Well I finally have my grubby paws onto Chinatown Wars for the DS and I must say I like this game mucho. As most of you know but for those who don't.. the game starts you off as a spoiled rich asian kid coming in from overseas to deliver a sword that's somewhat of a family symbol to his dead father's uncle.

As soon as you land in lovely Liberty City you get your shit shot up, kidnapped and basically Left 4 Dead(eh eh!) Typical story to start a GTA game but that's only the bare bones. From what I've played so far in the story it seems all right so far. It's not totally engrossing but it's enough so far to keep you into the game.

Speaking of the story, GTA has always had really great voice acting to match with really great cutscenes. Well obviously you can't get all of this done on the DS so if some of you lovely folk wonder how they do it.. well? It's all comic book panels really. All of the cutscenes are delivered in a somewhat comic book panel form with a floating picture of whoever is talking at the time and the dialogue they speak under their picture. Some of you might not look this.. I don't mind it. It's enjoyable..although the dialogue sometimes is a little too much. I mean.. I understand the main character is a spoiled rich kid but he comes off as too much of a smartass sometimes. Almost to the point where it's uncalled for.. sometimes the things the characters say make you wonder wtf they were thinking.

Alas, the gameplay! Now if you're a fan of the older GTA titles(me!) then you will feel right at home in this game, and I don't mean the old PS2 GTA games.. I mean the oooooold GTA games..! I'm talking PS1 baby! The game feels really similar to those in terms of the camera angle and the way the whole game controls itself in general. It's a lot more arcade-like than the other GTA's but that's not a bad thing. If you can remember far back enough you'll even notice that characters die the same way as they did back then as they do in Chinatown. Now the gameplay is great. The controls feel well even on the DS. The buttons are simple: D-Pad is to move around, naturally. B button is sprint, A button is used for combat.. if you're unarmed you can hold A and Mr. Lee will punch in the air non-stop, if you tap it three times he does a punch punch kick combo similar to Snake from MGS, if you're armed he'll just fire his weapon. You can also press both B+A to do a flying Liu Kang type kick. Now X is to steal cars of course and hold X near taxi's with a lit up sign to hail a taxi. On a side not you can also hold L and either whistle or yell "Taxi" or "Hey asshole!" into the microphone and the taxi will also stop for you, but doing this in public might not be the best idea.. especially the asshole part. Y does a simple tuck n'roll when he's running and if you're near fences he'll hop over them. L faces the camera behind our hero and R locks onto targets for shooting or fighting or what have you.

Now there's A LOT more to this game that I haven't gotten into but I will eventually. Anywho, long story short..this game is solid. Let's hope it stays that way until I beat it.

Until next time.