Part 2 was pretty hectic, what with all those missions we had to complete from no
less than 7 different guys. Go read Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t. There is a
lot to take in, this game’s a soap opera about criminals.
Our latest mission comes from Hsin himself. He’s
pretty pissed that we’ve been attacking the Massina family under Rudy D’Avanzo’s
orders. Huang explains that there’s a tape revealing the Mole, but Hsin replies
that Huang has likely been played by D’Avanzo to do his bidding… Hsin then
orders Huang to kill D’Avanzo. Well, that’s alright, I felt he was too much
like a second Chan Jaoming, always getting ambushed and whatnot. Hm, maybe I
shouldn’t be saying that in front of Chan’s dad. Fuck, I should really watch my
mouth. Well, Hsin is the big boss, and when the big boss gives you orders,
whether it’s to jump, to go kill someone or to shove a zucchini up your ass, all you can do is ask how high, who, and which size.
Ah, what a motherfucker. Yup, there's no better word. |
Pictured: Not hacking skills. Anyway, not very good hacking skills. |
Ah, I just love to be in situations where everybody wants me dead! |
I don't think it can get more epic than that. |
However, immediately afterwards we get a message from
Wade Heston. Dammit, I thought I'd never hear from you ever again! He says… Chan and Zhou were not the moles, the file
they got was a fake that incriminated them. Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit,
fuck, fucking shit, holy shit fuck. Câlisse de tabarnak. Saint sacrament de torrieu de calvaire d'ostie de viarge. We just killed two
innocent men- Ha! Okay, no, sorry, I can’t say that with a straight face,
that’s just bullshit. They weren’t innocent, but they weren’t killed for a good
reason. Huang and Heston head to the salt factory, where the IAD is meeting the
Mole. When they get there, they see that the real Mole has been, all this time…
Uncle Kenny??
Holy shit, you fucking monster! You are going down! Oh
yeah, by the way, that’s when the IAD and the FBI show up, likely to arrest
Heston and Huang, and Huang has to chase after his uncle who’s running away
through the factory. Huang makes his way through the mooks in the way, then has
to kill a guy equipped with a fucking rocket launcher, then chase after Kenny
on a boat and killing all the cops, villains and helicopters who are approaching… and by that point, the Wanted star rating reaches 4, which means
every cop in town is chasing after you.
I'll kill you! You're not my uncle anymore! Wait, yes, you still are. But you will be nobody's uncle ever again! ...Wait... Dammit, I get my badass creeds all wrong! |
That’s when the IAD and the FBI show up to arrest
everyone. Hsin, who’s been pretty badly wounded but not dead yet, is taken by
the cops. Heston decides to get all the credit, and lets Huang go scot-free.
Well, this was the Story Mode. Now, we can roll the credits. I hope you enjoyed
this long re-telling of this story. I tried to make it as interesting as
possible, and not too long either, because there was a LOT to discuss…
…and in fact, it’s not over. The Story Mode itself
only constitutes about 50% of the game. Less than that, even. Everything else
is made up of the dozens of side-quests. There are so many, in fact, that I’m
gonna need a lot of words to discuss them all. It’s crazy. Let’s start by the
basic thing: Drug dealing. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been talking about it, but now I
can explain it in more detail.
Drug dealing is the quick way to make money in this
game. Shortly after starting the game, you get e-mails from dealers all over
the city. These dealers will either offer to sell a type of drug to you at an
extremely low price, or they’ll offer to buy from you a type of drug at an
extremely high price. The only problem is the limit: At any moment, you can
only go around with a maximum of 50 units. Granted, dealers will rarely have 50
or more units of drugs, all combined, to sell when you meet them, but if you
spend the money in this game to rack up, say, 100 of each type, and getting
ready to sell it back when a dealer offers a high price, you can see your
profits skyrocket. It’s the best get-rich-quick method. And yes, this only
applies to this game, don’t try it in real life, like, seriously,
man, if you try that in real life because a game taught you how to, my God,
what’s wrong with you. In fact, the dangers of doing it in real life are
represented here by the random cop descents that can happen when you complete a
deal. The drugs themselves are split in three categories: Depressants (Weed and
Downers), the cheapest ones, and the most common in the neighborhood where you
start; Hallucinogens, Acid and Ecstasy, which are more expensive and a little
harder to come by; and Powders, Coke and Heroin, which are very expensive,
thankfully if you buy them from a dealer at a very low price, and sell them to
another at a very high price, you can make a lot of CASH. And there’s no
shortage of dealers, either, with 80 of them scattered around the map.
The most epic vehicle in the entire game. |
Here, I am living proof that when playing this game,
you start getting the gangster mentality. It’s incredible. Thankfully I’m not
stupid enough to believe that I’ll stop being Wanted by just entering my house
and taking a nap on the couch, no matter the gravity of my crimes.
Now, there are more side-quests. Outside of the quest
to find all dealers, there are many things to look for around town, which means
you really gain from exploring every corner.
