Sarcastic Review: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

This review was originally posted on January 14th, 2015. We are reliving some of our greatest hits from old days, but now with a modern twist. The original score for GTA: Chinatown Wars still stands for the iOS/Android version.

Liberty City has never looked so, er, tiny and flat. Rockstar’s latest upset for mothers everywhere puts the player in the shoes of Huang Lee, the son of a dead Triad boss, a normal guy who enjoys selling drugs, running over pedestrians, and long walks on the beach.

It is incredibly impressive at how much they really squished down the Liberty City world into this game. Driving around the map in the top down view actually felt nice as the world is almost second nature to me at this point(many many hours of GTA IV). There’s even a good bit of hidden easter eggs to find that reminds me of the good ole’ days of Vice City.

It wouldn’t be a GTA game without the mission based gameplay and tongue-in-cheek dialogue between characters, but this version has a unique charm in it’s 2.5D visuals and touch controls. If you’ve ever wanted to experience death from missed button presses this is the perfect game to get frustrated with. While they’re completely customizable in size and position, the lack of feedback leads to crashing, accidental grenades, and occasional death by chainsaw.

One could correct this immediately with a Bluetooth controller, something I recommend anyway for gaming on the go. That doesn’t mean that the touch controls are bad, the system is actually quite flexible and allows for a few different play styles. But touch lacks that…satisfying crunch of a nicely tossed grenade.

The shining feature of this iteration is the drug dealing system (yes, really), which allows you to sell various narcotics such as heroin and ecstasy to people on the street in the hopes that the cops don’t make a bust. It makes for quite a good time waster between missions or while you’re sitting at the DMV because your license was suspended, and you get to meet some really nice strangers all over the city. It’s a neat distraction and also, if done well, an awesome money maker for those with business minds.

The police system was also adapted from the GTA 4 era, while you do have a “circle of vision” to escape the cops, you actually need to ram their vehicles so hard they go out of commission – enough times for them to eventually give up. This actually makes more sense at this scale, as the game world is very flat and hiding isn’t as satisfying as vehicular mayhem.

The latest update for iOS prettied up the game for retina screens, and the game finally hit Android in December. Did I mention it doesn’t have any microtransactions at all? Go buy it already. GTA: Chinatown Wars won’t bring new people to the series, but fans will appreciate the effort here.