Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Yes, that's right. Stan and I did not plan this out whatsoever, and yet we both started and finished both of our copies of Chinatown Wars within a day of eachother. A Back-blogged suprise! Well, there's not much I can say about this game that Stan didn't cover in his glowing review- it's one of, if not the best game available on the DS right now. It's easy to compare it to GTA3 in terms of fun, as I, like Stan, found GTA3 to be miles ahead of its successors in that respect. Chinatown Wars doesn't rely on numerous sidequests and general dicking around/killing sprees to stay interesting, however, but it's on the back of its fantastic campaign that this game really shines. Aside from a few starter missions that were more like tutorials, all of the tasks felt unique and only got better as the game progressed. The story was cliche, but even the characters themselves made fun of this and most of their dialogue was pretty funny. The graphics were suprisingly strong for the DS- at no point did it feel like I was playing one of the old 2-D GTAs; it was more like the current 3-D ones stuck in 3/4s view. Overall though, what made me happiest was that driving has been fixed. In GTA 4, the fun stop-on-a-dime style of driving was killed off for a more realistic feel, and to me this simply killed the game. It was a pain. I was constantly crashing and had to drive much slower than usual to get around, and that's really no fun at all. Chinatown Wars brought back the easy style of driving, and I am forever grateful. It helped make the game a great experience, and while I have enjoyed other games on the DS more, I think this game has such a universal appeal that I would recommend it to anyone with a DS. Seriously, go buy it, Chinatown Wars apparently bombed but I want Rockstar to keep making handheld iterations.