Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars GTA for Nintendo DS III

This system works extremely well for the game’s new addition: the drug trading element. Much of the economics of Chinatown Wars revolve around buying and selling drugs all over the city – you buy low, and sell high. Throughout your life in Liberty City you’ll befriend drug dealers, and many times they’ll hit you up with tips of where the bargains and the most needy dealers are in the city.

The trading is integrated so well within Chinatown Wars that it’s more than a mini-game, and you’ll find much of your time will be dedicated to driving all over town finding where the best deals are. Of course, surprise drug busts could end your dealings right quick, and all that time could be lost if you’re pounced by the fuzz. Good thing you can store an overstock of goods back at your hideaways.

There are other DS-centric elements peppered all over the GTA experience. Some cars aren’t as easy to jack and may need a little grunt work: wrenching, hot wiring the ignition, or hacking the theft deterrent system might be necessary, and that could be a real drag if you’re running from the cops and pick the wrong vehicle for your getaway. Driving through a tollbooth without dropping coins into the basket might trigger an undesired wanted level. Gate locks will need to be cut, explosives will need to be positioned…all through the use of the touch screen. It might seem like these are all unnecessary gimmicks, but after a few surprises along the way your stylus begins to feel like a tool of the underworld trade as you pull it out and put it away.

What doesn’t work well on the touch screen: lobbing grenades and other projectiles. If you want to toss one out, you need to tap the stylus onto the icon and slide it around the radius to lob it in a 360 degree fashion. If the mission calls for tossing explosive weapons exclusively, then it works and works well. But it’s very cumbersome to be in a firefight with the normal weapons and reach down to throw a grenade. If you use your fat thumb to do it instead of the stylus, you might find that you’ve accidentally dropped it at your feet. Whoops.

We do miss the fully animated, acted cutscenes of the console and PSP Grand Theft Autos, and we’d much rather have those than the somewhat rushed, visually awkward comic book-and-text dialogue intermissions that are in Chinatown Wars. It’s very difficult to read the attitudes of all the various characters in the game, and the sarcastic nature of the personalities don’t come through in the text nearly as well as they could have if they were professionally voice acted. And the music, while decent in its own right, definitely lacks the punch of a licensed soundtrack with the humor of fake commercials interspersed. At least the writers had fun putting the jokes in the e-mail system.