?) and Huang gets a warm american welcome with a bullet grazing his head. The game's cutscenes use a comic book style, and they are always filled with plenty of clever dialogue. The story takes time to develop, but its fun and you're usually wanting to see what's next. There are some very colorful characters and a few weird ones. (Like Hot Dog stand operators who need you to spy on their adultering wives)

There is a lot to do here in this game.You're never really out of things to do. For the first time in recent memory, I found myself playing GTA for the missions. Drug selling alone makes it hard to simply boot up the game to shoot cops for endless hours. If you'd like, you can avoid the narrative being told and go straight to offline multiplayer (which is fun but should be online) or play the standard GTA sandbox murder simulator. Stealing cars and running over innocent chumps is a blast. The police are unyielding in their determination to catch you. The wanted level system has changed. For every star you get on your wanted level, you have to knock that many pursuing police cars out. You can do this by causing them to run into other cars, or ramming them into oblivion yourself. You can hide to lose the heat, but you are often assaulted with a flurry of the boys in blue. The cops are always forcing you into confrontation which gives the game a fun and fast feeling.

Like I said, when I get a new Grand Theft Auto game I usually fool around with the city for a while. I like to see how many people I can kill before getting wasted or busted. The story really pulled me in with Chinatown Wars. Huang is a nice, engaging character. He can be funny, as he benefits from some very humorous writing. His uncle Kenny is a tool who only thinks of pleasing other crime lords. Kenny doesn't think about how these actions reflect upon his family, and he often jumps at every chance he gets to kiss up to more powerful crime lords. A relationship blooms between him and Huang that I couldn't wait to see develop.

I found myself passing up the dozens of ramps in LBC, and turning back to experience them. I would steal cars to see how fast and how long I could make my next ramp jump. Motorbikes and fast cars are great. Additionally, the more damage your car takes the harder it is drive accurately. For something as underpowered as the Nintendo DS, its impressive they've gotten such responsiveness out of it. The collisons between cars is superb. It feels and sounds realistic. Your car will overheat from damage as you'd expect. Cars take flips and spins very nice. You can still shoot out of your window just like in console GTAs. You can also dive out of the car while it maintains momentum and veers off in the distance. This is particularly amusing when trying to time when your flaming car will explode. I liked seeing if I could jump out just before it exploded so I could see its fiery explosion inflict a wave of death on pedestrians.

Chinatown Wars bares all the essentials of any GTA adventure. There are hookers, trigger happy police offers, and the classic GTA radio stations. I loved being able to switch through the radio, thus changing the mood of my driving experience. I'm happy to see my favorite stations of past trips in Liberty City have returned with great music. When you shut the DS and open it you're even greeted by spoken dialogue reminding you that you're still playing GTA. The most hilarious of which is a woman asking if "You want a piece of her pie". The game never stops beaming with personality. Every part of the city is alive with detail. You're always entertained, and always at a loss for words. Many of my friends thought it was wrong that you could sell drugs in this game. Once they played it they understood the addictiveness of drug dealing in Liberty City.

That's probably my favorite part of this game, selling drugs. You buys drugs like Cocaine, Downers, Weed, Heroine. You then go to other parts of the massive Liberty City to make big profits by selling them. When you're buying drugs it tells you what the market value of said drug is, and how much you could profit. Shortly after you begin buying and selling you will be making a lot of money. That is essential to this game because the initial missions don't pay a whole lot of money. You will have to deal drugs at a fast rate. So if you don't like the sound of that, this game isn't for you. Dealers will email your PDA with tips on how much the drug market is paying for certain drugs. Sometimes different parts of LBC will pay more for some drugs. Some parts may favor downers, others Cocaine. You'll find yourself hurrying over to far away sides of town to make profits in the tens of thousands of dollars. Be careful though, the cops will try to bust your deals and if you ditch the police just before arriving at the dealer's location he will get scared away. To avoid the cops from busting your deals, you have to take out secuirity cameras laid out across LBC. These are usually near the dealer's area. After these are gone the police raids decrease instantanousely.

The PDA is your hub for everything in CW. It houses your email. You receive email from dealers when good deals arrive. You also get email from characters who need jobs performed to move along the game's plot. It houses your map, which a few easy taps of the stylus will bring up a highlighted path to your desired destination. That makes the driving much simpler. Additionally, you can boot up the game's local multiplayer which is fun. Although it is not online nor does it have single card download play. You can track your statistics in here too and save your game at any time. So no more having to back track all the way to your safehouses from a long distance away. You can save anywhere. That is a very good reason why this game succeeds as an amazing portable game.

