GTA:CW takes us back again to Liberty City, this time as the wannabe Chinese gangster Huang. He was initially on a mission to deliver a symbol of honour to the new boss in the form of a ancient sword, but following a double cross, Huang is left for dead. When he finally makes his way to a safe house, he struggles with getting into the family business and finds himself dealing with all of the backstabbing that comes with so many people wanting to be the No.1 guy in town.

 

In GTA:CW you will have the usual gangster story-lines involving drugs, death and deceit, due to the DS processing power the high end cinematics of the bigger games have been replaced with captions during conversations, this does lose a little of the feel as without actors voices behind the scenes they feel a little limp, that said each character has their own personality and it comes well off the screen, with a few GTA classic moments in there.

 

But what else does GTA:CW have?, well its presented in a top down view, similar to the old PC and PSOne games, but don't let that description fool you, the game is fully 3D, with the camera spinning around for better views as your tear through the city.

 

Of course Chinatown Wars would not be a GTA game without cars and therefore you will be pleased to know that the game has plenty of cars for you to jack and drive around the city, from the classic Blista, sluggish vans to more powerful Stallions. Each one looks distinctive and handles really well, I really like the tiny little UV lights at the bottom of some of the street racers. The top down view really throws you off for the first few minutes of gameplay as it has a self levelling action where if you are hammering down the road, the car will auto steer to make sure you are going straight, this can however be turned off, making for perfect handling, even though you are only using the humble d-pad.

 

Liberty City itself has been scaled down a bit to help the DS cope, but with 3 main islands and a few little areas to the play game is huge, with you very rarely finding the edge's of each sprawling island. The city is also heavily populated with various buildings to visit such as Lottery shops, garages, spray and pay and safehouses all over the city. Though huge, the games PDA makes it a breeze to navigate by utilizing the touch screen perfectly, bring your contacts up with a quick tap of the screen and you can have the map guide you to the destination, GPS style. The emails are also seamlessly linked to the map, so if you have a gang member requesting help you can just tap the bottom of the mail and it will link you to the map, and again mark the map as your destination, it is really clever and smooth in its execution.

 

Most of the missions are the usual fare of collection, shootout or races, however the DS gets a few over on the bigger games with some ingenious levels, the first race you come across is not all about you getting to the finish but sabotaging other racers so your partner can win, requiring you to first steal and destroy the main rivals car and then enter the race and ram of all of the other racers from the track. There is also a fun level where you are required to jump on the back of a truck and throw stolen goods to a van trailing behind. Some classic side missions make a return like Rampage and also a few random characters, the biggest set of side missions and what is really the backbone of GTA:CW is the drug dealing. I was a bit surprised at how blatantly graphic it was with you hunting down dealers, purchasing and selling drugs like ecstasy, heroin, coke and weed, but like with any GTA game, check your morals in at the door and you will enjoy yourself. The drug dealing is such a large part as this is where most of your income will come from, as you play through the game you will meet and find more and more dealers who specialize in certain narcotics, buy cheap and sell high and you will be raking in the cash. The PDA will again assist you with choices, having a handy menu telling you who has what on offer and where they are based. Of course with all of this corruption and illegal goings on the police are never far behind, always ready to pounce on a drugs deal to try and lock you up. Rather than the usual chase until you lose them, GTA:CW takes a more direct route, requiring you to ram the police into walls or incoming traffic, causing them to wipe out and therefore no longer being able to pursue you. This is another refreshing take on the tried and tested formula.

 

Whilst all of the action is on the top screen, most of the fun can be had on the touch screen, the PDA is a genius addition adding more functions than the mobile phone offered in GTA4. If your looking for some cheap weapons all you need to do is go to a garage and make some Molotov's, moving the pump with the stylus and once the bottle is full, stuffing old rags in. To throw them just hold your finger on the Molotov icon and move in the direction you want to throw to bring up a throwing arc on the top screen, it’s that easy. When stealing cars there are numerous ways to hot wire depending on the make, cheap motor's will be a simple screwdriver into the key slot and just turn it, others require you to unscrew a faceplate and twist wires together and the more expensive cars need you to hook up a computer terminal and copy the numerical readout to crack the code. You can even buy scratch cards to spend your hard earned cash on which offers money, health and even a house (have not won one yet) as prizes. You can even get a job at a tattoo parlour and practice you art skills on willing members of the public.

 

Even though GTA:CW is on the humble DS, it still somehow brings so much more depth to the GTA series, I am amazed that Rockstar managed to fit all of this onto one cartridge whilst not sacrificing any graphical or content quality. GTA Chinatown Wars is a true masterpiece for the DS, well done again Rockstar you continue to surprise us.