Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was finally released into the Apple App Store yesterday evening. As far as the graphical quality is concerned this game for iPhone lies somewhere between the DS and PSP versions but if u take pure GTA gameplay into concern, everything seems to be intact.
Much like other versions of the game, screenshots barely do it justice. Liberty City in motion on the iPhone is amazing, and all the jagged edges in the screenshots quickly fade away when you're racing down a street, under elevated train tracks, and through alleys as you escape the police. The realtime clock in-game also changes the lighting of the city, shifting from the orange glow of a sunset to the street lights turning on at night. It really looks awesome.
The main plot of the game involves a man named Huang Lee, the son of a Triad gang boss who was recently sent to sleep with the fishes. He flies in to Liberty City with a heirloom sword his father won in a poker game, deciding to deliver it to his uncle. Of course things never go as planned, and not long after landing Huang finds himself in the middle of a gunfight and winds up getting kidnapped. After stealing the sword, the assailants assume Huang is dead, and looking to dispose of the body drive the car he's in off the side of a pier. In the same vein of other GTA games, story isn't really anything revolutionary, but it gets the job done.
Chinatown Wars is controlled very similar to Gameloft's Gangstar, with virtual buttons and a joystick that handle all the driving, running, shooting, and other activities in game. The iPhone port of Chinatown Wars retains the stylus minigames that filled the DS version, appearing in a little popups where you do things like tap to smash the window of the car you were trapped in at the beginning of the game, slide your finger around to turn a screwdriver to start a car you're stealing, etc.
Chinatown Wars seems to be a complete GTA experience. You have your apartment that serves as your character's hub with a "Fruit" computer you can check emails on, a garage you can stash a car in, and when you're on the road there is a full GPS system with a map of Liberty City that you can plot your destination on to easily get from one side of the city to the other. There's all kinds of stat tracking that will tell you everything from how many bullets you've fired to how many fish you've fed and in-game options that offer all kinds of different tweaks to the interface and gameplay.
App Store Link: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, $9.99
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