Friday 17 Apr 2009

In this first Grand Theft Auto game on the DS Rockstar have gone all out to make it a proper entry in the franchise, and they’ve gone and surprised everyone with a game that captures the spirit of the previous games on a handheld that isn’t known for its power. It’s clear from the start that this is not a “ride-the-DS-wave” cash-in developed on a small budget for a younger audience, but is instead a carefully designed game that should satisfy any long time GTA fan as well as draw in new ones.

You are Huang, son of a Triad boss in Liberty City, and your father has just been killed. You’re sent from China with a sword to deliver to your uncle, Wu Kenny, but upon arrival at the Liberty City airport some goons jump you, steal the sword and leave you for dead. You escape with your life and make contact with your uncle who provides you with a safehouse to rest in. It’s your task to avenge your father’s death and recapture the sword, which means getting in the thick of gangs, drugs, organized crime and being generally destructive.

Variety should be the name of the game

The main story arc is progressed by playing missions – there are a number of people you meet, like Kenny, that have jobs for you to do. They email you when they need you to do something for them, and if you want to do it immediately the game’s GPS system will guide you to the right location. Meeting up with the person will trigger a mission, beginning with a short cut scene (involving hand-drawn stills and sub-titles) that advances the plot and explains the mission. There are a lot of missions, and the variety is impressive. One might involve you destroying a warehouse, one will require you to kill a particular person, some involve boats, others bikes. At each step of the way the game guides you by telling you what you need to be doing and where you need to be going (along with GPS help). If you fail at any point you will have to repeat the entire mission, but this is palatable because the missions are only a few minutes each and the game allows you to skip both cut scenes and trips if they’re not eventful ones. Completing all the missions will take you over 10 hours if you focus on it exclusively, not that anyone does that when playing a GTA game, right?

The only other activity you are required to take part in is drug dealing – you need funds to buy the weapons you’re going to need on those missions. Drug dealing is relatively simple – it involves buying some drugs from one of 80 dealers scattered around the city, and selling those drugs to another. Of course, what you really want to do is buy low and sell high, and to help with this you’re emailed tip-offs every once in a while where a dealer is offering a bargain or buying at a high price. There are six drugs to deal in, and each has a particular area that you can get a better deal in (without the special deals). I tended to focus on collecting the cheaper drugs (weed and downers) and waited for a big sale on stuff like cocaine or ecstasy. Then when a buyer was willing to pay big I’d unload my entire stash onto them. This proved successful and pretty soon I had enough cash to supply a small army with munitions. Weapons are even easier to get hold of than drugs – just place an order online for whatever you want (such as an RPG, Minigun cannon, or a boring old pistol) and about 30 seconds later it’s waiting outside your front door.

Escaping the cops

Every once in a while when you close a big drug deal the cops try to bust you and you’re forced to high-tail it to shake them off. This is a huge departure from reality (not that Liberty City isn’t to start with), because if you waste some of the cop cars chasing you then suddenly they just give up, like it’s all too much trouble or something. Taking down cop cars generally involves driving as fast as possible up a big road and winding from side to side so that the cops have to avoid you and ram into walls, construction girders or other cars. This is all very exciting, especially when the helicopters and big vans join in the chase. If you’re caught it will cost you whatever drugs you’ve got on you, all your weapons, a bit of cash for the cops (they’re as dirty as the criminals), and you’re out on the street like nothing happened, so it’s really just a minor inconvenience.

In Chinatown Wars we return to the use of the fixed top down view which will offer some nostalgic feelings for those that played the series before it exploded in popularity on the PlayStation 2. The graphics engine is impressive to say the least – especially considering the abilities of the DS. All the buildings and cars are full 3D and beautifully cell-shaded with black outlines. The only sprites are the characters, and this allows there to be a number of people on the screen at once without too many issues. There was some slowdown at times when lots of things were exploding, and once the DS just couldn’t handle it all and locked up on me. Fortunately the auto-save function meant I was back blowing those same things up a minute or two later. The touch screen of the DS is used really well in-game, both to view the GPS system, view game stats, buy weapons (using a shopping cart system), and to do things like select your weapon while playing. It’s also used at times in the game, like when you have to put together a sniper rifle, or when you need to disarm a car’s alarm system. Each of these is a quick little touch screen mini-game that adds to the realism, and fun, of the activities.

In addition to the missions there is a huge amount of stuff to do in Liberty City. You could spend your days trying to find all the drug dealers, dealing in drugs, joining in some street races, going on rampages where you get points for blowing stuff up, playing the scratch cards, buying real-estate (this is actually necessary if you don’t want to go all the way across town just to save or stash your drugs), replaying missions you liked, destroying the 100 CCTV cameras scattered around the city, ramping through 30 different billboards, taking taxi passengers, driving the ambulance, hijacking the ammunition delivery truck, hijacking rival gangs’ trucks to steal some drugs, breaking into rival gangs’ compounds, or generally just causing casual mayhem and trying to escape the cops. That’s not an exhaustive list, and it leaves out the local and online multiplayer components too.

Not your friendly neighbourhood gangster

You may have noticed that there is absolutely nothing to do in GTA that doesn’t involve criminal activity. Even taking taxi passengers requires you to hijack a taxi first (a simple matter of pressing the X button). That is the first thing that bugs me about the game, and the series as a whole: the sheer negativity of all these activities. There is hardly a redeeming quality in any of them. You’re pretty much a scum-of-the-earth hired thug that destroys everything in the way of his personal mission. Of course it’s all over the top and a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it’s still not a part that I enjoy playing at all. The other thing that bugs me is the sheer amount of driving – at least half the game time is spent driving from drug dealer to safe house to drug dealer to boss to safe house, and so on. It’s the price you pay for a playground the size of the Liberty City in this game, but it can take a few minutes to drive from one end to another. Some sort of teleport would be a great addition, but I can’t see how that could be added without also detracting somewhat from the character of the game.

Rockstar’s Liberty City must be the world’s worst city to live in (other than perhaps San Andreas) simply because the average life expectancy of its inhabitants can’t be more than 25 years or so. But at the same time in Chinatown Wars it’s a place full of variety and vitality, so it’s perfect for the crime escapades of a group of Chinese immigrants taking advantage of the land of the free. If you’re a GTA fan then I’m sure you will enjoy this game – and perhaps if you’re tired of the 3D entries this might refresh your interest in the madness of GTA. But if you’re like me and don’t like the idea of being a Triad, dealing drugs and whacking non-compliant goons then it’s hard to recommend it without qualification. While this game makes the theme and the violence a bit easier to accept because of its graphics style, it doesn’t change it in substance.

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Contributor:	Peter

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