grand theft auto - Chinatown Wars

love this game, but the cops on foot are reet bastards for grabbing you out of the car.

luckily though i've realised it's not that hard to obtain a shit load of weapons quite quickly.

it's REALLY REALLY good isn't it?

very surprising

drug dealing is one of the best parts, ste, you madman!

love the use of the stylus here too :D

haha, i've not done much dealing tbh. i've done the ones that are required for the missions, driving around looking for weed.

the stylus is used brilliantly isn't it. addicted to scratchcards.

grenading is a bit hmm though. destroyed 40 security cameras already, and lots of jumps done. Rampages are so much fun too.

Has anyone done the tank race at the airport? love it

not done tht one yet; last mission I completed was the driving ambulance from the airport one, where you have to rescus the guy in the back of the ambo en route

is it possible to win a house from those I'm rich cards?

I love the dealing; I'm loaded. sold $17k of heroin in one deal :D

wow, i'm skint so i might have to start the dealing then.

i've not won a house yet.

the tank race is a side mission, there should be a parked Rhino somewhere in the airport you can get in to start the mission.

yeah buy at discount and then wait for someone whose offering good prices; you can make a killing

it's great looking this game, too

Yeah, I got addicted to the drug dealing early and I've made over $250,000 only 25% into the story. It's great! Stockpile the cheap stuff and unload when you have a good buyer. I have most of the real estate already.

The cops were driving me nuts with the grabbing you out of the car but I find if you give the car a little shake it helps.

Also fun about this game is how different my fave cars are in it than in the console GTAs. The Stallion ftw! You can knock out a cop car just by ramming it from the back at high speed.

I think I may buy this on the way home.

I really like the pda as well; very unintrusive. I'd like to think rockstar learned their lesson after all the complaints about the irritation caused by the mobile but I suspect it's just cos they cdn't fit all the sound req'd for a mobile into the game. either way, it's worked out well cos the pda >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the mobile. plus due to the touch screen it ties in with the gps so well

so many little touches in this game make it so much better, for my money, than gtaiv

to some extent, how positive I feel abt it is obv because it's kinda crept up on me through word of mouth on forums etc whereas w/gtaiv there was obv so much hype and expectation. it ws bound to be a let down

What are the little blue swirly things, does anyone know? They show up on rooftops and in parks and on beaches and stuff.

no idea; I've seen them and wondered myself

how do you access the drug turfs filter for the gps?

google sez "you can find two lion statues at them after you beat the storyline. if you find them and sync your game to social club you get some extra missions."

Sales were surprisingly low for the game - almost makes me feel guilty for not going out and buying it right away (though I didn't pirate it either, just figured I'll wait for a price drop, or a few months). I'm really surprised, frankly, it got a lot of critical acclaim, hype and advertising.

eh, i'm sure it will sell over time.
i love gaming comment sections though, sentences that start "As a hardcore mature gamer..." never fail to raise a smile.

"As a single bloke in his mid thirties..."

I must be the only one who didn't like this. The whole expansive feeling that made GTA 3 and 4 so great is now smushed into a tiny top-down view. Granted, that's how GTA 1 and 2 were laid out as well, but in my view 3 and 4 were much better games.

I dug this more than any other GTA (never played the first two), largely because the controls weren't awkward as hell and because there was no half-assed stabs at pathos and/or poignancy to be undermined by the sophomoric humor. Also the humor is genuinely funny more often than not, which can not be said of III through IV. It's a shame it hasn't sold better.

i agree with that, especially the humour part - it is totally, totally hilarious.

hell yes, the street racing guy is a hoot, but III and Vice City were just as funny imo. It was only SA and IV that toned downed the humour.

Whilst I think this is a great rendition, I'd take III, VC, SA, and either IV over it anyday.

