I purchased this game about a week or two ago after hearing some comments from my cousin. I’ve always been a GTA fan, but figured I’d wait for a price drop, yet after what I’d heard I had to check it out. He explained to me the methods of stealing cars in this version which I’ll get to shortly. So I ran out and purchased a copy the next night and was not disappointed in the least. This is probably one of the most enjoyable in the series even though it’s a bit short. The reason it’s so enjoyable is due to the touch screen making it so hands on.
As stated, the touch screen makes this game very hands on, and also as I said it’s time to talk about the stealing of cars. There’s three methods to stealing cars in this game. If it’s a low end crappy car, when you jump in you’ll be shown a screwdriver. You grab it on the touchscreen and are prompted to insert it into the ignition and twist it back and forth until the car starts. On the slightly better cars you need to use the touchscreen to unscrew a portion of the dash, then pull out a green and yellow wire to twist together to hot wire the car. On the expensive cars you slide open a digital lock system, insert a cracking device that gives you the code and you need to insert the code on the scrolling digits. You are timed on all methods if I remember correctly, definitely are on the digital method and if you fail the alarm goes off and you can still take the car, but where’s the fun in not trying to jack the car properly.
This hands on approach also goes to planting bombs, plantings bugs on cars, and I’m sure other things I’m currently forgetting. One other very cool and notable thing that the touch screen is used for is that if you happen to drive into the water you have to keep tapping the touchscreen to kick out the windshield to escape the car, very cool touch then added.
The weapon lock system can be annoying sometimes and not lock onto the enemy you want and you may needed to quickly duck and cycle to lock properly before jumping out and shooting. If you want to throw a molotov cocktail and I would assume grenades which I never threw, you click the symbol on the touchscreen and quickly slide in the direction you want.
Another thing incorporated in this game is a drug trade system, nearly identical to the old PC game Dope Wars for those that remember that, this is really where you make all your money. The missions do make you some money but the email tip offs and drug runs net you the most money because missions will get you a $100 to $1000 near the end, a good drug run can snag you nearly $10,000 if done right. Make sure you use the drug map so your know where to buy cheap and use the email tip offs to know where to sell high. You could also just use the drug map and sell dealer to dealer but you won’t net as much profit as you will with the tip offs.
Now for the other portions, the storyline is great as well,unlike the other games, you really won’t find characters like Brucie or Packie to like, you’ll hate every character you work with in this game. At least I did, but I kept wanting to play more, buy more safe house, steal more stuff, which I forgot to mention, you can hijack ammunition trucks and bring them to one of your safehouses and use a torch to cut them open, or steal rival gangs drug vans and do the same except you slash the interiors open to get to the drugs.
As with all GTA’s there are thing to find as well, there’s 50 or 99 security cameras hidden to smash, I found some but couldn’t figure out how to smash them. There’s 30 specific billboards to be smashed, they have a beaver on them I think, when you find one there’s always a jump nearby to jump through one so you can break it.
The police chase system is done differently as well. If you have three star’s there will also be three cop car symbols beneath them, if you smash three chasing cars (they’ll get red X’s over them) it’ll drop to two stars and two cars, smash two cars it goes to one star and one car, smash one more car you go to a flashing white star and have a chance to hide and get away. That’s a nice setup and makes it finally possible to finish mission when you have a five star rating.
All in all this is a great addition to the GTA series and a nice kinda flashback to the original game being that this is also top down yet the cars are all technically 3D as you’ll see when they start flipping around. The radio stations did act up on me once or twice and just gave me a grinding annoying noise and made me turn my speakers down, I just changed stations a few times and turned them back up and it seemed to clear up. If your a GTA fan and have a DS/Lite/i I’d highly recommend this title. I'd even go as far to call this the DS GotY.
