There was a time when I thought my Nintendo DS was going to end up much like my PSP: sitting on a shelf, collecting dust.
You see, I'm not much of a hand-held gamer. I like my console and PC games just like the rest of you, but for some reason games on the DS just never held my attention for anything more involved than mini-games or ports of nostalgia inducing titles such as Super Mario 64 DS. In fact, when I started to play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars just prior to GDC, it marked the first time I'd turned on my DS in months.
Ever since the game was first introduced by NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime, I have struggled to comprehend how the Grand Theft Auto experience could be done successfully. Fortuitously, I had a ten-hour flight ahead of me, and I'd be able to see for myself just how well—or not—it worked out.
I've got good news: they've pulled it off.
I need to stress one thing before I dive into the review: I don't play GTA for the story. In fact, I could barely tell you the storyline of this game, so if you're looking for an overview of the ongoing narrative that is threaded throughout, you should go elsewhere. I play GTA for the sandbox experience, completing missions solely to open up more insane gameplay possibilities. This was a key to making the first two titles in the series so enjoyable; the entire city was there
for you to play around in. Chinatown Wars continues this tradition.
You do start out (as with any other GTA game) with an introductory story sequence, and must complete a few beginner missions to gain access to certain aspects of the game before you can really break out on your own. You play as Huang Lee, a 25-year old returning to Liberty City to deliver his grandfather's sword back to his uncle. Along the way your bodyguards get killed, you get kidnapped and dumped in the ocean for dead. Oh, did I mention they stole your sword? While the story is all very Kill Bill and your standard GTA styled revenge plot, I decided to part ways with it and broke out on my own, as I really wanted to explore the city.
The first thing you'll notice is that this version of Liberty City looks and feels very similar to the incarnation found in GTA IV. In fact, I noticed that certain landmarks and power-ups are in the same place in both games, straight down to the t-shirt/body armor at the feet of the statue on Liberty Island—a nice little bit of cross-consistency between games and platforms.
Visually, GTA:CW is like nothing else I've seen on the Nintendo DS. While it's not the most beautiful game (Metroid Prime: Hunters still gets that honor from me), it has a very unique style that immediately screams Grand Theft Auto. They've taken the dark and dingy world of Grand Theft Auto and gave it a just as dark-and-dingy cell-shaded look that feels straight at home on the Nintendo DS. (As an aside: I actually started playing the game on a DSlite, and have since continued to play it on my newly upgraded DSi. Let me tell you this: if you don't own a DSi, and are on the fence about upgrading, buy it for Chinatown Wars. There are no DSi-specific features, but the experience of the game is much more intense on the bigger screens and better speakers.)
There is something that needs to be said about going slightly over the top when it comes to the blood and explosions in this game: it is every bit as awesome as I expected it to be. Events in this game that should have small and simple explosions are instead over-exaggerated and have an almost comic-book-like artistic quality. You know they're happening, and you know the explosions (and resulting shockwaves) are causing havoc, but you never feel like there's ever too many of them. As for the blood, there's plenty! It seems to be a growing trend that blood is being reintroduced to Nintendo platforms, and I couldn't be happier.
There are plenty of aspects to this game that make it rise above and beyond that of the first two GTA titles, which Chinatown Wars pays much homage to. The advent of drug dealing to increase your cash flow is intriguing, conflicting, and highly addictive. It's conflicting, because you really start to feel like you need to be selling the drugs in the game; a great little mechanic that helps you secure more safe houses and other assets that can be picked up in the game along the way.
They've also brought back many classic vehicles from Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2. I was silently hoping the developers would bring some of the vehicles back, and I was incredibly happy to see it to be so.
For people like me who don't enjoy playing through the story, there are plenty of other things to do to keep you busy while you explore. Back are the standard rampage modes and big jumps, but the collect-a-thon found in many other GTA games arrives in a new incarnation that seems to fit right in with the style of this game: you can destroy all the cameras that the police have set up to spy on various drug deals. It's something that really makes the drug dealing aspect of the game really interesting above a simple method of earning a quick buck into an integral part of the gameplay experience.
There are a few other quirky features about this game that I absolutely love. For example, you can whistle for a cab—you actually whistle in the real world, and thanks to the microphone in the DS, a cab will pull up if you decide to whistle for one. There are a number of touchscreen-based activities tied into the game, too, like hotwiring a vehicle—done by twisting a screwdriver around in the ignition, unscrewing a faceplate and twisting wires together, or defeating an alarm system by attaching a card reader and deciphering the code. (The newer vehicles in the game sport the more modern hotwiring obstacles.) At gas stations, you can make your own molotov cocktails.
There's also a GPS that lets you set your own waypoints to areas you might want to return to—an awesome feature that not many people know about right away. And the tank, making its return, actually takes noticeable damage when you're fighting off the police; too many of the modern GTA games made the tank way too powerful. While there were no real licensed tracks on the radio stations, I still got the feeling that there was just as much a live radio as there are in the console incarnations of the series.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a welcome addition to the Nintendo DS library, and I hope that it finds success that will help spur Rockstar to release a Wii series entry in the future. With titles like MadWorld and now Chinatown Wars, Nintendo platforms are finally starting to see M-rated games.
Everything about this game screams fun. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes the GTA franchise, or someone looking for an enjoyable and fun sandbox experience on their Nintendo DS. The DS has never really held me for longer than the time it takes to get into and out of a pick-up-and-play game, but Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the best of both worlds, allowing me to play for as long or as short as I want, and still feel like I've accomplished something in the world of Liberty City.
