I liked the whole thing with all the mistakes balancing each other out. It's always awesome when mixing shit with shit gives you halfway playable.
Zero Punctuation: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
I'm a little confused. Did he like the game or not? He seemed to praise it a little at the end but I'm still left confused as to whether he thought it was overall good or overall bad or average.
Personally, I really liked the game, though he's right that the DS touch screen is sometimes a bit overused. (and darn it, I did hate those toll booths too)
Personally, I really liked the game, though he's right that the DS touch screen is sometimes a bit overused. (and darn it, I did hate those toll booths too)
No. The top-down view was part of it, but the reason it took off with GTA3 is the simple fact that GTA3 was a large improvement on the previous games in a lots of ways (i.e. they developed the sandbox gameplay)bjj hero said:
Guys, can you help me out fixing the transcribe? I missheard words in [], and probably made other mistakes.
***
After the world shattering television executive frightening success of GTA 4 it seems you can bring out GTA brand easy bake ovens and still get an investment back, but still a GTA exclusive to the DS ? fevered frog spawn chewing madness. That would be like releasing a Dead Space rail shooter on a Wii.
In all seriousness we'll, probably, be going to be seeing a lot this sort of thing with a monkey of economic crisis still clinging to everyone's backs [tickly] eating all the bananas. It's more bankable for studios to make more games for wide spread systems. They practically give away DSes with a Sunday paper and I'm pretty sure that there are more homes with Wii than with central heating, so here we are. Perhaps, this period in gaming will at last make Wii actually worth two shits. I doubt it, though, - you can shovel diamonds into turd and it'll still be a turd, just momentously more painful to produce.
The DS, meanwhile, is not a turd. [It got things too with a low sharp corners] it's just a kind that does it's own thing. It does it well, but GTA is from a different world.
Chinatown Wars is therefore a bastard offspring of two forbidden lovers form two warring families tragically shot dead, while trying to elope by a hired gun played in this drama by myself. Too late, sadly, to prevent the child being born and coming out a little bit malformed.
Chinatown Wars returns us to the liberty city of GTA 4, albeit missing Alderney. But it took too long to open up Alderney, so no one cares.
And todays [career] sociopath with astonishingly good lawyers is Huang ? a spoiled [witch] Triad kid with a dead dad, arriving in Liberty City to get embroiled to a family business.
With a top-down presentation similar to the original 2D GTAs ? China Town is a nostalgic callback to when a series were simplier, cartoonier and not as good. Yes, GTA only became a truly terrifying money spinner once it went 3D, because top-down 2D is full of inherent problems ? you can only see about 2o feet in front of you, also known as ?Metal Gear Solid henchman syndrome?, and there are a lot of beyond that twenty feet border you need to worry about.
Virtually every time I jacked a car I get an instant one-star-level, because I couldn't see a cop directly behind me helping an old lady across the road. And then there are tall gates back from GTA 4, just in case they didn't completely get on your tits the first time around. And they are almost invariably at the end of the long high-speed strait, so I lost count of how many times I accidentally sped right through and earn myself another big fat wanted star.
The limited visibility is also not helped by a camera, that appears to be mounted at the back of [drunko beastmen] on a Segway. Lurching sickeningly about when you trying to made God-awful targeting system lock on an enemy and not, say, on unarmed man on the other side of the wall on the [hab redies].
You my be unsurprised to hear than that the game is frustratingly difficult, in which case prepare to be surprised ? because it isn't. I breezed through all the missions on a rocket surf-board and rarely had to attempt anymore than once. The simple reason for this is that all that professional game-reviewing has finally paid me off and I just naturally good at everything now. But less whackious reason is that the enemy AI is crap.
Everyone with a gun seems to be afraid that using it fill offend the neighbors, when the police is after you, there is a mechanic where you can shake them of by getting them to smash into things. And really all you have to do is drive along the straight road very fast and they will do the work for you! It's like they've got brick -wall-magnet mounted to their bumpers. Alternatively, just use the respray -shop, of course,they won't do their job if there're cops around, so the technique I discovered was to park around the corner, wait for every cop car in the area to huddle around the nearest lamppost than [tickly] floor it to the garage doors, while they are busy disentangling their necks from the [steering columns].