Heads up - Best Buy is dropping this to $20 on Sunday, which is definitely low enough for me to go out and grab it.

huh, ppl are selling blatant copies on amazon marketplace

Seller: JUSTAMI04
Rating:87% positive over the past 12 months (38 ratings.) 38 lifetime ratings.
Delivery: In stock. Dispatched from United Kingdom. International delivery available. See Delivery Rates. See return policy.
Comments: ''BRAND NEW'' ''CARTRIDGE ONLY'' ''FOR USE ON DS LITE ONLY NOT DSI'S'' ''NO BOX OR INSTRUCTIONS'' these games have never been played but they have been tested. we bring them to you with no box so we can give you the best possible price!!! ( « less

wow, for $20 I'm there. I'm kinda hoping this plays as a really built-up Dope Wars, with the dealing part; well, Dope Wars with a cool driving/shooting game built on top.

That's exactly what I assumed this was. The zero punctuation review kinda killed my interest, honestly.

pfft zero punctuation

zero punctuation will kill your interest in everything. i just watch it for the lolz.

yeah, trying to mine truth out of ZP is like watching South Park for nuanced political analysis

off topic, but found yahtzee's 'i'm not racist' beat on the resident evil review, and the 50 Cent game, rrrrrrrreally unfunny and actually kinda racist actually. has soured me on what i had previously thought a halfway-funny charlie brooker clone.

he lives in australia, innit

xpost yeah, that was pretty gross and kinda put me off.

he did some pilot for an internet-based show where it's him and two other dudes talking about games. the cranky gamer shtick fails him miserably when he's actually on camera. guy just comes off as a whiny, obnoxious twat.

I'd never heard of Zero Punctuation, but I watched this episode b/c of this thread, and it seemed ok but not enough to turn me off of the game (at $20 or so, not at $35).

this seems really good

does it get any easier to drive? If I look at the bottom screen to check my route I crash my car, invariably into the fuzz

getting pulled out of a moving car by a cop standing on a street corner is pretty annoying, particularly if you've just got away with buying 20 bags of heroin and then incurred a wanted rating by swerving to avoid a maniac and accidentally dinging a police car

unfortunately the driving whilst trying to look at the map is one of it's downfalls.

(for me anyway)

From what I understand, there is a way to get the map onto the top screen standard gta style - go to the options and have a look

just checked it. thanks. what it does is put the gps arrows on the road itself. also you can select radar on too, which shows important locations at the sides of the screen. Pretty damn good really.

wow, that sounds great! I picked this up last weekend but won't get around to it until this summer; still, it's good to hear about the gps on the road. If only they'd add this on console versions---I think one of my big problems with GTA4 is that my tv is pretty small and so it was very hard to get around using the gps b/c I couldn't really see it! So I'd crash a lot just b/c I'd be staring at that. Whereas, say what you will about Fable 2, the trail of dots was awesome for negotiating without a map.

haha was anybody else really ready for what you had to do when they first drove a car into the water/

From what I understand, there is a way to get the map onto the top screen standard gta style - go to the options and have a look

this is much better, thanks

Still quite hard to drive, just because the roads are so narrow compared to what I'm used to

laffed at there being a mission called "Dragon Haul Z", but got quite annoyed when I kept fucking it up

Yeah - the thing that is stopping me from getting into this game is the driving - it just fucking sucks :(

Apparently this is coming to the psp in the fall. It seems like a weird fit, as one of the big selling points is the touch screen mini-games. It'll be interesting to see how it's different though.

I really should actually play this.

And now I have. I like it! Pretty much what everyone said above - goofy fun, great stylus use. Tweaking the "car distance" and top-screen GPS arrows made it much better. Amazing mileage out of the DS hardware, especially considering there is no loading!

car distance?

I got this too, began playing it but then started Chrono Trigger for the Players' Club. So I'll be coming back to this soon. It seemed fun, did the first few missions, was sad to see the girl killed so soon.

Not 100% sure but I think it tweaked the overhead zoom setting while driving (further out for more cars) which made it more playable, but probably bogged down the framerate more. There was also a weird setting for "auto-steering" that I turned off once I realized it was on by default, I think that helped too.

Need to play this again