Grand Theft Auto: ChinaTown Wars

[Shnitzel]

It's to have a drug dealing minigame

Via CVG

Oh dear. Here's some news that's surely going to send mainstream newspapers (and Nintendo's PR department) mental. It's emerged that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS features a full-on drug-dealing mini-game.

Revealed in the latest Edge magazine, the drug-dealing feature lets you flog heroine, cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid and downers. Selling the six type of drugs makes you a ton of in-game cash and help you gain experience of market conditions, says the mag.

"We wanted to have a drug-dealing minigame in lots of the GTA games," Rockstar VP Dan Houser told Edge. "We played with it a little in Vice City Stories, because it worked really well juxtaposed with the main story.

"It works well with what GTA is, with driving around the map, and it gives you another thing to think about - another layer or piece of the puzzle to keep you motivated."

But according to Houser, the drug-dealing aspect does have relevance to China Town Wars' plot. "It does intersect with the main story," he explained, "and things you learn from it work with the story, but it mostly runs on its own."

Let the games begin.

Here.

[SilentHunter]

GTA: Chinatown Wars release date announced

Rockstar Games has revealed the official release date for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS. The game will launch in North America March 17 of next year. Europe will follow just a few days after on March 20.

“Rockstar Leeds have once again created a game that far exceeds our standard for deep and innovative entertainment. “We are incredibly excited to share this enormous and uncompromising Grand Theft Auto experience with DS fans.” Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO - News), is proud to announce the release date for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the latest entry into the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto series. Developed by Rockstar Leeds, in conjunction with series creators Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be available for the Nintendo DS™ on March 17 and 20, 2009 in North America and Europe, respectively.

“Rockstar Leeds have once again created a game that far exceeds our standard for deep and innovative entertainment,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “We are incredibly excited to share this enormous and uncompromising Grand Theft Auto experience with DS fans.”

Edge Magazine commented, “How does Rockstar follow Grand Theft Auto IV? By rebuilding Liberty City from the ground up on DS - and not compromising its vision one iota.”

Nintendo Power added, “…it’s undeniable that Chinatown Wars is doing something no other DS game has come close to: creating that living, breathing world the Grand Theft Auto games are known for.”

Linky

[Shnitzel]

First DS game with an 18s rating

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars has become the first DS title to be given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification.

Edge's preview of Chinatown Wars - which features an interview with Rockstar Games' Dan Houser - explains that the title features a drug-dealing minigame, prompting fears that the title will find friction with classification groups and national media outlets.

Fortunately for Rockstar, the BBFC has stated on its website that, though the title includes "very strong language and drug references", it has not undertaken any content cuts.

The decision is in line with what the Houser brothers, and indeed those at Rockstar Leeds, wanted as a target audience for the title, as Dan Houser explained to Edge: "No one disagreed with Sam [Houser, Rockstar president and Dan's brother]'s very clear edict that GTA has to be an M [18 equivalent] rating. It can't be softened to make it family-friendly - that's not the game we're making. We've never not done well by sticking to our guns."

The BBFC also claims there are nearly three hours of cut scenes and non-playable game footage in Chinatown Wars. The title is set for a release in March.

[VampiricPadraig]

Originally Posted by Shnitzel_12

First DS game with an 18s rating

It's not the first DS game to have a 18...SEGA Casino is a 18+ and there is some FPS (Cant remember the name) is also a 18+

[SilentHunter]

Originally Posted by HellBoyX1000

It's not the first DS game to have a 18...SEGA Casino is a 18+ and there is some FPS (Cant remember the name) is also a 18+

they are the european rating system not the British ones. those games are rated 15s by the british rating system.

[burkey123]

Im really looking forward to this. DS game of the year maybe?

[Shocker]

Edge online preview:

Apparently, it’s already complete, save for a few more passes for polish and bug hunting.

Rockstar’s claims that the team that created it is twice the size that worked on the PSP’s Liberty and Vice City Stories games and that it contains more lines of code than San Andreas are good indicators of the care that’s gone into squeezing GTA on to Nintendo’s twin-screened handheld.

And playing a few missions and seeing a few sights proves that Chinatown Wars has been designed from the ground up for its peculiar capabilities. We’ve already seen its bustling Liberty City, rendered in smooth, clean 3D and unchanged in plan from that of GTAIV, other than a missing Alderney.

We’ve also experienced the driving, with vehicles sporting varying handling and featuring subtle and very useful auto-straightening steering. Now it’s a chance to sample the details that are so important to any GTA.

Central to life on the streets is player character Huang Lee’s PDA, which is displayed on the DS touchscreen. Taking the place of GTAIV’s mobile phone, it shows the minimap, which is identical to GTAIV’s, even down to the way the sat-nav works. It’s also where you access such staples as emails, the main map and now Ammu-nation. The weapons chain is no longer found scattered around the city – it’s now an online store that delivers goods direct to your safehouse.

The safehouse performs the functions that it did previous in GTAs, but will now also display trophies earned through playing the game and features a large whiteboard covered with photos of contacts and magnetic letters. Apart from rearranging the letters to spell rude words via the touchscreen, you’ll also be tapping on contact photos to access a list of the missions they’ve doled out, with the option to replay them and see online leaderboards.

The PDA screen is also where you select weapons – tapping the icon automatically pauses the action until you’ve made your choice. Muzzle flare and tracer lines are suitably emphasised – during a mission in which you must defend a heist attempt from the unwelcome attentions of several waves of Korean gang members, the gleefully over-egged ballistics prove vital to show the direction and impact of your shots, which are fired with the A button.

Grenades and Molotovs, meanwhile, are thrown by touching their icon (turning it into a large circle), and dragging out in the direction you want to aim. The trajectory, in green, is displayed on the upper game screen, handy in such intense scenarios as a mission in which you toss Molotovs from an AI-piloted helicopter at a gang attempting to escape to a gathering of moored boats.

Another mission, an order to snipe a target only described as wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, shows off one of Chinatown Wars’ minigames. On getting into position you must assemble your weapon from parts found in a suitcase, screwing the barrel into place and snapping the stock forward into its body. It takes only a few seconds and in practice feels far from gimmicky – rather, it serves to engage you further with the action.

Other games include safe-cracking (pay attention to the audio indicator as you gently turn each dial), stealing a parked car (delicately fit a screwdriver into the ignition), paying bridge tolls (flip a coin into the slot), and rooting through rubbish in red dumpsters for weapon caches. All those we’ve seen are short and smoothly integrated with the greater game.

Indeed, all of Chinatown Wars’ details seem to be present and correct. If the greater game, including the mission design, proves to be as snappily realised, this could be the best handheld version of GTA yet.

Linky

This is all sounding rather good.

[smashking]

can't wait

[machine-do]

Its sounding like a great game!!!

Defo on my list to get for sure!

[burkey123]

Eurogamer review is up! Spoiler: 10/10

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Review - Page 1 // DS /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

I'll be picking this up on Friday!