The original announcement for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was met with a large degree of apathy, largely due to fans remembering the low quality of previous Nintendo handheld outings of the series. Things are a little different this time – Rockstar has kept development of this one in house at the Leeds studio, which was previously responsible for Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. More importantly, they haven’t held back on the scope of the game, and have tailored the experience to best fit the Nintendo DS’s capabilities. To be perfectly frank, Chinatown Wars is the best the Grand Theft Auto franchise can be on the Nintendo DS.

Chinatown Wars attempts to cover new territory for the Grand Theft Auto lineage from the outset, focusing on a war between various factions of the Triads. Caught up in the middle of the conflict is Huang Lee, who recently relocated to Liberty City after the death of his father, the leader of one of the warring factions. After his father’s death, Huang is instructed to deliver the sword Yu Jian to Wu “Kenny” Lee, Huang’s uncle and the new patriarch of the family. As you’d expect, the proverbial hits the fan when Huang lands in Liberty City. Huang’s escorts are killed and he is shot and, thought to be dead, dumped in the river, with his attackers running off with Yu Jian. Huang survives and gets into contact with Kenny, who informs him that the sword was meant to be a gift for the Liberty City Triads’ boss Hsin Jaoming, to secure Kenny’s position as his successor. The loss of the sword has cost Kenny his position and reputation, and now you must work together to get it all back.


The transition to the Nintendo DS means that Grand Theft Auto loses some key aspects of its modern incarnations, such as celebrity voice acting and licensed music, and reverts to the bird’s-eye perspective of the first two games in the series. That is not an entirely bad thing – it gives players a minor advantage in that they can see more of the environment, which is especially helpful when driving. Chinatown Wars is still 3D and the game world is massive; one gets the feeling that Rockstar Leeds is pushing the DS as far as it will go. They have also made sure to make the visual presentation play to the DS’s strengths – a map is always available on the touch screen, and the graphics are stylised in a way that ensures the game looks like it belongs in the Grand Theft Auto lexicon without having a negative impact on gameplay.

The basic control scheme of other Grand Theft Auto games is essentially replicated in Chinatown Wars, with actions like sprinting, jumping and carjacking bound to the same button positions. With fewer buttons available on the DS, some compromises have had to be made. There’s a surprisingly functional auto-aiming mechanic, which is even more useful when in a vehicle, and players slide their stylus along the touch screen to define arcs for projectile weapons like Molotov cocktails. Steering assistance is also available to aid in getting used to the new perspective.

Chinatown Wars follows the fairly typical Grand Theft Auto gameplay structure; you take missions from a variety of contracts which require killing folks, stealing cars, delivering packages and so on, while having access to a variety of diversions like taxi driving, vigilante missions and such. The DS game goes above and beyond the call of duty by adding in touch screen interactions within these missions. For example, you’ve got a mission that requires you to steal a car rigged with explosives before they go off. A standard GTA game would have you take the car to a bomb shop or drop it at a safe location – a fairly standard delivery mission. Chinatown Wars, on the other hand, will require you to disarm the bomb using a touch screen mini-game that involves finding the correct wire to slice before you can move the car. The touch screen forms a vital part of the Chinatown Wars experience outside of missions too. Often you’ll have to use it to hotwire a car, make Molotov cocktails, tattoo gang members or fish guns out of trash cans. It’s the little touches like these that make Chinatown Wars feel so much more involved.


As good as the missions are, Huang doesn’t make too much cash from them; you need to find other ways to build up a healthy base of green. As previously mentioned, all of the standard issue side missions are available, but the most lucrative way of making money in Chinatown Wars is drug trafficking. Dealers and buyers are scattered all around Liberty City; you need to find the dealers that are carrying the stuff you want to buy at a good price, and offload it to the people who want it the most. One must be careful because the police have a tendency to bust up drug deals; you’ll need to high tail it out of there – taking out any nearby CCTV cameras will reduce the chance of getting caught.

The LCPD is somewhat more tenacious than in recent Grand Theft Auto outings. Rather than escaping a search grid like in Grand Theft Auto IV, Chinatown Wars gives players a set number of police vehicles they must eliminate before their wanted level can be reduced. Disabling police cars can be done through skilful and creative driving (causing the pursuant to crash) or through violent means, like tossing Molotov cocktails from your car. Getting busted is the worst possible punishment in Chinatown Wars as you lose any weapons and drugs you are carrying; if you die in the pursuit, you keep all of that stuff and merely need to pay the hospital bill.

Through Huang’s PDA, players receive tips about the best drug prices and any demand spikes, and can keep track of their purchases, sales and other statistics. Drug trafficking quickly becomes quite enthralling, though players can get the knack of the trade down pretty easily and be making massive amounts of cash in very little time. Huang’s PDA has other uses outside of the drug trade. From the PDA, one can plot routes on the in-built GPS, order guns and equipment from the AmmuNation online store, upload their game statistics to the Rockstar Social Club and set up multiplayer matches.


The story side of Chinatown Wars runs for about ten hours, though with the great number of side missions and the fetch quest (one hundred CCTV cameras this time around), you’re likely to get more than five times more out of it, and that’s before you take the multiplayer portion of things into account. Multiplayer matches are strictly local, but enough gameplay types are available to cater to all tastes, including many which appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV. One also has the ability to replay any previously completed single player mission, a seemingly vital inclusion that has strangely been overlooked in every game in the series to date.

Rockstar Leeds really got it right with Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. They’ve fit a game which is utterly massive in scope into a machine with - let’s face it – somewhat lacking hardware, without too much compromise. Instead, they’ve played to the strengths of the machine and even experimented a bit with some new ideas, many of which really need to be included in future Grand Theft Auto games. New systems like the PDA, drug trafficking and touch screen mini-games give players an extra sense of involvement in the game world. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a fantastic, engrossing experience; a vital addition to any gamer’s DS library.