Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS) Review
There really is no excuse for people to think that the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS are for the younger audience. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had a lot of very mature and explicitly over the top titles come to the Nintendo Wii. Slit necks in Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, blast hordes of zombies in Dead Rising, be showered with swear words and limbs in House of the Dead: OVERKILL and brutally rip an enemy apart with your claws (scorpion claws, that is) in Deadly Creatures. No matter how you look at it, the Wii is finally receiving the core, more mature orientated titles that it deserves. And now, what better way to continue that trend by bringing one of the most controversial series to one of the most popular handheld? Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is exclusively for the DS, and the first thing you see is lots of drugs being “dealt” away to reveal Rockstar Games’s logo. From the get go, it’s clear that Rockstar does not care for the console they are developing the game for – they definitely did not hold back. And sure, it may be controversial, but there’s heaps of substance to match this game’s style too.
The Grand Theft Auto series has never really been a great conduit for compelling story telling, and unfortunately Chinatown Wars is no exception. Players step into the shoes of Huang Lee, a spoilt and rich man whose father was one of the most revered triad bosses in Hong Kong. However, following his assassination, Huang Lee must take it upon himself to deliver the Yu Jian, a sacred sword and family heirloom, to his Uncle Kenny in Liberty City, in a bid to reassure Kenny’s inheritance of the Triad Bosses. Naturally, Kenny has some competition (namely the other two Triad leaders in Libery City), and Huang’s welcoming to Liberty City is a far cry from what he is used to – being run into a river and left for dead. The story then picks up where Huang escapes his watery grave.
As previously mentioned, the game really doesn’t have an engaging or entirely original storyline, furthermore, the characters presented are very forgettable. There were times where I was getting confused as to which character was which, sometimes even forgetting the name of the protagonist himself. That being said, the presentation of the story is very well done, and although not voiced like in previous iterations in the series. Most of the cutscenes take place on the touchscreen, and use an almost comic-book like presentation with just text being used for the dialogue instead of voice. Although it’s not anywhere near as immersive as the previous games, it works very well.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is also one of the first games to employ a very different graphical direction in comparison to the previous games. It’s hard to explain, but almost everything in the game is outlined in black lines, and the character models themselves are cel-shaded. Animation is interesting, not being entirely fluid but surprisingly working really well, considering it does sometimes look like a very strange and jerky reaction. The environmental detail is astounding though, with different weather effects hitting Liberty City over different periods of time, as well as citizens donning umbrellas during thunderstorms. The attention to detail here is amazing and surpasses most other DS titles.
For those who are used to playing Grand Theft Auto games, the general gist of gameplay is largely intact. For those not in the know though, we’ll just go over the core gameplay mechanics briefly. You control your protagonist in an open world city, in this case modelled upon New York. You have free reign over what you can do, between undertaking missions from distinguished members of the Liberty City underworld and just stealing cars, killing countless amounts of people and generally wreaking havoc. Players can steal cars, participate in street races and, once again, kill people. The gameplay is much more varied and in-depth than this though, with severe consequences to your actions taking place in-game as well. Should you, for example, kill someone or steal their car while a police car is close by, you will receive a “wanted level”, which increases as you commit more and more crimes without being caught (or losing the wanted level). The police will progressively employ more severe methods of enforcement to stop you, with the game peaking at army tanks and helicopters. Needless to say, you can easily create an objective to last as long as possible without getting caught. In fact, that’s the beauty of Grand Theft Auto, that although there are missions you can undertake, the game encourages you to do everything at your own pace in your own time.
And although Chinatown Wars does a lot that previous Grand Theft Auto games did, there’s also a lot of stuff that you would never have seen in a GTA game. Almost all of the activities that Huang can do are touchscreen controlled, from making molotov cocktails to hotwiring cars, most of it is controlled through touchscreen mini-games that are pretty nice features. In addition, Huang can utilise his PDA to do an assortment of tasks, including making phone calls, cracking electronic immobilisers and planning routes via it’s GPS function. As the game progresses, you can install new applications onto the PDA in order to add functionality, a nice feature no less that authenticates the experience. The PDA is where you’ll be spending a lot of time in Chinatown Wars, planning your next mission, reviewing instructions from mission providers, and finally, one of the game’s most unique features: finding dealers.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars utilises an interesting system in which Huang can load himself up with different kinds of narcotics form his stash in his apartment. Naturally, loading yourself up with all your stash and going out and dealing is risky business, as if you are caught you will lose everything you have, but on the other hand a larger profit will be available if you trade more at any given time. The drug trading mini-game is no doubt one of the more controversial aspects of the game, and almost forms a well made game-within-a-game in itself.
Similarly to previous games, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars allows players to tune in to specific radio stations of varying genres during their drives between locations. While previous games had talk show hosts rambling some pretty hilarious dialogue, this feature is unfortunately missing from Chinatown Wars, though it is understandable considering the hardware the game runs on. All is not lost though, as the radio stations still provide some pretty decent music too, and although I didn’t recognise the artists being played (besides Deadmau5) I am sure some players will. The music is a brilliant range of genres that are bound to appeal to almost anyone that picks up Chinatown Wars.
All in all, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is one of those games that pretty much every Nintendo DS owner should own, assuming that they are over 15 of course. Rockstar have succesfully proven the critics wrong and have made Grand Theft Auto that boasts as much scope, freedom and some even unique features when comparing it to it’s console cousin. A game that almost every Nintendo DS owner should try, if not buy. Definitely worth your money.
