Just beat Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on Vita. I actually started playing this one two years ago or so on PSP but I think I then stopped playing it because my battery died. Thanks to hacking my Vita I was able to transfer my actually legitimate copy of Chinatown Wars there. Because so much time had passed since I last played it I just decided to start over, though.
Chinatown Wars is a very interesting entry in the series as it's a top-down GTA game released after GTA IV. So at first glance it looks like the original two GTA games but is in many ways far more similar to the 3D GTA games. From what I understand they made this one because they wanted a GTA game on the DS but that one couldn't handle a third-person GTA game (like the earlier Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories released on PSP). And then they released this one on PSP too, giving the PSP a solid library of three pretty good GTA games.
Anyway, Chinatown Wars tells the story of Chinese triad member Huang Lee who is supposed to deliver a sword required in some ceremony of succession to his uncle in Liberty City. Also, his father was murdered. When he arrives he is almost killed and the sword stolen. From then on Huang is of course pushed around by senior triad members and pretty much everyone else in the city while he's trying to recover the sword and avenge his father. For the most part it's actually a pretty decent story that got me more invested than most plots in the GTA series. I liked Huang a ton because, even though he looks like a total moron, he's witty as heck and perfectly aware of how everyone else is an ignorant asshole. He's easily the protagonist I could identify most easily with in the entire series due to how much his perspective aligns with that of the player. And the mystery of who stole the sword and why was pretty interesting as well (though the ending is pretty abrupt and cliched).
However, while Huang is a really cool character and the story quite okay, the writing in this game is pretty darn weird. The dialogue often feels like it drags on forever and not for exposition but mostly for not-so-well written pointless exchanges riddled with expletives, insults and usually terrible puns. I guess they might feel better in animated and voiced cutscenes (but even then a lot of the dialogue would be awkward, I think) but here you only get subtitled still images which kinda sucks, especially since the PSP is capable of a lot more (I guess the limitations of the DS are to blame for this format). The game starts out really rough in this regard but either the writing gets better over time or I just got used to the format eventually. And some of the more ridiculous moments actually made me laugh out loud.
As for the gameplay: it's for the most part pretty good. The driving is good and Chinatown Wars may in fact have the best wanted system in the entire series. Rather than depending on pickups and Pay 'n' Spray shops here you get rid of cops by crashing their cars during chases. The higher the wanted level, the more patrol cars you have to crash before your wanted level resets. Often the cops crash on their own as you just keep moving but you can also execute a bunch of manoeuvres in order to push the cops into obstacles, other vehicles or just crash head-on into them. The physics are a bit unreliable and often it felt to me like a cop car didn't crash when it should have but all in all the cop chases were more satisfying to me here than perhaps in any other GTA game, if a bit easy. Also the mission design deserves some praise. Like in pretty much all GTA games they offer a lot of variety and often come with unique gimmicks like having to operate a train or having to triangulate a wi-fi signal. Some missions are of course turds, as is always the case, but generally they are rather good.
Quite peculiar features of Chinatown Wars are mini games based which are often based on gestures, like tattooing gang members or filling up molotov cocktails at a gas station, and the drug trade. Throughout the entire game you only get peanuts for missions (you will usually literally receive only between 50 and 200 bucks for completing missions here!) but you can easily make a fortune with drugs. It's a basic trading game where you discover dealers all over the city who offer different deals depending on their gang affiliation and sometimes you receive an email that informs you about a short-lived special deal from a specific dealer. There isn't much strategy involved here, you can easily make a fortune just by reacting to emails right away and the only risk is the occasional two-star wanted level after buying or selling drugs. Oh yeah, and there's a limit to how many drugs you can carry around so you put them in a stash that can be accessed from any one of the purchasable safe houses all over the city. The drug trade really does not involve much strategy if any and soon becomes more of a chore than a fun activity but still, it's not bad and it's super satisfying to make a crapload of money with a single good deal.
Now, there are two pretty massive flaws in this game. One of them is that you will be using the PDA a lot which allows you to set GPS coordinates, read emails and also order weapons from AmmuNation (which I didn't do all that often) alongside a few other things and in the PSP version of the game there's several seconds of loading whenever you switch screens within the PDA. It's honestly super annoying (and apparently that's one thing the DS version does not suffer from). The other thing are the combat controls. Honest to God, handling weapons is a nightmare in this one. Even though Chinatown Wars is for the most part two-dimensional the controls are somehow even worse than in the console versions of the old 3D GTA games with one of the most awful lock on systems I have ever seen. I eventually kinda got the hang of it but it never felt remotely okay or reliable. Luckily there isn't all that much shooting in this one but still, gunfights are easily the worst part of the game and a friend of mine actually rage quit the game for this reason.
But still, it's all in all a very cool "small" GTA game that I've enjoyed more than I thought I would and ironically it has aged much better in my opinion than many other older GTA games, largely thanks to how basic it is. Also the graphics are bearable and the soundtrack pretty good. Whether you want to play another GTA game in the vein of the top-down originals or want to experience another story campaign in the style of the third-person GTA games, Chinatown is a pretty great choice.