Review by: Brandon "Two Wheels" Cackowski-Schnell

If you missed out on GTA: Chinatown Wars earlier this year because the DS is not your handheld of choice, or you felt slighted that the game wasn't present on the PSP, home to the most recent GTA outings, well worry no longer. Huang Lee's Liberty City outings are now available for PSP owners and while the game gains some things and loses others in its translation from DS to PSP the overall result is still the same: a great GTA game from start to finish.

Huang is your typical spoiled rich brat, sent to Liberty City to deliver a family sword upon his father's death. It doesn't take Huang long to get relieved of the heirloom, shot, dumped in a river and left to die setting into motion a chain of events that will have you tearing up Liberty City with all manner of weapons, and coming across some seriously twisted individuals in the process. All of the original story missions are here, along with some new ones that find Huang protecting a news reporter as she works to unearth Liberty City's seedier side.

In porting the game to the PSP, Rockstar had to make some concessions for the various mini-games that were sprinkled throughout the DS to account for the lack of a touchscreen. Some games, like hot-wiring cars survived the conversion intact. Others, such as making molotov cocktails, did not. Luckily nothing is so bad as to be unplayable, and if you haven't played the DS version you certainly won't feel slighted. Other changes to the game involve making the various buttons on the PSP perform multiple functions which can be confusing however the game always prompts you for the correct button press for the current situation.

I miss having the second screen to act as a persistent map, however the larger screen on the PSP allows you to see more of the environment when driving and the upgraded graphics certainly make the game much easier on the eyes. Even your PDA gets an upgrade with multiple skins for that extra dose of realism. Unfortunately realism comes at a price as switching between the various functions bring up a slight loading icon. These loading times are even more prominent when loading up the game for the first time, and when auto-saving with the latter being bad enough to make you consider turning auto-save off. These load times are only a problem in the UMD version with the digital version showing miniscule load times upon start up and significantly shortened load times upon auto saving.

Other than these minor quibbles, and they really are minor, the game is an outstanding portable title and a great addition to GTA canon. There are dozens upon dozens of story missions to take part in ranging from burning down buildings and cars to hiding in a Chinese dragon during a parade to hide from the cops. In between missions you can spend time doing street races or rampages or dealing drugs in the game's incredibly addictive drug dealing mini-game. For those with a flair for impersonation the GTA standby of stealing police cars and ambulances are still there along with taking taxis and food delivery cars.