Time to ‘fess up – I used to be a DS hater. I first bought my DS about two years ago, and frankly the games selection bored me silly. There’s only so much brain training a man can do before wanting to torture small puppies. Thankfully, things have moved on a bit since then and I’ve discovered there are some good games – well, about 4 anyway. GTA Chinatown Wars is the first DS game I’ve ever had the motivation to actually keep playing and even finish, which is saying something for me.Luckily, we just had cubicles installed at work, so I managed to get about 4 hours a day of good solid game play for a few weeks.



I guess I was a little shocked when I heard GTA was coming to the DS. I thought it might be some kind of April fools joke in mid-August, but that would be pretty lame. Having played every GTA since the original top down PC version, I was a bit worried that the franchise might be let down by some dodgy toned-down DS family-friendly version that quickly got written off as the worst GTA in history, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only have the developers managed to keep the traditional GTA feeling in it’s entirety despite being on a dual screen portable touch thing, but they’ve added a whole bunch of new game play features that really add something.

Core Mechanics

While the usual fare of cruising around killing people for money is ever present, Chinatown Wars introduces drug dealing. It feels so perfectly natural in a GTA game, I’m wondering why the hell it’s never been done before. Following the tip-offs from dealer friends is a sure fire way to make a ton of cash by buying cheap and selling to junkies desperate for a fix. If you don’t want to buy, you can always chase down a rivals truck and hijack it.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

Outrunning the police seems a little easier this time around due a new system of lowering your wanted level if you can force enough pursuing cop cars to crash. The tend to drive fast and make ballsy overtaking attempts, so it’s not too hard to nudge them off the side of the road and into a conveniently placed tree. And they make a rather satisfying yet strangely cute little dying siren sound. The actual driving isn’t half bad – driving assist is on by default, which means you only need to nudge the D-pad when taking over or changing lanes, and the gamestraightens you up automatically. Die hard fans can turn that off, but don’t expect this to be a racing simulation.

Missions

It certainly feels a lot more mission focused than other games, but it could just be that the missions were so fun I felt no desire to go random killing or play the “how many wanted stars can I get” game…Not wanting to give too much away, I will just say that one of my favorite moments had me disguise myself as a Chinese dragon and dance my way out of a bank robbery without drawing too much attention to the fact that I was seriously sucking at the dancing. Let’s just say the mission are a lot more random in this game and will really surprise you.

GFX

Chinatown Wars feels like a throwback to the original GTA 1 and 2in graphical style, but that’s no bad thing. In fact, it’s beautiful -easily the best graphical interface of any DS game, ever. It’s all 3Drendered underneath the hood, but from a top-down perspective that suits the DS and gives it a retro feel.

Story

The storyline is as good as any GTA so I’m sure there will be mixed opinions on that, but the cut-scene text dialog is a no-holds barred festival of profanity that I found quite refreshing. You will remember the day you first saw the f-word on your little Nintendo handheld. The self-mocking black humor will have you rolling around on more than one occasion, I promise you.

I Want… Guns

The only thing that was a little annoying was not being able to buy new guns. Ammunation is ever present, but only in the form of armored trucks which are altogether rather too dangerous to try to hijack since the drivers carry shotguns. I tried a few times, but ended up splattered on the sidewalk. Luckily, missions usually supply you withall the firepower you need, and you can always try to win a gun or some armor by buying special Ammunation scratch cards~ Your fists are actually quite lethal too, and a quick tap of A and B lands a nice flying kick on your target that knocks them out for a bit too.

BEST. GAME. EVER.

The last place I would have expected Rockstar to test the bounds with new adult-oriented content is on the Nintendo DS – but that’s exactly what they did. One can only imagine why Nintendo let this monster loose on their family fun-for-all device, but I’m sure glad they have. I really wonder how this made it past the censors though, and I can only imagine the uproar this is going to cause if some retarded American journalists get their hands onthe game. Has Nintendo forever sullied their little dual screen money-making love child with this dirty drug-dealing cop-killing swearfest? I doubt it. Will the American media rip into this game like always? Very likely. I however, couldn’t care less, as even having completed the main story-arc I’m still running around Chinatown enjoying the hell out of this game.

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We Ninjas are invincible, and do not require support from anyone except our mothers. However, our IT guys assistants next-door neighbors uncles wifes child does need to eat this month. So consider buying Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars through our Amazon Affiliates Link..