Chinatown Wars Double Review Madness!
March 24th, 2009 | Written by Anthony Perez | Topic: Nintendo DS
Ok, so there was a bit of a mixup in the assigning of our GTA: Chinatown Wars review. Therefore, we ended up with two reviews instead of one. We published the one that was initially scheduled, but why let a perfectly good second opinion go to waste?
So while we just published Alex Quevedo’s on the main site, check out Danreb Victorio’s review after the jump.
The following review was written by Danreb Victorio.
OVERALL SCORE: 9.2
When Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was announced for the Nintendo DS a while back, gamers quickly turned their heads, knowing that it would never compare to the brutal open-endedness of its console brethren after Grand Theft Auto III. But as Rockstar unveiled more about the game, players became more and more interested. Now the game has finally been released, and to everyone’s surprise—this is actually one of the greatest experiences one can have on the Nintendo handheld.
GTA Chinatown Wars puts players in the shoes of Huang Lee, the spoiled son with a triad boss of a father who was killed in a heist. Huang is on his way to Liberty City (yep, the same place as Grand Theft Auto IV) to deliver the Yu Jian—a sacred sword that has become the Lee family’s prized heirloom passed down from generation to generation—to his “honorable” Uncle Kenny. When Huang lands in the United States, he received a bullet to the head and is left for dead in the ocean. Unfortunately for his assassins, he was never killed. As for the Yu Jian, players find out that Huang’s father simply won the sword in a Poker game, and now that it’s lost, it has to be found.
As any Grand Theft Auto fan would tell you, it’s no longer the main story that makes the series great. It’s about the amount of stuff there is to do both in conjunction and out of context with every mission. Chinatown Wars does this as well as any GTA that came out after III, which is quite a statement considering fans thought there’d be all sorts of sacrifices when developing the game for the DS.
The environment in Liberty City is presented in the same visual fashion as Grand Theft Auto I and II, from an overhead perspective. While this is what initially turned players off, it’s worth noting that the DS makes good use of this style because it also allows the camera to move at ease. Progression is made in the game by doing missions set up by Huang’s uncle. While there’s no real tutorial in the game, the first missions in the game just a few things to get players used to the activity in Liberty City. For example, the third mission in the game has Huang attacking a dummy with both his hands and weapons—it’s assumed Huang has no fighting skill, because the guy’s supposed to be a spoiled brat. With that, there’ll be a lot of missions that require you to shoot a thug, get rid of gangsters that threaten the Lee triad in Liberty City, steal and bomb a few cars, and all sorts of highly criminal things to get back to the idea of the central story.
Like the cell phone in Grand Theft Auto IV, Chinatown Wars comes with a few tools that makes every mission a lot easier. At anytime in the game, players can check their “e-mail” to see what’s new aside from the main mission at hand. Players can find out which drugs are cheap, where to find the coolest cars, and other things of that nature. Chinatown Wars also features a PDA, which is used entirely with the touch screen, can be used to plot points in your map, find safe houses, gas stations, or places to paint your car, and other locations that will be key to every mission you take part in. In addition to that, the game has plenty of mini-missions at your disposal should you get bored. For example, if players somehow steal a Police car without getting caught, they’d actually play as a cop and be able to stop crime around Liberty City. Or, if players want to stay a fugitive, players can go ahead and hit up the drug dealing business.
With the game as open-ended as it is, players always run the risk of being thrown in the slammer. If the cops catch Huang doing anything “illegal,” Huang is going to be hunted down. While that in itself is pretty cool, it would be better if Rockstar were stricter with the crimes. For example, speeding, driving in the wrong lane, or even rear-ending a non-cop car isn’t enough to get the police chasing after Huang.
Police pursuit has always been a staple in the Grand Theft Auto series, but Chinatown Wars gives players some extra wiggle room. New to the series is the Fugitive system. Depending on how reckless players are with their crimes, there’ll be a star rating on top right portion of the screen. The more stars there are, the more police there will be at chase. Players can get rid of these stars through multiple means. One way is to just somehow get away and hide. The other, which also doubles as the most challenging yet fun, requires players to be so savvy with their driving that the police crash their cars left and right, rendering them useless, or the player driving so ruthlessly by hitting the cars themselves. One of the most satisfying sounds in the game is hearing the police sirens suddenly die, and even though the game is played on the DS, you can’t help but feel some sort of pleasure when accomplishing the feat.
Of course, to get away from the cops, Huang needs some hot wheels. One of the most impressive features in GTA Chinatown Wars is the fact that like the other good GTA games, there is a noticeable variety of vehicles in the game. While it’s easy to highjack your run-of-the-mill kind of car, there are even rarer and faster cars hidden in Liberty City. At first, the slower vehicles like big rigs and the faster vehicles like racer Ferrari’s will be hard to use, but it’s good to experience the difference in controls with each car. In addition, Rockstar made good use of the DS touch screen when stealing parked cars. When stealing parked cars, players are given a limited amount of time to play a minigame in order to get the car started. Some are as simple as rigging the ignition, while others will require players to unscrew the bottom of the dashboard in order to hot wire the car using the stylus. The newer cars will require you to unscrew the dashboard and break some sort of digital code to start the car. This all gives the game a lot of variety, and it’s comforting to know that a third party like Rockstar actually knows how to make use of the touch screen.
In addition to the game’s expansiveness, the game comes equipped with a slew of multiplayer modes to keep players busy including a Capture the Flag mode, Racing mode, and even a Gang Bang game. The only knock with these games is that every player must have their own copy of Chinatown Wars since there isn’t any single-card play. GTA Chinatown Wars also comes equipped with Wi-Fi Connectivity to obtain online-exclusive weapons and items, and there are even Fugitive Leaderboards to keep people playing.
As stated, Chinatown Wars’ aerial view of gameplay works out well on the Nintendo DS, and while there aren’t any real 3D polygons in the game, the designers did a good job by cel-shading every environmental piece in the game. The cel-shading meshes well with the comic book delivery that Rockstar was hoping for. The artistic direction with the comic book-style cutscenes is good, and the artists really did a good job with facial expressions. While the game isn’t a visual masterpiece, it ends up doing its job quite well and is pretty effective with the entire tone of the game.
The sound in the game is also top-notch. When you enter a car, the radio starts to play, which is a nice touch. In addition to that, players are happily greeted by the angry citizens of Liberty City with constant swearing. While pretty much all the dialog in Chinatown Wars is hilariously brutal (in a ghetto way), this is definitely not something to buy for a kid—unless of course, you want him or her yelling the F word every now and then while driving them to school. If anything can be improved with the game’s presentation, it would be nice if the game’s comic book cutscenes had voice acting, because there’s a lot of satire and sarcasm, but sometimes it’s hard to catch it.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a game that will amaze players with the most remote players from start to finish—if there even is a finish. While the game’s presentation may look substandard at first glance, that simply isn’t the case. The game makes use of themes from its great predecessors between Grand Theft Auto III and IV, and some may say that the series might have actually taken a step forward. At 15 hours, not including the game’s many side missions, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars should keep players busy for as long as any Grand Theft Auto available. These are quite bold statements, but Chinatown Wars is simply great.
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Comment by TheForgotten0ne on the March 24th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Always nice to see that the two of you give the game almost the same score.
And it's nice to be able to comment on a review, something I have missed.
Now I ask myself, why did I buy a PSP? Okey, I got MGS:PO, the only reason I bought it. And I'll get KH Birth of Sleep. But I'm missing out on this game. The GTA's on the PSP is just bad versions of the once on the PS2. This is like my fav GTA, GTA II. I miss that game