See this security camera? DESTROY IT! |
-Rampage!: These are special points in certain places. Those are missions where you must kill as many opponents as
possible in the allotted time, and try to rack up enough points to get a Gold
medal. These special missions will usually force you to use one particular
weapon for the rampage. The rampage stops when the time limit runs out, when
you get taken by the cops – unlikely – or when you get killed. Which, in GTA,
is bound to happen frequently to the main character yet he never dies. Even
though his only female ally in the game dies in the third mission, and other
important characters die and never come back…
-Unique Stunt Jump: One of the coolest features in
GTA: Chinatown Wars is how you can go at full speed on a ramp and have your car
jump for a distance of several feet. Unique stump jumps are special moves that
you can accomplish in a car, which you send flying off a ramp and into a
billboard, destroying it. There are 30 of those. The hard part is that some of those require cars that
go extremely fast, or else they’ll fall back to the ground before hitting the
billboard, so choose wisely for your next car if you want to do this
side-quest.
There are some side-quests that require getting
certain types of cars, and if you know where to look, you can go on to play
those side-quests and aim for the Bronze, Silver or Gold medal.
-Paramedic: Steal an ambulance! Surely that will
merely be an annoyance to those citizens who are currently in any kind of
deadly pain at this exact moment, right? Well, despite the cynical world of
this game, you can play Hero by saving people’s lives, taking them in and
bringing them to the hospital in record time.
You hate them as enemies, but the police car is one of the best cars to steal. |
-Firefighter: More heroics please! There are 10
firefighting missions. Gee, good thing a Story mission had you use a firetruck
to save Chan! Yeah, and see how that turned out.
-Taxi Driver: You have to find clients and bring them
to their destination in record time. This is probably the easiest mission to
find, since there are taxis everywhere and, unlike police cars, you can take
one without getting in trouble. However, it’s a difficult mission in which the
GPS may sometimes prove untrustworthy…
Gotta love pointless decorations on vehicles. |
-Noodle Run: Near the first apartment in the game,
there’s a Noodle shop with a delivery car that has a cool dragon on top. You
can steal it and deliver orders to people’s doors. Sounds simple? It is, until
rival food delivery companies decide to get in and attack you as you wait for
clients to come take their order. Because this is Liberty City, and violence is
the only solution.
Want more side-quests? Here's more!
-HoboTron: Shooting homeless people like they’re
zombies! That’s all you really need to know about this one. This mission which
is only accessible on the small graveyard island, offers six levels with hordes
that get tougher each time.
-As you drive around, sometimes you’ll see a person
logo on the GPS. Stop by that person and you’ll be given a mission. It ranges
from putting a tracker on a person’s car to giving a woman the time of her life
(Not that way, sadly; but by driving dangerously and doing stunts to amaze
her).
-Odd Jobs: Some particular spots on the map will offer
special jobs for you to accomplish. They range from doing package deliveries
around town to tattooing people. Stealing from warehouses also counts as an odd
job. Some are their own mini-game, like the race across the graveyard in the
hearse. Explaining them all would be pretty long, because there are many, but
it’s only by going around town – and attempting to steal special cars – that
you’ll find them all.
-Liberty City Gun Club: There is a Gun Club in Liberty City in which you can practice shooting with all the weapons. Those also have medals attached to them, so you should try them all.
-Liberty City Gun Club: There is a Gun Club in Liberty City in which you can practice shooting with all the weapons. Those also have medals attached to them, so you should try them all.
Last but not least, when Story Mode is completed, you
receive an e-mail about two statues called the Lions of Fo. They’re hidden at
two spots on the map, and you have to find them. They’re hidden in two of 20
different places; those places on the map, prior to finishing Story Mode (and
after finishing it, in the case of the 18 empty places) are represented by
swirling dots. That’s a final mission, but a mission nonetheless.
Now, take most of those side-quests as well as the 58
story missions in the game… and try to get a Gold Medal on each. To get 100%
completion, that’s what you have to do. In order to replay a story mission, you
just need to go to a board in any safe house you own and select a mission to
replay it.
Well, there you have it: Everything that can be found
in this game, and a re-telling of the whole plot, as I always do. What do I
think of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars?
Well, I think it’s awesome. Simply an excellent game.
Now, let me be clear, I rarely play wide open sandbox games. I don’t have the
consoles to play through other GTA games, so I can’t compare. But if that’s the
standard quality of a GTA game, I’m impressed. Because Chinatown Wars is, and
remains, one of my favorite Nintendo DS games, not only for its story and
characters (which you’ll remember; my first playthrough of the Story Mode was
years ago and I still knew about all the bosses Huang accumulates through the
game; yes, even Lester), but especially for its near-infinite replayability.
When I don’t know what to play, I’ll gladly pick up that game and possibly
discover things I hadn’t seen before in it. There is so much to do during the
story, and so much to do outside of it, that you can’t help but enjoy it.
