In Creation Games

Developer: Rockstar Leeds/Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Platform: DS
Genre: Action-adventure
Players: 1 – 2
Release Date: March 20 2009 (EU)

When it comes to making a DS game the developer needs to make sure that they get the right balance between the touch screen and the face buttons. If the touch screen is overused it can make the game feel repetitive and boring because it is used for the sheer hell of it. If a game relies too much on the face buttons however, it can still be a great game. Look at New Super Mario Bros for example, it’s one of the best games on the system and it hardly uses the touch screen. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the other hand is easily the best game when it comes to balancing the touch screen and regular face buttons. You never feel like the touch screen is used for the sake of using it and really adds to the game.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars starts off with your character, Huang Lee arriving in Liberty City with his fathers’ sword which he is bringing to his Uncle Kenny. Of course it wouldn’t be Grand Theft Auto is something didn’t go wrong. You get attacked shortly after arriving in Liberty City and the attackers presume you are dead and leave you in a car which gets dumped into the sea. This is one of my favourite points in the game. You see the car drive off the edge into the water and you presume that Huang will get out and swim to the shore automatically. Wrong! You need to tap the windscreen of the car so you can smash it and get out of the water. This is just one of the touch screen events that make you feel immersed into the game.

The touch screen is used for loads of things in the game. Like I said before you can smash your windscreen but there are many other things you can do. You can fill up bottle with petrol so you can use them as Molotov cocktails and you can even hotwire cars with it. I don’t want to say too much though because part of the fun is finding out what the next touch screen game is.

Grand Theft Auto IV was known for many things. The amazing story, the way the city felt and acted and of course the gameplay. Chinatown Wars manages to do all of these really well but it rarely excels Grand Theft Auto IV which is hardly surprising. The story in Chinatown Wars starts off good and is interesting but it isn’t exactly amazing until you get towards the end which is full of plot twists and really hooks you. The cities and people are done well but obviously not in the extent that GTA IV done it. People will generally just walk about or run away when you attack them or fire weapons. I did notice some people stealing cars and running people over on a few occasions though. The most impressive thing about the cities this time is the size. You play in the first two islands plus South Bohan. They aren’t in the same scale as GTA IV due to obvious limitations of the DS but it is extremely impressive for a DS game. Now onto gameplay. Unlike the console games Chinatown Wars does not use a 3D camera but instead uses a bird’s eye camera which is fully rotatable. It suits the game really well and feels a lot similar to the original GTAs on the PlayStation but better.

Chinatown Wars feels like a GTA game which is one of the main appeals to it. It feels more like San Andreas and Vice City where it wasn’t about being realistic but when it was about being over the top and incredibly fun (I’m not saying that GTA IV isn’t fun though). However the gameplay is perfectly crafted to suit the DS and is designed incredibly well with many features that wouldn’t suit the console games.

The two main elements of any GTA game is driving and shooting. Chinatown Wars does well in both of these areas. The driving, like GTA IV, takes a while to get used to. Since the cars and roads are a lot smaller than normal it can feel a little bit awkward but there is driving assist which should help a bit. When you master the driving though, you’ll be swerving in and out of cars while evading the cops with ease. The shooting is solid enough too. There is no cover system or manual aiming in this and it is all auto aim. This suits the game however and doesn’t take away any of the challenge. Some of the gun fights can be extremely fun and hectic.

The wanted level and police chases have been slightly tweaked. Instead of driving out of the radius, you must know destroy the pursuing police cars. To lose one of your wanted level stars you need to destroy the amount of police cars proportionate to your wanted level. For example if you have a three star wanted level then you will need to destroy three police cars to drop down to a two star wanted level. It’s really good fun and when you get high wanted levels you can have some pretty cool car chases.

Unfortunately the multiplayer is not online so you can only play locally with multiple copies of the game (Well two copies as it is only two players). The multiplayer is very fun though. It contains a mixture between co-operative and head on head modes. One mode has you protect a base with your buddy which can get pretty frantic and can be a right laugh. The races are awesome as well, especially the death races which rewards you for killing your opponent. The multiplayer is great fun and definitely worth convincing a mate to buy the game so that you can play it.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is one of the best games on the DS. It is a smaller, refined and suits the DS amazingly well. It contains all the over the top, crazy missions that GTA was known for as well as top notch gameplay and plot.

+ Suits the DS really well
+ Great story when it gets into it
+ Great balance between touch screen and face buttons

- No online multiplayer

9/10