Keep your GTA Trilogy remaster, I just want Chinatown Wars on PC | PC Gamer - harrissirstion

Keep your GTA Trilogy remaster, I fair-minded want Chinatown Wars on PC

(Image credit: Rockstar)

It's probably going to exist ages before we get a the right way new GTA. In the lag, we're getting remasters of a tercet of classics in the form of the Grand larceny Auto: The Trilogy, letting us live over our criminal misadventures in GTA 3, Frailty Metropolis and San Andreas. All of these games are readily ready on Personal computer, however, and plenty of other platforms. There's no novelty hither. There's hardly even any nostalgia. A so much tastier treat would have been a remaster of Chinatown Wars, a great merely oft-forgotten return to GTA's old top-kill capers.

Chinatown Wars definitely couldn't be accused of lacking novelties—symmetric the choice of capital political platform was out there. Though it eventually launched on PSP and mobile, the ingenuous human race law-breaking fantasy was originally a Nintendo DS single. Selling drugs and running finished pedestrians seemed utterly incongruous to Nintendo's family-friendly hand-held, and that was region of its charm—the surprise of having something like this sitting next to Mario and Nexus's latest exploits.

The DS's second screen and touchscreen interface made it crystalline from the old games. In particular, I was a big fan of how it made you hotwire parked cars with a quick touch-based minigame instead of immediately being able to jack them. Some of that legerdemain would cost lost on PC, obviously, since you're non smearing your fingers across the screen, but the systems could dead still persevere—and remain engaging—even without poking and prodding with a stylus.

See, the touchscreen stuff was really just an extension of Chinatown War's more hands-on approach to crime, encapsulated best by its drug-dealing system. You could fill your sack of treats with each sorts of illicit substances, and then drive around the City trying to make the bundle. And you couldn't just befuddle drugs at the hungry masses—Liberty City's gangs had different preferences, so about would deal out you venomous at a decent Price and want to buy ecstasy. Ultimately you were just trying to buy low and sell high, but compared to most GTA felonious enterprises it felt importantly more engaging.

This besides meant that the cops weren't sensible disagreeable to bust you for labour-bys and murders—you had to avoid getting caught selling drugs as comfortably. You wouldn't, for instance, want to hand over a big bag of pills underneath a CCTV camera. That's a rookie dealer mistake.

Chinatown Wars for Nintendo DS — (Image credit: Rockstar)

It wasn't until I picked upward Chinatown Wars for my DS in 2009 that I realised how more I lost the top-down view of the master GTAs. GTA 3's modification to third-person shooter was obviously the right go off for the series, but Chinatown Wars gave us a glimpse of how the series could give birth developed if it had stuck to the old ways. Thither's just something more toy-like and playful nearly IT, like you're sowing chaos across a big diorama.

A rotatable camera successful it feel like an evolution rather than sportsmanlike more than of what we'd seen in GTA 1 and 2, only the real growth came from the art style. From GTA 3 on, the serial publication has bestowed its cities as pretty hard-nosed. Thither's still a distinct title there, sure, but it has a fewer clear off visual identity than, say, Saints Row. Thanks to the limitations of the DS and the topmost-down view, Chinatown Wars did things a flake differently. The cel-mirky, comic book near was a practical one, fashioning it so much easier to lay down sense of what was on the screen, but information technology also gave the gyrate-off more flair than any of the games in the mainline series. Information technology looked great for a DS game, but the real triumph was one of artistry concluded graphics.

There was also another flip in perspective: to a character that was neither white nor American. Huang starts off as a ill-natured Triad scion visiting Liberty Metropolis from Hong Kong, a check that is extended after an attempted murder and the theft of a family heirloom. The tarradiddle doesn't deviate much from the typical revenge romp that most GTA's offer, only we do bring to see a new side of Liberty Metropolis.

Despite critical acclaim and the GTA name, Chinatown Wars underperformed at launch, then over again when IT launched on other handheld platforms, through with no fault of the game itself. It deserved to be celebrated aboard Rockstar's other grown successes, just lot was cruel. As very much like anything other, that's why I'd love to witness it reappear on PC. IT deserves to be place in front of a more interested audience.

This seems extremely unlikely, of course. While I have nary doubt that it's taken a lot of effort to improve the GTA Trilogy's aging visuals, making a handheld game look good on PC would take even Sir Thomas More work, especially with the indigence to reconsider controls and all the otherwise stuff it would need to do without. And it's not a foregone conclusion in the same way something like San Andreas is. Rockstar already knows it can sell a good deal of copies of that.

A boy rump dream though.

Fraser is the UK online editor in chief and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, helium's been around the block a few times, portion as a freelancer, news editor and productive reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling opinion sims, and he ne'er turns fine-tune the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been glorious to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind pile with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when atomic number 2's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 language besides long. He thinks labradoodles are the uncomparable dogs just doesn't get to write about them more than.