Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Hands-On

The most detailed hands-on playtest of the hottest DS game this year, complete with HUD diagrams and new screens.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5 

Page 2

Story and presentation is one of the staples of any GTA experience, and in Chinatown Wars they've made good use of the DS's two screens. Whether it's the opening sequence leading up to the 'Rockstar Games Presents' opener, or cut scenes within the game, what Chinatown Wars lacks in audio dialogue (a capacity consideration, sadly, and really the only production sacrifice) it certainly makes up for in style and finesse. They've gone for a comic book type presentation, so in the opening sequence for example, the top screen shows a panned out view of Huang's flight and later his car journey, while the bottom screen shows a more intimate close up of the characters' thoughts and dialogue in text format. The arrangement works particularly well in action sequences as well, with explosions providing some real oomph for example as you can see it from different perspectives at the same time.

Things only get better once we're in the game proper, and there's no denying the developers have put some real thought into how best to use the dual screen format. The top screen is where all the action happens in 3D, with the bottom screen reserved for the lion's share of HUD elements as well as certain touch-related actions like selecting weapons, and precisely lobbing projectiles such as Molotovs and grenades in the direction you want using the stylus. This frees up a lot of space on the top screen for the 3D action, with only your wanted level displayed in the top right and street names in the bottom right. All of these appear to be the default settings, but it's important to note that you can tweak where and how HUD elements are displayed on either screen in quite some detail, so if you prefer your map in the bottom left of the action screen (in the vein of GTA IV), no problem. You can also toggle LOADS other things like having your GPS marked out on the actual road, or just on the map.

GTA Chinatown Wars Bottom Screen HUD

As for the 3D perspective in general, we're sold. It's difficult to get a sense of how well the game works and moves without seeing it in motion, and you can forget any worries about a return to the more low-fidelity world of pure-top down era GTA; there are no tricks here - this is full 3D - and the perspective of the action, while generally from above, is actually very flexible, and supports lots of really nice detail. The perspectives you'll get used to are simply a fitting gameplay consideration.

For the driving and racing segments it works just fine, with enough line of sight afforded to be playable (if you ever played any classic arcade racing games like Virtua Racing, think about the third or fourth views you could select, where the perspective was nice and broad), and if you want to dapper things up you can also select a GTA IV-style cinematic cam. Whether on foot or in vehicle, the camera seems intelligent and gameplay feels natural, and in fact the 3D view often zooms in closer to the action, for example when scouring 'red trash cans' for goodies (an important part of the gameplay, we'll later find).

There are other examples of thoughtful design, for example when the action disappears under a bridge the game produces an arrow to show you what's going on, or the way that you can manage weapons out of game in order to swap to a better gun without risking being killed in the process, or another neat touch is that you can deliberately 'burn out' when driving to produce fire from the back wheels - which can even be used as a weapon of sorts, as you set people on fire with it. Ace! Our favourite polishing touch though is whenever you open up the DS from standby, an amusing quip is yelled, such as "you wanna piece of my pie?!" Don't mind if I do.

As is the case with particular DS software that's had genuine time and effort go into it, the screenshots don't do justice to Chinatown Wars. Seeing the game moving and taking the time to play it, it quickly becomes obvious how much painstaking detail has gone into the production of the game, and how the world in motion lives up to the expectations you'd have from the company that brought you GTA IV.

The engine overall is really quite impressive and solid for the DS hardware. The frame rate is decent, there's no jerkiness or pre-rendered malarkey, and there's a definite feeling of real-world goings-on with pedestrians getting into audible dialogue with each other, getting into trouble with the law, scrambling for cover when it starts raining, being helped by paramedics when they're injured - it's like the AI simulated realism that we felt in GTA IV, and which is really quite unexpected for this edition of the game. It's obvious that Rockstar really wanted to transfer over as much of Liberty City's personality and depth as possible from IV to Chinatown Wars, and we're certain that fans will like the results.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5 

NEXT PAGE >>