Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Originally released on the Nintendo DS and hailed as an important (timed) exclusive, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars takes you back to Liberty City for one more go around. You play as Huang Lee, who is flying to Liberty City after the death of his father to deliver an important family artifact to his uncle, who happens to be a crime lord about to fall on some rough times. As expected, it doesn't take long before you're roped into the struggle between competing crime families and organizations that are all looking to muscle in on each other's turf. The game is a near direct port of the DS title but with some added in missions and cleaned up visuals and audio.

What's Hot
Chinatown Wars does a great job of maintaining the grand scale of Liberty City without overwhelming the screen with an overhead perspective. It's impressive to see how large the city is, how lively the streets are, and how detailed the buildings and environments are without bogging down the hardware too much. Yes, there are some slowdown and pop in moments to deal with, but they're pretty minor for the most part.



The controls work quite well in the PSP version of this game. There are times when the PSP just offers a higher level of precision than what was possible with the DS, and the larger screen gives you more real estate to work with during shootouts and chases. There's some assists present while driving as well, which really go a long way toward making the driving sequences more enjoyable.

Despite the shrinking down, Chinatown Wars feels very much like a standard GTA game. I would argue that Chinatown Wars does the best job at providing the full GTA experience to date on the PSP. The way the missions progress, the optional objectives, and the scale of the story all hold up beautifully on the PSP.

Other tweaks to the classic formula are introduced in GTA: Chinatown Wars that make it an experience well suited to the handheld format. For one, if you fail a mission you can not only restart it, but you can skip the driving that typically comprises the first few minutes of each mission. This is great, especially if you are only looking to play for a few minutes at a time.

What's Not
Even if you haven't played the DS version of the game, you can still see that the DS roots run strong here. Many of the mini-games are kind of shoehorned into the PSP controls a bit clumsily where they've been designed for touch controls. It just feels odd rotating around the analog stick while messing with the shoulder buttons to hotwire a car or to smash buttons to simply remove items from a case.



With the jump to the PSP, the graphics took a step up in quality department, but everything also seems shrunk down on the larger PSP screen. Character models are pretty small, and enemies can kind of get lost in the mix of the frantic action or just in the general environment. It's probably an even trade for the crisper visuals, but it can be a bit bothersome all the same.

Final Word
Overall, GTA: Chinatown Wars on the PSP benefits well by making the leap from the DS to the PSP. Some may favor the DS touch controls, but the majority of GTA fans will probably prefer the sharper visuals and extra missions found with the PSP version. It is worth noting that I did play the game on a PSPgo, and the publisher mentioned that playing the game on a Go or from a memory stick will provide a slightly superior experience due to the system not needing to access the slower UMD drive as often. GTA fans that might not have been satisfied with past iterations of the franchise on handhelds may want to give Chinatown Wars a closer look because the experience translates very well here.