I am LOVING this game. I just can't get enough of it. It's like when GTA IV came out, I couldn't stop playing it. The gameplay is ingenious, the Drug Trade implementation is addicting as hell, some of the missions are really creative and fun to play, I just can't say enough good things about it.

What do you guys think of it so far?

Loving it too. Ones i got used to the top-down view i really enjoyed it. The drugtrading is by far my favorit part of the game. The only thing i dont like is how there is soo many cars on the street. Its almost impossible to drive fast without crashing. The problem is that you cant see very far ahead. The minigames are awsome and fits very well in. I must say im enjoying this more than GTA IV. Sure its on the DS, but there's so many small things that make the experience better for me, especially the drugtrading.

Absolutely loving it and i am at 50 percent completion now. Did you guys already get the sword from Hsim? It a terrific instant group killer in close quarters way better than the chainsaw since it kills in one hit and kills all the enemies in front of you and not only one. I actually have no problem with the driving now, takes some time to get used to, myself i crashed in to every single police car when i first started the game but now even at high speed on the motorcycles i am doing fine.

Protip: wait for a dealer to request heroin or cocaine, I made a ton of money in o so little time and bought all the safe houses early on thanks to that.

Do you guys know what destroying cameras does? I sort of forget to read what the dealer who talked about them said. Also there are these blue swirly things hidden in back allys that i have no idea what they are for or how they work.

The blue swirly things is armour wests i believe. The price of the drugs is supposed to go down when  you disable the cameras.

Do you have a tip for changing targets when you are attacking someone. I went on a rampage with a chainsaw and there where men all over. But i died because of the damn target system. :S

"The blue swirly things is armour wests i believe. The price of the drugs is supposed to go down when  you disable the cameras.Do you have a tip for changing targets when you are attacking someone. I went on a rampage with a chainsaw and there where men all over. But i died because of the damn target system. :S"

I like it so far. I disliked every GTA after 2, but this one is alright again. It tries many, many new things, most of them work very well (drug trade has been mentioned  several times, I myself am addicted to the lottery) and they lighten up the gameplay (even the little things, like the collecting of tolls), and most important of all: Creative, original mission design.

It's the little things. Creating molotov cocktails and finding ways to disable the fire trucks. Recruiting and tattooing new gang members. And of course, drug trading. Somehow, the drug minigame is very addictive (ha!) and rewarding.

They did very well with this title. In your face, graphic whores.

Left shoulder button changes target. The swirly things are not armor vests that i am sure of, those show up as a icon of a vest. "

damn i really should get this

Left shoulder button changes target. The swirly things are not armor vests that i am sure of, those show up as a icon of a vest. "

I am completely and utterly surprised about how complete a GTA experience Rockstar Leeds managed to squeeze into this cartridge. Everything you came to love about the GTA series is in there, and then some.
The drug dealing aspect , for examle, is surprisingly deep and fun, I would love to see this in future console renditions of GTA.
And I really like that they reintroduced the silly, but nonetheless entertaining, sidemissions which were ommitted from GTA IV, obviously to support the more serious and in-deep story and character development.
But in GTA:CW, they again went completely nuts the GTA:SA way and added tons of random races, rampages, sidemissions given to you by pedestrants which randomly show up on your mini map.  Unlike in GTA IV, there's a ton to do in this game besides the main storyline.
Add to this a really nice and slick presentation which I wouldn't have thought to be possible on the DS with so much more going on besides the rendering, and you have one of the best "core gamers" DS title on your hands.
Only mayor complaint would be the not-so-inspired story which, while doing the job of carrying you through the game, won't exactly provoke deeper discussion like GTA IV did, but this really doesn't distract from the fun I'm having playing this masterpiece. :)

I'm fairly meh on it.  It's great on a technical and design level for a DS game, but I'm having problem with the 'fun' part.  Just isn't doing it for me so far.  I played the top down PC GTA games, but I still don't like this viewpoint.  It makes it hard for me to drive personally, I'm often driving straight into cop cars and then having to evade for a while to get them off me.  In the 3D GTA games I get excited when I see a cool car and I steal it.  In this game I can hardly tell one car from another visually.  I'm not getting joy out of the basic stuff that a GTA game needs to give me entertainment on.

"I'm fairly meh on it.  It's great on a technical and design level for a DS game, but I'm having problem with the 'fun' part.  Just isn't doing it for me so far.  I played the top down PC GTA games, but I still don't like this viewpoint.  It makes it hard for me to drive personally, I'm often driving straight into cop cars and then having to evade for a while to get them off me.  In the 3D GTA games I get excited when I see a cool car and I steal it.  In this game I can hardly tell one car from another visually.  I'm not getting joy out of the basic stuff that a GTA game needs to give me entertainment on."

