So close...
Chinatown starts of when your character takes a flight to Chinatown to recover a sword that has been in his family for generations (since his father won it in a card game that is). He gets shot in the head and dumped into the river, but he is still alive and joins his uncle's gang. After that the whole sword business might have to rest for a while, because more important is the battle of power within the gang and helping your uncle out, making good contacts etc.
The story in Chinatown Wars is really good. What is good about it is how it delivers a plot regarding dangerous gangsters in a way with so much humour. All the charaters are two-dimentional, but the dialogue is enjoyable nonetheless. The music and graphics styIe create a city that seems just how a dangerous Chinatown should be. Storywise the game doesn't aim higher than what it can deliver and I think it works. It would have worked even better if the gameplay could match it though.
The combat system in the game is simply broken. You are a little dot on the screen, moving in 2D and shooting or beating up other small dots in different colours. There is very little to it and it just seems like such a waste. It all comes down to holding down the targeting button and keep shooting while moving around so the enemy won't hit you as easily.
The driving delivers a lot better. The controls are spot-on, the cars feel distinctly different to drive and other cars on the road are appropriately stupid. It is hilarious to be chased by police cars and then just suddenly break, often meaning that they drive straight into your rear full-speed and get wrecked. However the driving suffers from one major problem. The GPS system. While the fact that the GPS system exists is a step in the right direction, it is really unfortunate that it is on the lower screen.
Hey, DS developers, just a heads up. It isn't humanly possible to pay attention to both screens at once. In order to do so you have to move your gaze up and down. Now, this is not a big issue in a game where you rarely use the map. Neither is it a big issue if the enemies are notet on the map so you can actually just look at the lower screen. However in GTA CW it is a problem. You can't take your eyes of the road because you'll run in to cars. However you need to check the map all the time because you can't see further than about one block, and you need to know where you are supposed to drive. The end result is that you have to move your eyes frantically up and down and it becomes old very soon.
The most annoying part is just how easily they could have fixed this issue. It would have been so easy to have that yellow line that is showing you the way on the road on the upper screen instead. It would mean a lot to the gameplay. Sure, the system they have seems more realistic since it is a lot like a real GPS, but who cares about realism in a game where you can steal a taxi and start taking fairs – and the customers might still tip you after you've run five people over and broken every traffic rule in the book? While the GPS might seem like a small problem, I would like to point out that in a game where you spend 90 percent of the time driving the driving part really ought to be flawless.
In essence, Chinatown Wars has a good story that is part funny, part serious, but it is weighed down by flaws in the gameplay. I eventually rage quitted when I ran into a hundred man battle that was also an escort mission. I will say this to the game's strength. It did have one of the most memorable moments I have had in gaming. It was a mission where it actually felt like the story and gameplay was playing on the team and working well together. In case you don't want any spoilers, let me end this review by saying that the game has some good parts and some bad parts and in the end it isn't any greater than the sum of its parts.
If you don't mind spoilers…
Well, at one point you have to work for a guy in your clan. From the start it is pretty obvious that he is full of himself. At one point he sends you to rescue a man who is about to die. You drive out to find the man, then steals the ambulance that he is in. However the police is after you from the start and what is more, the man's heart keep stopping. So while you are trying to escape the police you also frequently need to restart the man's heart with touch screen controls. It is really hectic and stressful and a really great mission.
When you return to the guy from your clan, it turns out that the reason he wanted the man alive was that he wanted to be the one to kill him. More specifically he wanted to cut out the man's heart while it was still breathing. Not only is it a shocking plot twist when I had started feeling like the game was only focusing on its humour, it is also so easy to identify with your character right then. I really felt the shock and frustration and downright anger towards the guy from my clan. I just thought "You made me save him for that. I freaking jump-started that heart five or six times and it was only so that you would get to cut it out with a knife? You sick, sick bastard!" Anyway, I thought it was a great plot twist and really well executed.