I’m someone who grew up in the ‘PSP-era‘ of video games. My fond memories from that time include playing games on the PSP Street. Out of all the games I got to play back in the day, one of my favourite games was GTA Chinatown Wars. You could say that Chinatown Wars was my introduction to the GTA series! Well, it’s 17th March, and the game turns 16 years old today. I thought something special had to be done for this game, so today I’ll showcase some of the unique features Chinatown Wars had, that I’d like to see in GTA 6 when it does come out.
Also Read: GTA 5 Legacy Vs Enhanced Detailed Comparison On PC
1. Drug Dealing System
Well, first of all, the biggest feature that the game had, has to be the Drug Dealing system! I’m not kidding around when I say this, but you can buy and sell drugs in the game. Look, drugs are no stranger in the GTA Universe. But when you consider that the game was released in 2009, it’s crazy to know that the game had an entire drug dealing system baked inside of it. Because of it, this feature did spark a lot of controversy, when it came out first.
Players had the option to buy and sell 6 different drugs like Heroin, Weed, Coke and more. The drug dealing system is a major part of the game, you can build your network of drug dealers. On the GPS, you can spot multiple drug dealers around the city. Upon interacting with the dealers, the drug dealer gets a permanent spot on the map, for easy access to selling and buying drugs. A few missions also require you to bring drugs to proceed further, and the same missions give you drugs instead of money, if you complete them, pretty cool if you ask me.
Most of the money you’ll make in-game will come from dealing with drugs. So the game also gives you “Trade-tips“, which is an estimate of how much money you could make or lose if you bought a certain type of drug, based on the market value of the particular product. You even get notifications about certain drugs that a dealer might need urgently, for which he is ready to pay a large amount of money.
All of this sounds good, am I right? But you do realise that dealing drugs is illegal? Well, it’s illegal in this game too, so you’ll mostly find the dealers in spots tough to catch by cops. However, that doesn’t stop the cops, as there are moments in the game, where you can get caught while dealing, if that happens, get ready to face the cops, and if you get caught, you will have to lose all the money, as the cops take all the drugs with you. But your drugs can be safely stored in your safe house, no one is taking that away from you.
2. Cop Car Computer
Another feature that I enjoyed with the game has to be the cop computer that can be accessed using a Cop car! If you manage to enter the car of a cop sneakily, without any of the cops noticing you, then you get the option to play as a cop in the game. What I mean by that is, that you get to choose some cop missions spread across the city using the cop computer in the car.
By playing as a cop, you can chase after the bad guys and teach them a lesson for their wrongdoings. Well, it does sound a bit ironic, considering the average crimes an average GTA player commits during his playtime, but sure, yeah, the feature is quite cool! A feature similar to this was seen previously in GTA 4 too.
I’m not someone who likes discussing about leaks very often. But since it was leaked that Jason, who could be the second protagonist in GTA 6, is most likely a cop, it would be cool, if we got to see a similar feature in the game. I mean, just imagine, stopping crimes during the day, by playing as Jason, but committing crimes at night by playing as Lucia. Balanced, just the way it should be.
3. Wanted Level System
While we’re on the topic of cops, let’s discuss about the Wanted Level system of this game. Unlike any other GTA game, where losing cops was a struggle, Chinatown Wars had a very unique system to counter them. Because the game was made for handhelds, the developers decided to ease up a bit and made the cops in the game easier to tackle. Players, when they get a wanted level star, can lose the cops by hiding from them. But to get quickly rid of cops, if you manage to ram into cop cars, and make them unusable, then you can lower your wanted level.
Suppose, if you have two wanted level stars on you for committing a crime. Now unlike other GTA games, what you can do is somehow, make 2 cars unusable, by ramming into them, or using the environment to your advantage, you know, just throwing the cars into water, then you will be able to lose one star. How cool is that! But remember, the more wanted level stars you have on you, the more cars you’ll have to ram.
I am well aware that most gamers would not like to have an easy way to counter the cops, but only if the game made it optional, it would be pretty cool. Sometimes, making the game a little easier doesn’t hurt, features like this from GTA Chinatown Wars are pretty cool if you think about it, much less annoying than other games.
