Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Rather than import the cast of GTA IV, Rockstar also tells a different story through another band of variously anarchistic, vain and foolish characters (we meet the usual corrupt cop trying to bust his way out of trouble, for instance), and although we've yet to meet a new Brucie, we've driven vengeful loony Zhou Ming around a park while he tears the local drug-dealing fraternity asunder with a 50-cal, and done a spot of terrorising ourselves as Chan Jaoming's passenger for a helicopter Molotov rampage. The story sequences are not voiced - this is a cartridge, remember - but there's enough effing, blinding and one-lining in the text banter to compensate, and there's humour and character throughout the scripting incidentals, including the inevitable dodgy phonetic Chinese, like Uncle Wu's restaurant, "Sum Yung Gai". Easy now.

Whether because the DS would struggle to render a zoomed-out mini-map clearly, or for other reasons, Chinatown Wars also modifies police behaviour. You can still ditch the cops with pay-'n'-spray, but now each star of your wanted rating corresponds to a specific car on your tail, and by running them off the road you can release yourself from their pursuit. Even so, we're told to expect more arrests, although it won't be so much of a penalty; you won't choose death over detention as you always did in GTA IV. A "trip skip" option also allows you to retrace mission steps should you die, fail or be detained, cutting out a lot of the travelling.

Equally, we're not sure whether it's a reaction to feedback - although we doubt it, given the timing of the original announcement - but Chinatown Wars is rich in interactive detail. Certain bins (toss the bags out with the stylus) act as stash spots for guns and contraband; security cameras are the new pigeons, lurking in the background to hunt and destroy; your safehouse allows you to revisit any completed mission for old time's sake, and mess around with fridge magnets; and most promisingly and provocatively you can become a full-on drug-dealer.

Once you acquire a stash box at your apartment, and some drugs from a first contact, you can set up shop and deal. Prices vary from place to place, and fluctuate based on local supply and the presence of unmolested security cameras (two things of note there: you won't always want to shoot them out quickly, as they guarantee top prices; and perhaps this will help you locate them). Your PDA, which acts like a combination of GTA IV's mobile phone and tw@ cafés for email access, slings you requests for quick sales at inflated prices at specific times and places, and a Trade Info page allows you to study the lay of the drug-dealing land. Naturally if you're nicked you lose whatever you have on you, and you can't get high off your own supply, but it's easy to see where the DS-first 18 certificate came in.

GTA IV's problem in the eyes of its critics wasn't so much that there wasn't stuff to do outside the story core, though, as that there wasn't much personality beyond the core: you could visit comedy clubs, snipe and assassinate your way to wealth, and court and car-thieve the hours away, but you couldn't continue to reach out and touch the world in any meaningful way. It will take a bit more time in Chinatown Wars' company to assess that side of it, but what's clear now is that there's no shortage of content to exhaust before you reach that stage: Rockstar estimates at least 20 hours of story and side content, and that excludes the online multiplayer component we've yet to be shown, and integration with the Rockstar Social Club.

And what's equally clear is that any sensation of displacement is quickly lost in the bustle of another living, swearing, squishing openworld city, that quickly measures up to the catalogue of hit sequels to the early top-down Grand Theft Auto games the first Chinatown Wars screenshots initially recall. If anything it goes further, using the stylus, the microphone and those two screens to drag you closer to the nuts and bolts of Huang's quest for vengeance, and the series' trademark skewed perspective, than the camera elevation implies. It's no wonder Rockstar Leeds is at twice the capacity required to turn out PSP titles Liberty City and Vice City Stories, and there seems little chance this will risk the lower review scores their conversion work occasionally prompted.

What's most clear of all, though, is that while we've only been looking down at the new look Liberty City for a couple of hours so far, everyone else is still staring up.