There’s no pretending that our hero is only called
such because he’s the protagonist; the game doesn’t hide the fact that Huang is
an asshole in a world of even bigger assholes, a world where even the better
cop serving as the protagonist’s ally has some serious fucking issues. Rockstar
Games knows that we’re not here for altruism, and gives exactly what the gamers
want from this series; a chance to do as much crime as possible, with the only
real dangers are getting caught by the police, or death – but for that last
one, it doesn’t matter because Huang always survives. You’ll enjoy Huang’s
snarky take on everything – with a side-order of vulgarity, pretty please –
just as much as you’ll enjoy his seven different bosses, to different levels.
Lester is pretty gross, but he has most motorcyce missions, which some players like. You get a begrudging respect for Wade Heston
as he helps the player retrieving the sword and unmasking the Mole. Rudy
D’Avanzo is notable mostly for his final scene, Hsin is imposing, Chan is the
moronic son of a rich who takes nothing seriously enough, and Zhou is ruthless
and cruel. Uncle Kenny, the secret villain of the whole story, will quickly get
on your nerves with all his speeches of honor and family and whatnot. For
all intents and purposes, he was a figure of authority that Huang had to
respect. Even by the end there were little to no hints that he was the culprit
behind all this (kinda helps that the Mole subplot appears only halfway through
the game, and it’s never explained how Kenny tampered with federal documents to
incriminate his rivals in the race to become chief of the Triads). My only
sadness with the story’s characters is that Ling gets killed very early on, the
old “Woman Dies For Drama” trope in full effect – though you can say her death
doesn’t actually have much of an impact since she dies three missions in. It sucks, it really sucks, but hey, the place is called Liberty City, not
Love City.
The story evolves at a steady rhythm, all the missions
introduce the player to a new mechanic that is used once in-story and can then
be encountered in side-quests. Flashing red e-mail icons indicate which Story
Missions are important at any moment, and sometimes you have “down times” with
smaller, non-plot-related missions. The missions range from easy to very
difficult, and many of them are a lot easier when Huang is protected with a
bulletproof vest and if he has an arsenal of weapons with him already. Both of
which you can order from Ammu-Nation, given you have the money. Said money can
be collected easily through drug dealing, which is also great once you get the
hang of it. You’ll enjoy the twists and turns that the plot takes, with some
twists that you genuinely wouldn’t see coming on a first playthrough – shame
that I revealed them all, huh?
And some chracters are just walking jokes. |
The difficulty level raises as the story progresses;
the last missions are hard mostly because the mooks show up equipped with automatic
weapons and if you’re not equipped appropriately, it can get very difficult. The
side-quests range from moderately difficult to near-impossible, at least when
it comes to getting the Gold medal; sometimes, you also need to be lucky.
Getting Gold medals in every mission and side-quest and discovering every
little secret in Liberty City is what you need for 100% completion, so you can
play for a very, very long time and still be a long way towards completion. A
time comes where side-quests only award 1/10th of a percentage.
The gameplay is great, from the gimmicks some missions
and side-quests add to it, to how it’s like to simply drive around town for
fun. Driving is not always simple, as some streets are rather narrow. Huang can
run, but not for very long, and his walking speed is pretty bad, hence the need
to steal cars to get from Point A to Point B. Well, granted, this IS called
“Grand Theft Auto”... You can’t enter most buildings (and you rarely get to walk around inside the ones you enter in Story Mode),
but then again the world outside is massive enough that it’s not a big loss.
(If you go and say “Well, other GTA maps are larger and you can go inside the
buildings”, keep in mind that this is the only GTA game I’ve ever played, and
to me it’s still pretty damn impressive.) You can not only visit every corner
of the land, you can visit every corner of the sea. Preferably on a boat.
Although it’s far less interesting…
The PDA contains a myriad of options, some which are
extremely useful, others that are less useful, but you’ll discover most of them
as you play. The physics of the game are very good, with the vehicles behaving
just like in real life; the medium-speed vehicles that turn just right, the
fast cars that turn quickly, the longer or heavier cars are slower and need more space to turn. In a shootout situation, you can press R to aim for your
opponent to take him down quickly. The controls are awesome, the music is
alright (not all that particular, there are some radio stations that you can
tune in while in a car, but not enough to offer much diversity), the game is
very stylized (especially the cutscenes) and just looks fantastic.
Now, some might be bored by the bird’s view style of
the game, or may say it’s a little too easy with the targeting mechanic. And if
you’ve played other GTA games, you might think this one is not quite as good,
and I can’t blame you for that. But this is my first GTA game, and I’m
completely satisfied.
Although the month is not over, which means I can
still slip one M-rated game before the end of April. Hm… I know just the one.
And if you thought GTA is a murder simulator, man, you haven’t seen shit.
Next week… If you pictured Huang as a good guy, first
off, you’re wrong. Second, when it comes to protagonists who barely count as
good guys, there’s far worse out there, as many games show. In fact, you could
say that in some game worlds, there are no good guys to speak of. You can
practically call it a world where there are No. More. Heroes…
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