The Charge:
Search for honour, riches, and revenge in the most dangerous city in the world.
Opening Statement:
The Grand Theft Auto franchise has been synonymous with two things since 2001’s blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III; controversy, and pardon my French, great freaking’ games. We’ve seen three titles during the last console generation, an explosive debut on the PS3 and Xbox 360 (including a popular downloadable expansion pack for the 360 version), and two smash hits for the Sony PSP. GTA has been a gravy train with a rocket booster for Rockstar Games, and despite barrow loads of negative attention from the media and overzealous ambulance chasers (sorry Jack); it has shown no sign of slowing down. However, this newest instalment has provided a larger roadblock than even the Vice City sheriff’s department could muster up. Can a game concept as large as Grand Theft Auto, be made to fit on the Nintendo DS without losing everything that made it fun?
Facts of the Case:
Huang is just a simple kid trying to do right by his family name. His father has just passed away, and Huang has been charged with delivering a priceless family heirloom to his uncle in the big city. Unfortunately for Huang, that city happens to be Liberty City, that heirloom is an ancient sword; a symbol of his family’s control over the Triad crime syndicates of the rotten burg, and not five steps off of the airplane, Huang is gunned down and the sword stolen. Fortunately for gamers everywhere, that means we get another romp through the always controversial, but never conformist Grand Theft Auto franchise.
The Evidence:
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is, as clichéd as it is to state, not your Daddy’s GTA. The infamous game play has been boiled down to its most basic elements, stripping away most, if not all of the immersive sandbox features of the post GTAIII titles, and instead focused on building a completely different style of game in order to create an enthralling GTA experience on a handheld system. What’s amazing is how Rockstar Leeds still managed to take the overall feel of the console titles, and force it into an itty-bitty little DS chip. While many will make the claim that the camera has been returned to an isometric view as homage to the original PC games, actually playing Chinatown Wars still feels like a living, breathing console GTA game. The entire city has been rendered into a Cel-shaded representation of the cover art, giving the game a fairly unique look when measured against its bigger brothers. There are dozens of vehicle variations to sate even the most larcenous of players, and each one handles differently from the next. Slow and clunky for vans, Speedy Gonzales for motorcycles. The larger vehicles still maintain that feeling of trying to direct an irresistible force when it comes to cornering. I spent just as much time as I would’ve in GTAIV just taking the different vehicles for cruises around the city, just to see which ones I preferred. That time can be measured in hours, by the way.
I do feel that I must once again warn against ever letting someone under the age of 17 play this game. We all know that GTA games aren’t for kids, and yes, the mayhem is all in good fun, but Chinatown Wars does add one new feature that should keep it alienated from any gamers whoa re less than mature. The player character does involve himself in a rather deep narcotics distribution operation, and gamers will be required to deliver drugs around Liberty City. Of course, the drug dealing is handled with all of Rockstar’s usual charm, and is no worse than anything seen on the big screen.
Replacing the cell phone from GTAIV (and thankfully Cousin Roman), is a touch pad PDA that obviously takes up residence of the DS’ own touch screen. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING is handled via Huang’s PDA. Missions are doled out via email, and messages are seamlessly brought up with a touch of the stylus. Destinations can be mapped to an in-game GPS just as simply. The ways in which Rockstar have cooked up to use the DS’s touch screen to greatest effect are simply ingenious. While the real meat of the game all takes place on the top screen; the touch screen is used for everything from hotwiring cars, to bypassing alarms, to arming and disarming explosive booby traps. It becomes such that the stylus is used so often it might as well be a Swiss army knife in the hands of MacGyver. I apologize, I just get these warm and fuzzy feelings when a developer finds a way to incorporate actual game play into the DS or Wii without it feeling clunky or padded.
Rebuttal Witness:
That’s not to say that Chinatown Wars is not without nits that can be picked at. The new police system may throw many gamers off, as wanted levels are no longer dropped by avoiding police contact for any given amount of time. Instead, Chinatown Wars takes a page out of Burnout’s book, and has gamers disable police vehicles with calculated vehicular strikes. It’s fun, and really adds a nice Risk vs. Reward aspect to GTA, but I can see this throwing a lot of gamers off.
Personally, I really missed the voice acting, and licensed soundtrack. It’s obvious that the DS is kind of limited when shoving a game of this magnitude down its gullet, and the cut scenes are handled magnificently, even if it is just text. It’s just that whenever the pedestrians pipe up out in the street, one begins to imagine.
Closing Statement:
There is so much I wanted to say about this game that I couldn’t without typing a near 5,000 word epic poem. Instead I tried to avoid the normal talk about graphics and focus more on how the developers managed to do the GTA experience better on the Nintendo DS than they did a couple years earlier on the Sony PSP. The hardware may be limited, but rest assured, one word that will never be used to describe Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is “limited”. Despite the challenges of shrinking down the gaming industry’s greatest sandbox franchise to fit on what could be called “under-powered hardware”, Rockstar Leeds passed with flying colours. One has to wonder how a title like Chinatown Wars will sell on the family-friendly DS handheld, especially as no reviewer on the planet would ever recommend it for children OR families. I mean the main character deals in narcotics, the screen even says ‘heroin’ as you do it. I guess that’s what we have the rating system for. As for OUR rating system? Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars scores big.
The Verdict:
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: Rockstar Leeds
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Rated: M(17+) for Mature.
Grand Theft Auto Series Rocks!!!