Like I said in another post in this forum:

"I picked up GTA: CTW three days ago.  I think I've put like 15-20 hours in already.  This is the best game on DS, and may very well be the best game on a handheld this generation

And this is not hyperbole: this game is better than GTA4."

I'm playing this along with Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. I'm enjoying it at the moment but have only put in about one and half hours into it, I hope it continues to be as impressive as it was when I first turned it on.

"Like I said in another post in this forum:

"I picked up GTA: CTW three days ago.  I think I've put like 15-20 hours in already.  This is the best game on DS, and may very well be the best game on a handheld this generation

And this is not hyperbole: this game is better than GTA4.""

I also like that the game is slowing down when it has much to do; thus, sacrificing speed instead of frames per second. MGS2 did the same, and there it worked equally well. Because this happens mostly when there's a lot going on at the same time (because surprisingly enough, Chinatown Wars offers the same scenes of mayhem with six guys shooting each other in midst of four exploding cars, a helicopter and a thunderstorm), entering a somewhot slomotiony mode when the system has much to do is a good thing.

Shenmue did that also. It's lovely.  Well, not exactly, but, you know. All games should take that route. Though the fps is lowered also, you just don't notice it as badly and instead merely see it as a speed reduction. Of course, it's bad to have one or the other, but going for the whole slow down thing is just what all games should do unless it's impossible like in a multi player game for example. I wonder why most don't do that even. At least you see all the action how it's meant to be, you don't lose half the frames and wonder who/what hit who inbetween the stuff you missed if it's a fast paced scene. I wonder why frameskip is standard practice instead.

Definitely awesome, but I wouldn't say I like it more than GTA4, they're just different.

really great game. first DS game i've bought for a while (not that there hasn't been good games, i just haven't gotten them. I'm surprised by how much time i spend on the drug buying/selling mini game.

its really really good. the story so far doesnt come close to IV's but the game is just way fun
and i agree that the drug trade is addicting as hell.

it is a really good game.great and great

I Kr3lian said:

"Like I said in another post in this forum:

"I picked up GTA: CTW three days ago.  I think I've put like 15-20 hours in already.  This is the best game on DS, and may very well be the best game on a handheld this generation

And this is not hyperbole: this game is better than GTA4.""

I've only played it for an hour.  It truly brings me back to GTA 2 when I was smaller.  I've already made 17 grand selling ecstasy (6000 x 2 and 500 x1 for profits).  Truly an amazing game and looks great too.  This is coming from someone who's beaten every GTA game ever made.

From what I have read on other forums, the "swirlies" could be where the Guardian Lions pop up after you completed the game.  http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/games/cw/Stats.html has more info.

having beaten Chinatown Wars... there isn't much to do in the game afterwards. I guess I could replay the missions, but nothing really stands out as "damn, I wanna play this mission over again". In general they were fun missions the first time through, but not that fun to go back into them.

I beat the game with approximately ~65% complete. It took me ~10 hours and 59mins to beat the story.

Now whenever I play Chinatown Wars, I just get my police rating high and then work to get it down to nothing. This is the only 'fun' remaining for me at the moment.

The drug dealing aspect is weak. It's an interesting concept though. I have so much money... there is no need to deal drugs. The system employed for valuing the drugs is weak.

Sometimes I accidentally crash into a cop car and my rating goes 1 star, which pisses me off. You may be thinking "big deal, 1 star" ... but if I'm doing the noodle run for example, wtf am I going to do? I'm going to be taken into police custody and ruin the noodle run? In some cases 1 star ruins the game.

The motorcycles are very stupid. You can't drive a motorcycle. As you increase speed, the camera should zoom out so that you can see ahead of you. But the camera in Chinatown Wars stays in the same zoom as a car that goes much slower than a speedy motorcycle... counter-intuitive.. Sure you can go into settings... but  it's not a dynamic adjustment with respect to gameplay.  What? "Oh I'm driving motorcycle so let me go into settings and adjust camera zoom?" YOu drive the motorcycle for a minute and then change to car "oh I'm in car now, let me through into the settings menu and change the camera zoom.." oh wtf... so stupid. And even when you play with the zoom setting, the zoom out still sucks.

The auto-aiming is garbage, it doesn't allow me to aim at specific objects or people sometimes. Sometimes it auto-targets things through walls... I can't hit them anyway and I waste ammo. I could nit-pick some more...

I'm at about 40% through and I'm starting to get bored with it. The graphics are great yes, and the dialogue is pretty funny, but I don't feel like the missions are advancing the story. To me, they just seem to be randomly patched together. The most fun I have is mowing down randoms until the cops come, and then try and make a break for it.