Sure, all the attention might be focused on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the iPhone right now, but don’t forget there’s another great new version arriving sooner for non-Ninty pocket gamers: GTA Chinatown Wars PSP. It’s not out until next month, but we’ve had a go already, and it duffs up the DS version any day. Here’s why.
1. Better graphics
Where do we start? Everything looks crisper. Artwork has been redone, the city looks, well, more 3D than ever before, and even your character, Huang, moves differently when he’s legging it from the cops. And wait until night rolls around: the lighting in GTA Chinatown Wars on the PSP has to be seen to be believed.
2. Dual screen? Nah, split screen
If you were wondering how the twin screen view on the DS version of GTA Chinatown Wars would carry across, the answer is perfectly. Cut scene comic strips take up the full PSP screen, and Rockstar’s sensibly swapped it out for split screen views when it comes to things like mini games. When buying drugs, for instance, the naughty substances pop up on either side of the shady chap you’re talking to. Speaking of mini games…
GTA Chinatown Wars DS: first impressions
3. You won’t notice touchscreen controls are gone
The hilarious touchscreen shenanigans you had to jump through in mini games on the DS version of GTA Chinatown Wars work just as well on the PSP. You’ll find yourself frantically twirling the analogue joystick to hotwire a car or trying to escape through a tank hatch underwater. The best example is with molotov cocktails: where you had to move the stylus on the DS to aim, you now hold down the right bumper and target up with the analogue. If anything it works even better, as you don’t have the distraction of wielding a plastic pen.
4. Better sound
Grand Theft Auto is famed for its Tarantino toppling soundtracks, and GTA Chinatown Wars on the DS was no different. But the PSP has a lot more to work with than the DS does, and so doesn’t just belch out the same bleeps and bloops. The songs are uncompressed, much easier on the ear, and there are even more stations to tune in to – just tap left or right on the D-pad to flick through.
5. It’s not a port, it’s an improvement
It would have been all too easy for Rockstar to port GTA Chinatown Wars across to the PSP as it was, cashed in and chilled back with a pina colada or nine. But the PSP version feels like a game that was always meant solely for the platform, even if it’s capable of more than top down views. It’s not just the big ol’ graphical overhaul, but the little touches too, like Huang’s PDA being styled like XMB. Bring on GTA Chinatown Wars on the PSP!