One of the unique points is the drug-selling system. And really pick any commodity trading element from any game and replace the names with a censor provoking ones and the way we go ? find who sells cheap, buy it all up and flog it to whoever buys dear. 30 GOTO 10. You can do this whenever you can, because doing the actual missions pays slightly less than wending cardboard boxes to the homeless. And you need all the money you can get; for when the cops catch you on the dozy morning and take all your favorite weapons away.
Fortunately, the drug trade has it's own underground stock-marked that ticks hot investments tips directly to your PDA, so making thousands upon thousands in a single deal is incredibly easy. The more patient player than I can probably spend an hour or two trading around than end up with enough money to buy all the safe houses in the game and invite all the gangs to the grate big pool-party.
It seems that the weird thing about Chinatown Wars so far is that all it's faults are balanced by it's other faults: stupid enemies compensate for shitty controls, the easiness of trade compensates for it's banality. All that faultiness mixes together to create something half-way decent in the middle. It's almost prodigious in it's retarded genius.
The writing is not as tallow as GTA usually is ? characters feel interchangeable and arbitrary drops self-consciousness and references to sexual perversion into the dialog for no better reason than trying to hard.
But for what I've gathered I'm the only person who gives a shit. I think my biggest problem is the whole DS thing. It seems when you agree to develop for the DS or Wii, Nintendo makes you sign a contract agreeing to throw at least one irritating out of place touch-screen gimmicky Wii-mode waggle. So, being a good little whore, Chinatown Wars breaks things up frequently with an occasional bit of the touch-screen flappery, like hot-wiring cars or throwing Molotovs.
Nothing wrong with it in it self, but since the movement controls use the buttons you have to be constantly fumbling for the stylus or just to use your thumb and live [tee-tow] dust all over the screen. The DS works when you exclusively use either control system, but switching between [when the movement nose eats?] isn't good for my poor arthritic controller ruined fingers.
Just because you can something doesn't mean you should: I can use the syringe to remove the fillings of my [cabbary screen] and I can replace it with the Branston Pickle, but it wouldn't be a good idea. At least I don't think so. Hold that thought.
No, it really isn't.
***
***
After the world shattering television executive frightening success of GTA 4 it seems you can bring out GTA brand easy bake ovens and still get an investment back, but still a GTA exclusive to the DS ? fevered frog spawn chewing madness. That would be like releasing a Dead Space rail shooter on a Wii.
In all seriousness we'll, probably, be going to be seeing a lot this sort of thing with a monkey of economic crisis still clinging to everyone's backs [tickly] eating all the bananas. It's more bankable for studios to make more games for wide spread systems. They practically give away DSes with a Sunday paper and I'm pretty sure that there are more homes with Wii than with central heating, so here we are. Perhaps, this period in gaming will at last make Wii actually worth two shits. I doubt it, though, - you can shovel diamonds into turd and it'll still be a turd, just momentously more painful to produce.
The DS, meanwhile, is not a turd. [It got things too with a low sharp corners] it's just a kind that does it's own thing. It does it well, but GTA is from a different world.
Chinatown Wars is therefore a bastard offspring of two forbidden lovers form two warring families tragically shot dead, while trying to elope by a hired gun played in this drama by myself. Too late, sadly, to prevent the child being born and coming out a little bit malformed.
Chinatown Wars returns us to the liberty city of GTA 4, albeit missing Alderney. But it took too long to open up Alderney, so no one cares.
And todays [career] sociopath with astonishingly good lawyers is Huang ? a spoiled [witch] Triad kid with a dead dad, arriving in Liberty City to get embroiled to a family business.
With a top-down presentation similar to the original 2D GTAs ? China Town is a nostalgic callback to when a series were simplier, cartoonier and not as good. Yes, GTA only became a truly terrifying money spinner once it went 3D, because top-down 2D is full of inherent problems ? you can only see about 2o feet in front of you, also known as ?Metal Gear Solid henchman syndrome?, and there are a lot of beyond that twenty feet border you need to worry about.
Virtually every time I jacked a car I get an instant one-star-level, because I couldn't see a cop directly behind me helping an old lady across the road. And then there are tall gates back from GTA 4, just in case they didn't completely get on your tits the first time around. And they are almost invariably at the end of the long high-speed strait, so I lost count of how many times I accidentally sped right through and earn myself another big fat wanted star.
The limited visibility is also not helped by a camera, that appears to be mounted at the back of [drunko beastmen] on a Segway. Lurching sickeningly about when you trying to made God-awful targeting system lock on an enemy and not, say, on unarmed man on the other side of the wall on the [hab redies].
