This cover was made using Canva and Bitmoji, the pictures in this post were taken directly from the game by me.
These past few days I've talked to you about a couple of games from one of the biggest video game franchises of the past few decades: Grand Theft Auto (more specifically, Vice City and IV). For some reason I've been feeling quite nostalgic about it, so I've taken the opportunity to revisit all the games I can.
On this occasion I wanted to dedicate a couple of hours to Chinatown Wars, a rather underrated title that demonstrates a philosophy that I would honestly like to see more often within GTA, especially when it comes to the series' ability to produce spin-offs.
And while GTA Chinatown Wars seems to represent a regression to the advances of the franchise in terms of gameplay and aesthetics (remember that it is presented with a top-down 2.5D view, which reminds us of the humble beginnings with GTA I and II), this limitation not only serves the purpose of adapting to the humble capabilities of the device for which it was conceived (the original Nintendo DS), but is also used as an excuse to explore other areas of the saga that are totally new, as well as to experiment with a more cartoonish and uninhibited style, less committed to realism and dedicated to telling a fun story with a unique audiovisual identity.
That's why I find it particularly brilliant that the starting point of Chinatown Wars is the complex city of Liberty City (impressively copied from its HD counterpart in GTA IV), creating a very notable contrast with the serious and shady stories that are usually told there.
It ends up being a humble complement, which adapts much better to mobile controls than the HD remasters (Remember that the controls of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are a disaster for Android/iOS) and at the same time knows how to segment the game sessions much better with short missions, easy-to-access checkpoints and a well-armed progression system.
As if that were not enough, Chinatown Wars compensates for the lack of certain traditional mechanics by establishing new ones, of which we can highlight a brilliant drug trafficking system with which we can quickly acquire money, as well as races and special missions that will give us access to several solid rewards.
Although Huang Lee's story lacks the narrative weight to which we are accustomed by the densest games of the saga, it is an addition that is appreciated and reminds us of those times when a new GTA entry did not need 15 years to be released.
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