GTA: Chinatown Wars Launching Today for PSP on UMD and PSN

With Grand Theft Auto: China Chinatown Wars hitting for PSP today, Rockstar Games sent along a brand new clip from the game. Like you’d see on any talk show, they also set up the clip; here’s Rich Rosado, a R* producer.

Hello all! It’s pleasure for me to introduce this next clip for the PSP and PSPgo fans reading this out there. We know that a lot of fans have been waiting to finally get their hands on Chinatown Wars and we’re thrilled to finally bring an even more refined version of this game to the PSP.

For anyone that hasn’t heard anything about Chinatown Wars yet, I can tell you that it brings a unique, arcade-like approach to the series. We really rethought the way a portable GTA experience could work from the ground up. On the PSP, the game includes some exclusive missions, music, re-optimized controls, and an intense high-resolution graphical overhaul that could only be done on this platform.

Some may still not realize this, but Chinatown Wars is actually the biggest portable GTA we’ve ever done – even bigger than Liberty City Stories or Vice City Stories in terms of polygon counts, lines of code, and especially environmental assets. Altogether, we have something that clearly looks and feels different than the Stories titles in our legacy lineup (both of which are launching on PSN this Thursday) – but the end result is one of our proudest achievements thus far, non-stop, innovative Grand Theft Auto gaming. We can’t wait for everyone to dive into it on the PSP today.

In this clip below, you can get a look at how we’ve chosen to weave the mini-game elements into the broader gameplay without ever forcing players to take their hands off of the system. These gameplay elements feel even more tactile on the analog stick, and it’s an integral component of the game that highlights the graphic novel style we’ve incorporated into the game.

When stealing certain cars, you disassemble the steering wheel column to hotwire the car with the analog stick – and as you can see, it works seamlessly. Whether you’re screwing together a sniper rifle to focus in on a headshots, or directing the fire hose on a fire truck onto a car that’s in flames and about to explode, the controls in the game have been optimized for a much faster experience on the PSP. This is especially true for when players are looking to throw projectiles weapons, either on foot or while driving. You don’t have to stop moving in order to pinpoint a grenade onto the hood of a rival gang’s vehicle. Here you can also see Huang taking on one of the Triad bosses above a construction site in a helicopter. Locking on with the R-button and firing away with an RPG-missile should do the trick. And this is one of those scenarios that I love, an old-school, arcade style boss battle. That’s really the direction we wanted to move in with this entry into the series: Quick, explosive, and precisely designed to work best as a portable gaming experience. It’s really unique, and unlike anything we’ve done on a handheld before.

There’s plenty more I’d love to be able to share with you about this extraordinary game. With all of our past PSP titles from Rockstar Games hitting the PSN storefront this week, along with the launch of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, I’d love to be able to answer any of the burning questions that many of you might have. As the team said, please feel free to send over any questions you have for me and I’ll be answering as many as I can right here on the PlayStation Blog very soon.

Rich has worked on all of Grand Theft Auto’s PSP iterations thus far, so send along your CTW questions and we’ll get ’em answered.