The entertainment value and the ability to cause mayhem makes up for lack of emotional involvement and the controls.
The Story:
You play as a Chinese guy, who'se father gets murdered. The father happened to be a triad boss and now all hell breaks loose. Everyone wants to be the new boss, everyone wants you to work for them, a corrupt cop wants you to help him find a rat to get IA off his back etc. Typical GTA stuff. Missions involving a lot of blood and a lot of cars. Kind of fun for the first 5 hours. After that, it gets repetitive. Luckily the game isn't too long. You'll complete the main story in less than 10 hours, unless you want to cause mayhem and sell drugs between missions (I did). Don't expect to like any of the characters, because unless your name is Jimmy Conway, you can't like them. They are all immoral, corrupt hypocritical murdering sons of...and in some cases, daughters of... What makes these characters entertaining, is how openly some of they are evil. They have no shame and that is hilarious. The dialogue is well written and makes you laugh, though at some points it can be disgusting. So, you won't grow attached to anyone, but you're not supposed to. Overall, the story isn't great, but interesting enough and there are some pretty good twists along the way to becoming the ruler of Chinatown. 6/10
Presentation:
Chinatown looks good. It looks damn good and it is a huge city in three glorious dimentions. From a technical point of view, it really is amazing. It's just very well designed and executed. The cutscenes don't have any real animation, they read like a comic book, but the characters are well designed and their faces reflect their personalities perfectly. All the little things, such as explosions and blood - the two things that we like about GTA - are all well done. There are a total of 9 radio stations, which means there should be something for everybody to listen. There are no talkshows, which is unfotunate, but who'd bother to listen anyway. Even if looking for a flaw in presentation, it is difficult to find anything, that isn't great. Even the whether effects are very well done. 10/10
Gameplay:
A big city to roam in freely is great of course. But the gameplay unlike the presentation is not without faults. Driving backwards can be problematic for a while. Shooting and aiming feels like the way it was designed was meant to work from a third person perspective, not for looking down from above. You lock on to targets automatically, but sometimes that means you target something you're not supposed and you end up wasting bullets and not taking out the enemy. The view from above can also be problematic when driving a car. When you go at great speeds, it can be very difficult to turn at the right time and looking at the minimap can confuse you. What is the point of having fast cars, if going fast almost always means you'll hit a wall sooner or later? I don't know, maybe I just suck at driving. After all, that's why my wife is dead. I mean WORRIED. Yes, she isn't dead. That's just a nasty rumour. Then again, you can't do anything to improve driving when the view is from above. Driving and shooting is fun though, so overall, I am not complaining...much. 8/10
Value:
As I said, the selling point of GTA is the ability to cause mayhem. You can do that in Chinatown wars. The main story is around 10 hours, but after you've completed it, there is still a lot of stuff you can do, online or not. Just the fact, that you can pick it up and kill and destroy and blow up and murder makes it worth having. Who knows, when you might have a bad day and need to offload some of your agression in a way that doesn't harm real people....let my pippll gooooo!!! Sorry about that. 9/10
Nonsense (this ctaegory will not be rated):
There is a lot of nonsense in video games, but especially in GTA. You loose your wanted level, if you ram cop cars. LOL. WHAT? How does that work? No matter how many people you kill, even if they are all cops, no matter if you lack money, you will be released for a cash bribe. Even if you kill hundreds of people in front of the police station, you'll go free. WHAT KIND OF SENSE DOES THAT MAKE? By the time I finished the main quest, I had killed over 4000 people, that's more individuals than died in the attacks of 9/11. My highest media attention was GLOBAL TERROR, but when the cops caught me, they let me go for 30 dollars. I sure hope that won't happen if Bin Laden is ever caught.
If you cut a person in half with a chainsaw in the park, the person sitting on the next bench, will not even notice. Some people will walk right up the corpse of your victim, ignoring the fact, that you're stadning right there with a minigun in your hand. Brave souls inhabit Chinatown. Drug dealers can be killed over and over, they will always respwan. That is is either
a) Nonsense at the convenience of the game or
b) A symbolic criticizm of the world we live in (I doubt it)
If you unload a thousand bullets into a person and shoot his corpse for an hour - not that I did that or anything - paramedics can still bring that person back to life by doing CPR.
If cops chase you and see you go into your home, they will leave you alone if you save the game. OK, I am done bashing the game for being nonsensical. After all, these aren't problems, these are fun things. Nobody wants a simulator, we want a game.
In Conlusion:
Chinatown wars is probably the best game for the PSP. It doesn't have an involving story and it can be repetitive, but it's a lot of fun and as a technical achievement, it is unparalleled on the system. I highly recommend this game to everyone, except for those who absilutely can not tolerate violcence. Those people can always play Lumines or Locco Rocco.
Story - 6/10
Presenation - 10/10
Gameplay - 8/10
Value - 9/10
Overall - 8.5/10 Great