To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Rockstar Games are discounting Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the iPhone and iPod touch by 30% until Sunday, the 14th of February.
GTA: Chinatown Wars is the most critically acclaimed PSP game to date.
Rockstar have today announced the development of Chinatown Wars and Beaterator for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Both titles are expected to be released this spring for the PlayStation Portable device as well, with Chinatown Wars currently available on the Nintendo DS.
Both titles are being developed by Rockstar's Leeds division, who previously worked on mobile titles such as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, and recently picked up the 2009 Develop Award for Best Handheld Game Studio.
We'll be bringing you our findings on the PSP versions of both Chinatown Wars and Beaterator later in the week.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is coming to PSP later this year, Rockstar Games announced today. It will be available on UMD and as a download from PSN this spring (northern "fall").
With a Metacritic score of 94, Chinatown Wars is the highest rated game available for the Nintendo DS. Yet it has been a flop in terms of retail sales, reaching only about half a million copies sold in the six months since its release. (If half a million sounds respectable, bear in mind that Nintendogs has sold over 22 million.)
Considering the different audiences that the two handheld platforms attract, bringing Chinatown Wars to PSP could well make a lot of sense. The two previous GTA games for PSP, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, were the highest selling games on the platform.
Rockstar's Leeds studio has released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars, the Nintendo DS title set to be available in March this year.
Chinatown Wars is an entirely original entry into the Grand Theft Auto series, and brings a new level of interactivity to its open environments.
With the use of the DS touch screen, players can navigate their way through the streets as they uncover the truth behind an epic tale of crime and corruption within the Triad crime syndicate. If you haven't read our preview, you can check it out here.
When we first heard about Chinatown Wars at E3 last year, we were more than a little skeptical.
It seemed unlikely, to put it mildly, that Rockstar could possibly do justice to the Grand Theft Auto series on the Nintendo DS. It's not like Rockstar or Nintendo are lacking in experience in this area, having previously released a few cut-down Grand Theft Auto games for the Game Boy nearly a decade ago, but times have changed and now that we've seen Grand Theft Auto IV the bar has been raised somewhat.
It could also be said that Liberty and Vice City Stories showed what possibilities were available for the portable market, but the DS is an altogether different device to the PSP, with a different set of challenges and platform-specific requirements.
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Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the highly anticipated first game in the GTA franchise designed for play on the Nintendo DS. But although it comes in a small package, this is a full-fledged game that stands on its own. With an all-new, deep story that approaches the familiar sights and sounds of the infamous Liberty City from a different perspective, an innovative control system and multiplayer options, Chinatown Wars captures the tone and flavors of the long-running GTA series in unique ways that both longtime players and those coming to it for the first time will find hard to put down.
Gameplay
The largest DS game to date, Chinatown Wars is set in the Grand Theft Auto IV-imagined version of Liberty City, and contains most of its boroughs and neighborhoods. In exploring and exploiting this vast area, players use the game's rotatable camera to take in a 3D, 360-degree view of their environment, providing an elevated and somewhat skewed third-person perspective, that switches to first-person with the appropriate player action. Assuming the role of Huang Lee your goal is to rise up in the ranks of the underworld to challenge the Triad of Chinatown gangs that have usurped your family's position and recover the stolen heirloom and your lost honor. In true GTA fashion this entails gameplay that embraces the seedy underbelly that Liberty City is famous for.
Throughout the game's 70+ missions -- all of which can be replayed even after completion -- and its myriad of side quests, players earn cash by completing jobs ranging from petty street crime, all the way up to drug dealing and assassination. As in other GTA releases, rising competence at crime raises the amount of attention received by police, but unlike previous games here players can not simply outrun alerted authorities. With each additional star added to your 'wanted rating' players must disable or destroy more of the pursuing police units to keep them off your tail. In addition to mission play, the game also contains many opportunities, such as the safe cracking and car hot-wiring mini-games and the various items and weapons hidden throughout the game that demand skill with the DS' touchscreen and stylus for success. By whatever means, once players have attained a certain level of cash and street cred they will also be able to recruit members for their own gang who pledge their loyalty by allowing themselves to be tattooed with the mark of the player's choosing.Cars and Controls
Cars and control schemes play a prominent role in Chinatown Wars. All cars feature GPS functionality based on available roadways. Directions are shown on the lower of the DS' two screens as part of the in-game PDA interface, but players may take vehicles off roads wherever possible, with the GPS automatically resetting when back on the pavement. While driving players also have access to five in-game radio stations and use of their weapons. Your PDA provides efficient management tools for your growing crime empire, including quick weapons switching, a running total of available cash, in-game e-mail and Internet access and nearly instant game saves any time. The control scheme in Chinatown Wars utilizes an easy to use and comfortable to play combination of steering via the D-pad, choice of action through the face buttons and/or stylus taps and manual and automatic weapon locks and unlocks via shoulder buttons.Key Game Features:
- The Largest DS Game Ever - Contemporary Liberty City is a massive world complete with pedestrians, weather and traffic patterns, five different radio stations and four different sprawling boroughs to explore.
- Endless Gameplay - Mature storyline with over 70+ story missions; plus dozens of side quests, collectibles, contextual mini-games and the all new mission replay feature.
- Street Economics - Addictive drug dealing side game with 6 different drug types, 80+ drug dealers and a supply / demand driven narcotics economy.
- Play with Friends - Nintendo Wi-Fi mode for head-to-head and co-op multiplayer mayhem.
- Bragging Rights - Chat, trade guns and commodities with your friends, and compete for glory via online tournaments and leaderboards on the Rockstar Games Social Club.
- PDA Interface - Use the touch screen as a PDA device to set GPS waypoints, change radio stations, communicate via e-mail with in-game characters and order weapons on the Internet.
