Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars

Rating Mature Genre simulation Publisher Rockstar Games External Links

You are Huang Lee, son of the Head of Liberty Cities Triad’s, and you would rather be anywhere else but Liberty City. Returning only to pass on the family sword, carried by the heads of the family for generations (after your father won the sword in a poker game), you are immediately shot, robbed, and left for dead in the nearby river. Now you must take your revenge on those who tried to kill you, while making a profit on the side. Welcome back to Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars.

First, this is not an original game, but a port of a previously released Nintendo DS game. As such, players can expect this version of the game to contain slightly better graphics than its Nintendo brethren, and a slightly different feel to the mini games with the loss of a touch screen. Having never played the original Nintendo version, I can’t comment on the physical differences the loss of the touch screen makes, however, the mini-games that required the stylus are rather obvious and, at least for me, seemed to have been adequately translated to the Playstation Portable (assuming they were still this ridiculously easy on the Nintendo version).

Controls are your standard Grand Theft Auto setup, and even new comers to the series should be able to adapt to the setup rather quickly. The strangest aspect of the controls is the heavy use of the select button, which is used in a variety of situations, and yet for the most part players shouldn’t find the use of this button distracting from their game play. The music is also staple GTA, providing players with the usual selection of fake radio stations to listen to as you drive around Liberty City, causing death and destruction.

There are 2 major changes to the GTA environment I shall discuss, and the first is the graphics. Unlike most GTA games China Town Wars is done with a top-down perspective in a highly stylized comic-book world. While this can cause issues on keeping your character in sight, this style does help keep the Playstation Portable from becoming overloaded, as it would with more realistically detailed models, and keeps the action moving relatively smoothly. On occasion, usually when making high speed escapes, the Playstation Portable was unable to render the graphics quickly enough, and I would travel for several moments along a gray plane. Thankfully theses glitches were few and far between, and quickly became a gauge of just how well I was avoiding the police.

Which brings us to the second, and my favorite, changes to the series. Fans of GTA will already know that acts of larceny will result in the player gaining a Star Rating, which indicated how seriously the police are looking for you. Scores above 3 Stars usually mean that the player will be facing death our incarceration if your vehicle stops for any reason. While highly enjoyable, constant car chases can be detrimental to the completion of the main storyline, so the people at Rockstar Games have introduced a new system to help players reduce their Star scores. Basically speaking, if the player can disable the chasing police vehicles without killing their operators, your Star Rating can be reduced as you are physically taking the police out of the search. Sounds easy enough, buy the higher the Star Rating the greater the number of vehicles you need in order to lower the rating by 1 Star, so beware of those Tank Killing Sprees, unless you like spending a fortune on hospital, and lawyer, bills.

Of course, money isn’t really much of a problem in China Town Wars. The core economy to this little game is, sarcastically surprised, drug running. Liberty City is full of drug dealers, and the key to staying funded is to remember the golden rule of commerce; buy low, sell high. Random tips will arrive on the players PDA, telling you were you can buy cheap smack. Hoarding these drugs till you find a desperate mark is the key to becoming head of the Drug Cartels in Liberty City. 

Bottom line; China Town Wars is just like any other GTA game, with a few good ideas mixed in that I can only hope will make their way to their console cousins. Owners of the DS version probably won’t find the Playstation Portable incarnation worth the purchase, but new owners (and fans of the series) should find this title an enjoyable waste of an afternoon.