You see, I'm not much of a hand-held gamer. I like my console and PC games just like the rest of you, but for some reason games on the DS just never held my attention for anything more involved than mini-games or ports of nostalgia inducing titles such as Super Mario 64 DS. In fact, when I started to play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars just prior to GDC, it marked the first time I'd turned on my DS in months.
Ever since the game was first introduced by NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime, I have struggled to comprehend how the Grand Theft Auto experience could be done successfully. Fortuitously, I had a ten-hour flight ahead of me, and I'd be able to see for myself just how well—or not—it worked out.
I've got good news: they've pulled it off.
I need to stress one thing before I dive into the review: I don't play GTA for the story. In fact, I could barely tell you the storyline of this game, so if you're looking for an overview of the ongoing narrative that is threaded throughout, you should go elsewhere. I play GTA for the sandbox experience, completing missions solely to open up more insane gameplay possibilities. This was a key to making the first two titles in the series so enjoyable; the entire city was there
for you to play around in. Chinatown Wars continues this tradition.
You do start out (as with any other GTA game) with an introductory story sequence, and must complete a few beginner missions to gain access to certain aspects of the game before you can really break out on your own. You play as Huang Lee, a 25-year old returning to Liberty City to deliver his grandfather's sword back to his uncle. Along the way your bodyguards get killed, you get kidnapped and dumped in the ocean for dead. Oh, did I mention they stole your sword? While the story is all very Kill Bill and your standard GTA styled revenge plot, I decided to part ways with it and broke out on my own, as I really wanted to explore the city.
The first thing you'll notice is that this version of Liberty City looks and feels very similar to the incarnation found in GTA IV. In fact, I noticed that certain landmarks and power-ups are in the same place in both games, straight down to the t-shirt/body armor at the feet of the statue on Liberty Island—a nice little bit of cross-consistency between games and platforms.
Visually, GTA:CW is like nothing else I've seen on the Nintendo DS. While it's not the most beautiful game (Metroid Prime: Hunters still gets that honor from me), it has a very unique style that immediately screams Grand Theft Auto. They've taken the dark and dingy world of Grand Theft Auto and gave it a just as dark-and-dingy cell-shaded look that feels straight at home on the Nintendo DS. (As an aside: I actually started playing the game on a DSlite, and have since continued to play it on my newly upgraded DSi. Let me tell you this: if you don't own a DSi, and are on the fence about upgrading, buy it for Chinatown Wars. There are no DSi-specific features, but the experience of the game is much more intense on the bigger screens and better speakers.)
There is something that needs to be said about going slightly over the top when it comes to the blood and explosions in this game: it is every bit as awesome as I expected it to be. Events in this game that should have small and simple explosions are instead over-exaggerated and have an almost comic-book-like artistic quality. You know they're happening, and you know the explosions (and resulting shockwaves) are causing havoc, but you never feel like there's ever too many of them. As for the blood, there's plenty! It seems to be a growing trend that blood is being reintroduced to Nintendo platforms, and I couldn't be happier.
There are plenty of aspects to this game that make it rise above and beyond that of the first two GTA titles, which Chinatown Wars pays much homage to. The advent of drug dealing to increase your cash flow is intriguing, conflicting, and highly addictive. It's conflicting, because you really start to feel like you need to be selling the drugs in the game; a great little mechanic that helps you secure more safe houses and other assets that can be picked up in the game along the way.
They've also brought back many classic vehicles from Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2. I was silently hoping the developers would bring some of the vehicles back, and I was incredibly happy to see it to be so.
For people like me who don't enjoy playing through the story, there are plenty of other things to do to keep you busy while you explore. Back are the standard rampage modes and big jumps, but the collect-a-thon found in many other GTA games arrives in a new incarnation that seems to fit right in with the style of this game: you can destroy all the cameras that the police have set up to spy on various drug deals. It's something that really makes the drug dealing aspect of the game really interesting above a simple method of earning a quick buck into an integral part of the gameplay experience.
There are a few other quirky features about this game that I absolutely love. For example, you can whistle for a cab—you actually whistle in the real world, and thanks to the microphone in the DS, a cab will pull up if you decide to whistle for one. There are a number of touchscreen-based activities tied into the game, too, like hotwiring a vehicle—done by twisting a screwdriver around in the ignition, unscrewing a faceplate and twisting wires together, or defeating an alarm system by attaching a card reader and deciphering the code. (The newer vehicles in the game sport the more modern hotwiring obstacles.) At gas stations, you can make your own molotov cocktails.
There's also a GPS that lets you set your own waypoints to areas you might want to return to—an awesome feature that not many people know about right away. And the tank, making its return, actually takes noticeable damage when you're fighting off the police; too many of the modern GTA games made the tank way too powerful. While there were no real licensed tracks on the radio stations, I still got the feeling that there was just as much a live radio as there are in the console incarnations of the series.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a welcome addition to the Nintendo DS library, and I hope that it finds success that will help spur Rockstar to release a Wii series entry in the future. With titles like MadWorld and now Chinatown Wars, Nintendo platforms are finally starting to see M-rated games.
Everything about this game screams fun. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes the GTA franchise, or someone looking for an enjoyable and fun sandbox experience on their Nintendo DS. The DS has never really held me for longer than the time it takes to get into and out of a pick-up-and-play game, but Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the best of both worlds, allowing me to play for as long or as short as I want, and still feel like I've accomplished something in the world of Liberty City.