To expand upon that, this game pulls off being a great portable experience. It replicates the home console feel of GTA while presenting it an entertaining, pick up and play package. It never takes itself too seriously. Driving, stealing cars, killing people is easy and can be done seconds after booting up the game. There is practically no loading screens in this game. That helps to make the game easier to pick up randomily. Another great feature that may be overlooked by people is being able to replay missions. If you fail a mission you easily restart it. All you have to do is press select to restart the mission and press it again to skip back to where your mission ended before. So you can by pass the repetitive drives across town that can take minutes if you have trouble with a specific mission. This takes out needless frustration that is commonly associated with Grand Theft Auto missions. So if you accidentally bump into the police and they bust you, you can start over and speed up the process.

The graphics may turn off some players at first glance. Don't let it deceive you. This game packs some good graphics. The game is presented in a somewhat top down angle, similar to Pokemon Diamond and Phantom Hourglass. Everything in Liberty City is presented in good 3D graphics from the meager DS hardware. The detail of how well people and cars look is great. The physics react better than any DS game I've ever played. Additionally billboards, ramps, police cars all come to life with a wide range of bright colors. The game uses a much more colorful appearance then previous GTAs. I believe that helps the graphics appear as nice as they do. It plays to the DS's strengths. There is nice shadows and lighting. When your car is launched from a ramp you will see a shadow of your cars exact body shape beneath it. You see lamp posts lighting streets well, and headlights in your path. There is some nice visual effects in Chinatown Wars.

The touch screen is applied very well, with only a few flaws. The biggest of which is hurling projectile weapons such as grenades and molotovs. You perform these actions by dragging the icon on the bottom screen and flicking it upwards as if you're tossing it to the top screen. Huang will toss it into the streets of Liberty City with unreliable accuracy. I can't think of a way a button press would give the same tossing accuracy this method does, but this solution isn't the most graceful method either. It makes you have to take your attention away from what's going on to focus on making sure you throw doesn't land away from your target. You don't want your projectile to land near you either. There are touch screen minigames like assembling weapons and hot wiring cars.These minigames are very short and never slow down the pace of action. If these minigames were expanded upon more, they could slow down the experience. But they never do because they never last more than a few moments. Its a nice way to use everything the DS can, without seeming too gimmicky.

This great game does have flaws.I imagine DS download play doesn't appear because downloading the game world in CW is so huge and so alive I doubt it could be done with DS's having no internal memory. It'd be nice but I can see why it isn't in there. The online multiplayer consists mostly of trading and non-competitve modes of play. The offline multiplayer is fun and you can lose hours with friends. The big minus here is the offline multiplayer would be even better if it was online with voice chat support. It would add even more life to this already addicting game if I could hop online and battle or play missions with my friends and chat it up with them. I'd even be okay with online play strictly reserved with friend codes and no random play. Sadly no competitive online play makes it to the retail release. Makes me wish there could've been a few months extra on the development time to get this feature in. There some missions that can be a tad bit boring, but there aren't as many escort missions as in past GTAs. This again goes to show how much care was taken into making this a great portable game.

Those are really my only gripes with this game. There isn't a whole lot left to be desired except a new game. That is something most games can only hope for. Leaving the player totally satisfied and they want another game instead of nit picking areas where the first game could've added value or gameplay. Graphics are nice and have detail, always brimming with color. Everything from the dialogue, characters, story, music, and missions are oozing with amazing personality. The DS fits unheard of physics for its two screens at all times, combining that with dozens of characters and collisons without any real framerate issues. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars could very well be the best game on the system. We rarely see a third party game challenge Nintendo for the top spot on their console in terms of quality software. Every Nintendo generation sees a few third party challengers, Resident Evil 4 comes to mind. CW suceeds in this reviewers mind of standing beside the Zeldas and Metroids among the best games available for the DS. The content in here is worth every penny of the $34.99 you will be paying for it. This is a mature adventure, it isn't always difficult but it isn't easy and parts of it require just as much patience and trial and error as past GTAs. Everything is streamlined and made easy to pick up and play here. That does wonders for the GTA formula. This is a console design not trying to tie you down to bench because of its design needing all your attention. The actual gameplay is what gets your attention. You have the ability to simply turn off the game at any point and pick it back up whenever with no consequences, and jumping in with no flaws. That is a significant achievement in itself.

Score: 9.8