Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

With Niko Bellic’s opportunistic odyssey still fresh in our minds, it’s difficult to imagine GTA 1V’s sprawling metropolis of Liberty city, in all its detail and scope, on the Nintendo DS. There’s a natural fear that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will end up as a Weight Watchers version of everything we’ve come to love about GTA, a watered-down emulation of something much richer, crammed into the console that gave us ‘Horsez’ and ‘Cooking Mama’.

Rockstar, of course, would never be so foolish as to attempt such development suicide. Chinatown Wars is an exercise in lateral thinking, an intrinsically new game designed for the handheld from the ground up, rather than awkwardly shaped to fit. It’s got a look and a feel all of its own, yet crucially retains the ironic and anarchistic GTA spirit.

Our time with the game was lengthy enough to certify that the DS hardware has not been stretched beyond comfort – rather, its limitations have been embraced. Chinatown Wars has a pseudo cel-shaded aesthetic, a style that fits with the iconic GTA box-art (remember the girl with the lollipop?), an exaggeration of a world that has always been larger than life.

An overhead viewpoint of Liberty City recalls the earliest GTA titles – in particular, the Game Boy Colour ports – however Chinatown Wars utilizes a more advanced physics engine, rendering almost all of Liberty City in 3D. The resulting presentation sits somewhere between retro and current-gen; an arcade throwback that knows where it’s been, but also how far it’s come. And it’s in the arcade, it seems, where Chinatown’s heart lies.

Your protagonist in Chinatown Wars is Huang Lee, a member of the Chinese Triad Crime Syndicate who is reluctantly returning to Liberty City to meet his family's new patriarch – Uncle Wu 'Kenny' Lee - after the assassination of his father. Huang's mission is to deliver the 'Yu Jian' sword to his Uncle, an heirloom that has been something of a false symbol of honour within the family. Of course, GTA ‘heroes’ lives never unfold in such a straightforward manner. Haung takes a bullet to the head after landing at Francis International Airport, loses the sword, and is left for dead by some anonymous henchmen. And so, gleefully, the game begins.

Cut scenes are told in a Manga-esque graphic novel style in the bottom half of the DS, and it’s comforting to see that characters are still traditionally narcissistic, for what’s a GTA title without good old fashioned vanity and idiocy? Uncle Kenny is particularly hilarious as a small time crook with delusions of grandeur, his speech pretentiously affluent and flowery. For those used to the DS’ pick up and play immediacy, fear not - these scenes move along at a fair clip, for this is a game that wants you to get into the action as soon as possible.

Once allowed to run amok in Liberty City proper (with an injured but alive Haung) we had to pause to marvel at the vibrant, open world Rockstar has created. It all works as it should; objects cast shadows, cars spin realistically, and lampposts fall if hit. Real world physics, or at least GTA’s interpretation of real world physics, apply. Liberty City is as faithfully recreated from previous games as possible – naturally, there are a few omissions of the grander set pieces due to different technologies – but on the whole it’s the same place, down to obscure alleyways and the graffiti on the walls.

AI characters are similarly comparable to their latter-day GTA predecessors. They may be the only 2D objects in the game, but they behave with remarkable individual depth - it’s all about going about their daily business, buying hotdogs, shouting at one another, pulling umbrellas over their head if it rains. To see such competent AI on the tiny DS is something indeed, all sketched slightly larger than their surroundings for greater definition. Huang is perhaps the most out of proportion of all - when he stands next to a car he almost dwarfs it – an extension of the overall exaggerated presentation, endearingly cartoonish, Liberty City painted by Roy Lichtenstein.

Moving around feels instantly familiar; the control scheme tweaked only subtly to fit the format. Your PDA on the bottom screen serves the usual purpose of emailing, text messaging and GPS navigation, while the action unfolds on the upper, character and vehicle movement controlled by the d-pad.

When driving, controls have been streamlined somewhat to allow for the lack of an analogue game-pad, akin to an auto-aim function, you’ll be straightened up if you go a bit wonky. It certainly doesn’t feel like you’re being lead by the hand, and high-speed chases are as frantic as ever, particularly with the arcade bent; your ride can now perform a burnout, screeching to life with an animated sound effect, leaving trails of fire.

Thankfully, the use of the stylus isn’t token shtick, integrated into the main action organically. Predictably there are ‘mini-games’, but each one is devised as a brief, fun moment to complement the main action. In two of the missions we played, we assembled a sniper rifle like a jigsaw, hot-wired a car by rotating a screwdriver in its ignition, and carefully filled a bottle with gasoline. To throw the assembled Molotov, we drew a line in the direction we wanted it to land. Bad guys burst into flames. It felt natural, and more importantly, instantly gratifying.

And gratification is what Chinatown Wars is all about. The DS is regarded, more often than not, as a traveling companion, a handheld not usually associated with arduous epic slogs (exceptions dutifully acknowledged). Taking this on board, missions in Chinatown Wars lean towards the short, fast and furious, with ridiculous weaponry and epic shootouts introduced from the get go. Even escaping the cops feels like an arcade experience – you’re not so much encouraged to ditch them as you are to ram them into submission to reduce your wanted level, a regular little demolition derby as you cruise from A to B. Of course, if you’re interrupted by reality, there’s a quick- save function so you can continue the killing spree on your bus ride home.

As we quickly caught on, the controversial GTA moral fibre remains well intact despite the more family-orientated console of choice. Most of Haung’s income comes from drug deals, occasional jaunts into the underbelly of Liberty City that earns you instant cash – provided you don’t get caught (amusingly, the Chinatown Wars equivalent of the ‘shoot 100 pigeons’ side quest in GTA IV is ‘find 100 packages’.) Once you’ve got a stash, your PDA tells you where there’s demand, at fluctuating prices and time specific locations. Couple these neat little un-PC sojourns with GTA’s usual suspects - psychosis, swearing, prostitution and gunplay - and you’ve distinctively got a game for adults.

With all of this in mind, from the mix of small-scale creativity and larger than life action we’ve seen so far, there’s no doubt Chinatown Wars is going to be a good game. Side-quests have been guaranteed, and with rumored wi-fi multiplayer connectivity it’s certainly got a lifespan. It’s success then, or lack thereof, essentially lies in the hands of those who will judge it for its merits, or those who may reject it due to preconceptions of the limitations of Nintendo’s handheld. To all who fall into the latter category, we suggest you forget Horsez, and have a little faith.