Game Stooge

REVIEW: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS)

• Scribbled on March 20th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Action, Nintendo DS, Reviews

When Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was announced, people got the impression from screenshots that it would be an homage to the first two Grand Theft Auto games: top down driving games that were relatively simplistic in their gameplay, especially when compared to the last two generations of GTA. However, what Rockstar Leeds did was nothing short of miraculous, and a technical triumph.

Chinatown Wars puts the player in the role of rich Hong Kong playboy Huang Lee, whose Chinese Triad father is murdered. He comes to Liberty City, a place he despises, to give the ancient sword Yu Jian to his uncle, Wu “Kenny” Lee. Huang does this not out of any sense of honor, but because he wants to continue his lifestyle of girls, drugs and opulance. However, Huang is ambushed by thugs at the airport and shot and left for dead in a car sinking in the river. This is the backgroup that the player finds himself, and soon finds himself in a struggle for power as three factions vie for Huang’s father’s role: his weirdly philosophical Uncle Kenny, a Triad leader’s amazingly stupid son Chan Jaoming, and psychotic Zhou Ming.

The in-game cutscenes are a lot lighter than Niko Belic’s self-flagellating existentialism – the dialogue is cracklingly humorous. That’s not to say there’s no pathos or shock – some scenes early in the game will make a player’s eyes widen. The cutscenes are rendered in cartoon form similar to what one sees on the GTA box covers. Missions have been improved in that should a mission be failed, rather than have to tediously redo the entire mission, it allows the player to skip ahead to the last successful save point. Plus, players can choose to redo missions to see how fast they can finish them – and upload them via the Wi-Fi to the Rockstar Social Club.

Leeds managed to cram all of Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City in full 3D into the Nintendo DS, right down the last garbage can. If that weren’t enough, not only does Chinatown Wars feature the entire city faithfully rendered in 3D, which allows players to rotate the camera – but it also includes over 100 different vehicles, including motorcycles, boats, trucks – not to mention taxis, fire trucks, ambulances, vans, buses and aircraft. Not only is there full 3D, but physics as well; cars will career, tilt and overturn, while explosions will scatter mailboxes, newsstands and garbage cans.

The complexity isn’t limited to the 3D graphics, either. Chinatown Wars is a definite improvement over Grand Theft Auto IV to the point at which it’s a better, deeper game; one might say it has the detail of Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City, but with all of the freedom of the Grand Theft Auto III games. While the player can hail cabs as they did in GTA4, they can also take on cab missions just as they could in GTA3. Yes, once again, they can do fire missions, paramedic missions, vigilante missions, food delivery missions and so forth. Player can try unique stunt jumps as well. The game also features an economy with fluctuating drug prices that the player can affect by destroying police cameras; drugs in areas without cameras are low due to saturation of product, while other areas are high due to risk of bust.

The place is so huge, that the GPS system is not only a Godsend, but necessary. It resembles the GPS from the Saints Row series, and even allows for arrows on the ground to point the player in the right direction. The PDA is also nifty, in that it allows the player to receive emails from both mission and activity contacts. From the PDA, a gamer can save from anywhere (except during a mission.)

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the game features a ton of online features, such as weapon and drug trading, as well as local Wi-Fi multiplayer games such as racing, “Stash Dash” (which is sort of a “kill the carrier” mode, but with drugs), death matching, as well as a co-op mode called “Defend the Base”, in which people try to fend their base from endless hordes of gang members.

The touch screen is also expertly handled. A lot of the game are minigames – or in some cases microgames – but never feel as such because they feel so right. For example, you don’t buy molotov cocktails, you make them at gas stations by buying gas, then filling the bottles with it and stuffing rags into them. Some cars require you to hotwire them by hand, stripping open the wheel, swapping wires then twisting. Bombs have to be defused by unscrewing the panel, detecting which is the hot wire and snipping it. Sniper rifles are assembled by hand, slapping in the ammo at the last. It truly adds to the experience in a way that none of the game’s bigger brothers have before.

Chinatown Wars is the sort of game which people who disliked GTA4, pining for GTA3’s versatility and humor, will go for. It’s the sort of game that stretches the Nintendo DS to its very limits, and is by far the best game ever released on the platform. It’s just that massive, diverse, and fun – and designed to be played in either short bursts or long sessions. Just get it – you won’t be sorry.