Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars centers on Huang Lee, a self-described "spoiled rich kid" seeking vengeance for the death of his gangster father. He travels to Liberty City, GTA's version of New York, where, within minutes, he is assailed and dumped into a river. Surviving, he makes his way to his uncle, Wu "Kenny" Lee, who gives him a place to stay and various (criminal) assignments to fulfill. Meanwhile, Huang pursues leads on the theft of Yu Jian, a priceless family sword (which, in reality, was won by his father in a poker game.)
That's really the gist of Chinatown Wars' plot. Along the way, Huang makes connections with several other fellow criminals, including Chan Jaoming, a sleazy hedonist, Zhou Ming, a gaudy underboss, and Wade Heston, a corrupt cop with a "tragic" past. You'll find no women in the main plot, sans a sex worker who is murdered within minutes. These characters fall just short of being truly three-dimensional, but they do have enough depth to make interactions with them interesting. A selling point of the game's writing, I think, is the irreverent and bombastic sense of humor; different types of flippant, sarcastic or outright stupid jokes help set Huang and these other characters apart. As a side note, you'll perhaps be unsurprised to hear that the game crosses the line more than a few times. It is, at best, overly reliant on racial and sexual stereotypes. At worst, it's ignorant, and also oddly fixated on lampooning "trans-sexuals." As a trans-sexual myself, I'm displeased.
The actual progression of the plot feels a bit meandering, though it eventually focuses on the search for a mole within the ranks of the Triad, which should feel like familiar fare if you've been through more than one narrative about organized crime. Huang is, frankly, a life-long lackey and a naive idiot. Over the course of the main plot, he is bamboozled, deceived, and led by the nose by just about everyone in his life. In the rare moments that he pushes back with his signature acerbic wit, he quickly backs down and does whatever is asked of him without question. There is a bit of text present about honor (kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also kind of orientalist) and Huang's sense of duty, but I don't feel it has a strong enough grip on the plot to make the eventual tragedy of the ending any less frustrating. I struggle to conclude whether or not the frustration I have with Huang makes the story effective or not. Well, I don't like it, anyway.
So, is the game fun? Sure it is. Who doesn't love stealing cars and blowing shit up? Hardly anything compares to causing a bit of mayhem in a sandbox space. Blowing up a few police cars is a sweet bonus. The story missions provide plenty of variety to the gameplay, introducing different vehicles, weapons, and objectives. Sans a few eye-rollingly frustrating levels (a staple of the Nintendo DS era of gaming, in my opinion), it's a blast to progress through. My favorite element of the game is likely the drug trade system, a sort of simulated economy where dealers notify you about what they're buying or selling at a given time. Stealing drug vans from rival gangs and navigating to the right places to sell your contraband and amass major profits is a sincerely great feeling. Oh god, do I sound like a capitalist?
Overall, you could say we enjoyed Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Also, it's crazy that this game was on the Nintendo DS, objectively. Hey kids, wanna sell some heroin?