4. Interactive Weapons & Environment
One of the best features of this game has to be how interactive this game was made! Given that it came out for the DS originally, which had the touch screen, it utilised the touch screen of the game well. I remember seeing the DS gameplay of the game and just drooling over how cool they’ve made some of the features!
Well, for starters if you wanted to use a sniper rifle in the game, which is fairly less used in the game, it is only applicable on two missions. To use the weapon, you had to assemble one on your own! Trust me, it’s very cool. It may sound like a lengthy process, but given how interactive it was, I enjoyed playing around with it!
Enough about the weapons, let’s now talk about the world of the game. Given the size of the game, I find it so impressive that the game managed to pack in such small details. For example, you could search up random garbage bins, to find unique items. Well, for starters, there were some completely useless items like a fish, but some nice-to-have items can also be found like a weapon, or if you get lucky, even some drugs to trade!
Remember the first point about drug dealing, well Rockstar managed to somehow make the environment heavily affect the drug market in the game too. The game has around 100 security cameras spread across the city. If you destroy the cameras in the game, it makes it easier for drug dealers to sell their stuff. Meaning, you get drugs for cheaper! I’ll be honest with you, that is one cool feature to have. If you destroy all the cameras, you can quite literally get the drugs for half the price, now that’s a steal!
5. Stealing Weapon Trucks
I don’t know what Rockstar had in mind while making the game, but somehow, they wanted you to commit a lot of crimes in the game. If dealing with drugs wasn’t enough for you, you could steal Ammu-Nation trucks in the game too. Remember Ammu-Nation? The store where you can buy weapons, yeah you can steal stuff from them too in this game. It isn’t even a rare occurrence, the trucks are spread across the map, and you can steal them easily.
Well, you’ll have to fight the driver driving the vehicle and trust me, his shotgun packs a punch. But, if you manage to fight him, then you could just drive the truck back to your safe house, to check the contents inside. Most of the time, it will have a nice weapon, which is very useful, to be honest. I feel like this is one of the features that GTA 6 should adopt from Chinatown Wars. I’m surprised, that Rockstar didn’t add it in GTA 5.
Look, I don’t know about you, but I genuinely don’t remember buying weapons in any GTA game. Call me a cheater or whatever, but hey, it’s a game. I personally really like how well implemented the feature was, like hey, stealing weapons sounds more ethical than entering a cheat code if you think about it. If they bring back this feature in GTA 6, that would be so cool.
6. Mini Games
Lastly, I wanted to mention the most underrated features that GTA Chinatown Wars had, which have to be mini-games. Most GTA Games have mini-games, but this game had some special ones. For starters, you have the option to buy lottery tickets. I know they’re available in GTA 5 too, but they are useless to be honest, checking them is such a hassle. But in Chinatown Wars, you could buy scratchable lottery tickets, which instantly tell you about the result. It is easy to win rewards in the game too. You can win rewards ranging from $15 to quite literally a house.
Stealing vehicles in the game is also a mini-game. You can simply skip the section, but it is a pretty cool mini-game on its own. Unlike other GTA games, where you can simply steal the vehicle with no effort, or well, your character just does a glass-breaking animation. In this game, to get into the car, you had to hack the car, somehow. For older cars, you could just open it up, and hardwire it. But here’s the fun part, for newer cars, you had to attach a separate device to get a code and start the vehicle.
Another cool mini game, I like is a Tattoo shop. Given the gang theme that the game revolves around, I find it quite cool that it also featured a tattoo shop. First showcased during a mission, where you recruit a few gang members, and join them in your gang by making tattoos on them. Aside from that, you can also use the shop to make some money. The money made is less, but the it is super fun to play around with.
You can either be a perfectionist by making some super cool moves to impress your customers. Or you could just make your clients regret their decision to get a tattoo. For every wrong move you make while tattooing someone, the more pain they have to go through and trust me, they make every kind of screaming noise, which is a bit fun!
Well, those were some of the features I felt like GTA 6 should steal from Chinatown Wars. Since we’re at the end of the post, would you like to hear a cool fact about the game? Did you know, that GTA Chinatown Wars, which was released in 2009, is still the second most recent game in the GTA series? Since after this game, Rockstar has only released GTA 5 so far. We do hope that Rockstar does release GTA 6 this year!