You my be unsurprised to hear than that the game is frustratingly difficult, in which case prepare to be surprised ? because it isn't. I breezed through all the missions on a rocket surf-board and rarely had to attempt anymore than once. The simple reason for this is that all that professional game-reviewing has finally paid me off and I just naturally good at everything now. But less whackious reason is that the enemy AI is crap.
Everyone with a gun seems to be afraid that using it fill offend the neighbors, when the police is after you, there is a mechanic where you can shake them of by getting them to smash into things. And really all you have to do is drive along the straight road very fast and they will do the work for you! It's like they've got brick -wall-magnet mounted to their bumpers. Alternatively, just use the respray -shop, of course,they won't do their job if there're cops around, so the technique I discovered was to park around the corner, wait for every cop car in the area to huddle around the nearest lamppost than [tickly] floor it to the garage doors, while they are busy disentangling their necks from the [steering columns].
One of the unique points is the drug-selling system. And really pick any commodity trading element from any game and replace the names with a censor provoking ones and the way we go ? find who sells cheap, buy it all up and flog it to whoever buys dear. 30 GOTO 10. You can do this whenever you can, because doing the actual missions pays slightly less than wending cardboard boxes to the homeless. And you need all the money you can get; for when the cops catch you on the dozy morning and take all your favorite weapons away.
Fortunately, the drug trade has it's own underground stock-marked that ticks hot investments tips directly to your PDA, so making thousands upon thousands in a single deal is incredibly easy. The more patient player than I can probably spend an hour or two trading around than end up with enough money to buy all the safe houses in the game and invite all the gangs to the grate big pool-party.
It seems that the weird thing about Chinatown Wars so far is that all it's faults are balanced by it's other faults: stupid enemies compensate for shitty controls, the easiness of trade compensates for it's banality. All that faultiness mixes together to create something half-way decent in the middle. It's almost prodigious in it's retarded genius.
The writing is not as tallow as GTA usually is ? characters feel interchangeable and arbitrary drops self-consciousness and references to sexual perversion into the dialog for no better reason than trying to hard.
But for what I've gathered I'm the only person who gives a shit. I think my biggest problem is the whole DS thing. It seems when you agree to develop for the DS or Wii, Nintendo makes you sign a contract agreeing to throw at least one irritating out of place touch-screen gimmicky Wii-mode waggle. So, being a good little whore, Chinatown Wars breaks things up frequently with an occasional bit of the touch-screen flappery, like hot-wiring cars or throwing Molotovs.
Nothing wrong with it in it self, but since the movement controls use the buttons you have to be constantly fumbling for the stylus or just to use your thumb and live [tee-tow] dust all over the screen. The DS works when you exclusively use either control system, but switching between [when the movement nose eats?] isn't good for my poor arthritic controller ruined fingers.
Just because you can something doesn't mean you should: I can use the syringe to remove the fillings of my [cabbary screen] and I can replace it with the Branston Pickle, but it wouldn't be a good idea. At least I don't think so. Hold that thought.
No, it really isn't.
***
Agreed on your agreement.beemoh said:
A good example of using touch screen and controls wrong...some game for the DS based on a Cartoon Network show I never watched where people race on the backs of dragons. From the X-Play review of it that I saw, during a race, you had to use the control pad, the buttons AND the stylus almost simultaniousluy.
Another one of his reviews in which I disagreed with what he said but still found it to be hilarious.
That takes talent.
That takes talent.
Wow he represents my feeling fully. I saw a different reviewer who took all these parts of the game that sucked and told us that's why it's good. They said the overhead crappy camera 2-d style was good. It's not GTA is about nothing without realism, and 3-d is realism. They said the autolock gun that obviously has flaws was good. They said the bad AI is good. Yhatzee doesn't and i appreciate the honesty.
I find it a bit annoying when Yahtzee starts to sound like he can speak for everyone. If you're going to review, you need to acknowledge that it's just your opinion. I don't always agree with him, but I find him funny and like to hear his thoughts. But in this review, just like others such as Mirror's Edge and Resident Evil, it borders on sounding like his opinion is the only one. You may think a game was bad, but that DOESN'T mean that popular opinion says it's bad. Quite the opposite, for all applied.
Then again, I guess maybe the part of Yahtzee's charm is that he's arrogant. It still makes me grind my teeth, though.
Then again, I guess maybe the part of Yahtzee's charm is that he's arrogant. It still makes me grind my teeth, though.