I never understood Grand Theft Auto’s segue onto the DS; a kid-friendly console is doesn’t seem to be the place for the industry’s most contentious “adult” title. The PSP port seems to have found a much better home for the series, having seen two entries already, and with an older user base. But what do you get when you take a title that has been simplified enough to run on the DS’ modest hardware and gimmicked-up to make use of non-traditional controls, and port it to a more powerful and stylus-free platform?

Frankly, an improvement.

With the exception of the frustrating tattoo mini-game, switching from the stylus to the analogue nub actually feels natural and comfortable. Steering your car – an inarguably important facet of these, um, driving games – is incomparably better. The controls and simplified graphics (no pop up!) are so much better than either of the previous PSP outings of the franchise that it’s almost laughable.


A sprawling urban epicenter, in the palm of your hands!

There are problems though, and lots of them. Navigating Liberty City (yes, it’s the GTA IV map in its entirety) seems to take forever and the constant visual interference of overhead train tracks, banners, and billboards ruins the return to the series’ classic top-down perspective. If you’re well stocked with weapons and ammunition, the combat is ridiculously easy, but if you’re taken by surprise the stripped-back system will leave you bleeding on the tarmac in seconds.

On the plus side, there are plenty of gameplay reasons to put up with these flaws. It is more than easy to get distracted by the game’s complex economic system, and spend hours building contacts, identifying supply and demand, and dropping everything to go careening across the city in response to a hot tip. The collection mission involves close circuit cameras and thrown explosives, which makes for quite a lot of fun of the “I set myself on fire” and “I have a four star wanted level” types. If you’re the achievement type, there are in-game trophies to win and a huge number of properties to purchase with your hard won cash. As bang for buck goes, you could easily sink a few weeks of non-stop play into this game.

The only question is, do you even want to, or will you do three or four missions and then go watch paint dry? Any sandbox-and-mission type games will suffer from the same problem, in that even if the missions are packed with variety, if you’re not feeling wowed by the atmosphere and storyline the boredom starts to set in around about the fourth fetch-and-evade quest.



On the whole, the GTA series escapes this stigma by being wickedly funny and slightly oddball. Chinatown Wars lives up to its older siblings, and in some ways even surpasses them, in the realms of humour and general weirdness. Even without voice acting – perhaps because of the lack of it – the dialogue is sharp and entertaining, and sarcastic, breezy Huang is a more likable character than previous protagonists.

Nevertheless, and despite its huge map and intriguing drug economy, GTA: Chinatown Wars gets old fast, since it just hasn’t got the wow factor. It is a perfect handheld game in many ways, with break-friendly short missions and loads of content, but it’s not quite good enough to tempt you away from the PC or your console, where you’re not living the life of a glorified courier in 2D.