Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

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Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Studio Rockstar Leeds
Rockstar North
Publisher Rockstar Games
Erstveröffent-
lichung
March 17, 2009
platform Nintendo DS , PlayStation Portable , iOS , iPadOS , Android
genre Action game and racing game
Game mode Single player , multiplayer
control Touch screen and microphone
medium Memory card, UMD , download
language English
subtitles: German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
Age rating
USK from 18
PEGI from 18

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (GTACTW for short) is the tenth game in the Grand Theft Auto series. The game was developed by Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds for the Nintendo DS . It was released on March 17, 2009 in North America and on March 20, 2009 in Europe. An implementation for the PSP appeared on October 20, 2009. Compared to the DS version, the PSP implementation has better graphics, new lighting and animation effects and new missions. On January 7, 2010, an iOS version of the game was released in Apple's App Store . An HD version has now also appeared exclusively for the iPad .

According to the Internet rankings GameRankings.com (93.86%) and Metacritic.com (94%), the game received very high ratings on average.

In April 2009, it was announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars had sold 100,000 copies in March. This means that the sales figures are well below the expectations of analysts, who had expected numbers of 200,000 to 450,000 units.

action

The player takes on the role of Huang Lee, the guarded son of a murdered Chinese gang leader, who arrives by plane in Liberty City to present a family heirloom (a sword) to the next oldest head of the family, his uncle. However, upon arrival in Liberty City, he is ambushed and almost murdered, losing the sword to the attackers. The loss of the sword is painful because Huang's uncle Kenny intended it as a gift to the triad boss Hsin Jaoming in order to strengthen his position and succeed him in the long term. Huang now fulfills missions for his uncle to restore family honor and to keep rivals and subordinates in check. In search of the sword and his father's murderer, Huang also fulfills a number of other more or less shady characters from Liberty City, including the stupid Chan Jaoming (Hsin's son) and the self-indulgent Zhou Ming, who with his uncle is about to succeed him Knight triad chief. In collaboration with the undercover cop Wade Heston, Huang finally finds evidence that the two candidates served the secret service as informers, whereupon he has to eliminate them on behalf of Hsin. Huang kills the two in a brutal showdown, but it turns out that the evidence was faked by the real informant, Huang's uncle Kenny, who also has his brother on the conscience. After a chase, he seriously injures Hsin, who is himself involved in the conspiracy, with his sword, whereupon Huang kills him. The police finally arriving arrested Hsin and all the other members of the triad present - except for Huang, who, according to Heston, would be a good man - for a rich snitch.

Gameplay

A detailed description of the typical game elements can be found in the main article Grand Theft Auto . The implementation of these game elements and the differences to their predecessors are described below.

The game is played similar to the bird's eye view of the first two GTA games. The camera position is not positioned above the player as in these games, but looks down at the player at an angle. In contrast to the first two games, where the game world or graphics only rolled horizontally or vertically, the game world can be rotated (around the height axis ) and thus follows the movements of the player.

The game world is the city of Liberty City, the structure of which is based on the city of Liberty City from the game Grand Theft Auto IV . The island of Alderney is missing, but the course of many streets and some buildings correspond to the version from GTA IV.

Some game elements have been expanded to include minigames that can be played on the touchscreen. So have Molotov cocktails are assembled at gas stations or parking cars can be stolen by unscrewing the cover of the ignition and the cables are short-circuited.

The playing figure can jump and swim and jumps are also possible with vehicles (cars, motorcycles, trucks, boats). The search system also offers the possibility of reducing the wanted level by destroying police vehicles. The collection mission typical of the series consists of the destruction of surveillance cameras with Molotov cocktails or hand grenades. The plot is not in the form of cut scenes tell but in the form of comic-like images that are shown before the start of each mission. Instead of a cell phone as in GTA IV, the player here has a PDA through which he can receive e-mails or set a destination. The route is then shown in the lower display.

After completing the story, the player can visit police vehicles and respond to reported crimes. The criminals must now be eliminated by the player. If the player has successfully completed enough crimes, he will receive medals. Other side missions include a. Fireman and paramedic.

The drug trade represents a special type of secondary mission. For this purpose, drug vendors must be sought out who buy and sell drugs at different prices. With the win, the player can z. B. buy more hiding places.

In addition, there are so-called "randomly met people" who you meet on the street and for whom the player can fulfill orders.

reception

Meta-ratings
Database Rating
Metacritic 90

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars received extremely positive reviews. The review database Metacritic aggregates 77 reviews to a mean value of 90. Gamezone.de speaks of “huge skepticism” and “wild anticipation”. On the one hand, they looked forward to being able to play a GTA game on the Nintendo DS, but were skeptical whether the implementation on a small handheld would be convincing. The result is more than convincing. Only the intermediate scenes, which consist of still images, and the “tinny” sounding “simple” “instrumental guitar, rock and jazz sound” were given as negative points.

“It looks like GTA, it plays that way too! [...] a very hot iron, which can completely convince in almost all matters! "

- gamezone.de (94%)

Eurogamer.de also comes to the conclusion that GTACTW is a successful implementation of the GTA series on the Nintendo DS. This was not necessarily to be expected, since the previous implementation of games on handhelds was only "almost as pretty" or "almost as good". GTACTW is a game that was specially developed for the Nintendo DS.

"Rockstar Leeds has created a portable open-world game that has nothing" small "or" almost as xxx "about it and which can only be played on this console in the most positive sense. An unmistakable, genuine GTA, which, precisely because of its differences, does not have to fear comparison and has a lot of its own character.

- eurogamer.de (9/10)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS - GameRankings. Retrieved March 18, 2013 .
  2. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS Reviews - Metacritic. Retrieved March 18, 2013 .
  3. Gamasutra - News - Nintendo: Chinatown Wars Sales 'In Line' With Expectations. Retrieved March 18, 2013 .
  4. a b Metacritic.com: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Retrieved May 15, 2019 .
  5. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars in the Gamezone test. Retrieved on March 18, 2013 (German).
  6. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Test • Page 1 • Eurogamer.de. Retrieved on March 18, 2013 (German).