I'm currently stranded with a PSP, so I've decided to try GTA Chinatown Wars, the one glaring gap in my GTA resume. At first it feels like a throwback to the first games with its pseudo top-down perspective (it's actually fully 3D, the perspective mainly serving to hide the nonexistant draw distance), but it's far closer to the 3D era games and GTA 4. The map is actually the GTA 4 Liberty City minus one island, which is an impressive technical achievement given this game was also on the DS. I feel it's way too intricate and busy for this kind of game, though. The early top-down GTAs gave you a lot of room with its wide streets(even if you could barely see in front of you), not so much here. Riding a bike is for masochists only. Racing collect-a-thons, taxi missions and so on are considerably harder. You're also too dependent on the mini-map and GPS, which I don't like. Looking at the full map, which in the other games could be achieved simply by pausing, here requires you to navigate menus, which is rather inconvenient. Since I'm playing on a real PSP with a disc, I spend a lot of time doing this.
The main innovation seems to be the drug selling mechanic. There are various drugs like heroin, acid, ecstasy, etc. that you can buy and sell from dealers. A certain dealer will sell heroin at a discount and buy acid at a premium, for example. This is the only way to make real money in the game, as the missions pay about as much as selling your school's newspaper to the neighbours. This is a cool mechanic for a little while, it's certainly more fun than the extra activities in GTA 4, but it's way too casual. Supply and demand is fixed, some routes are optimal and can turn fantastic profits for little risk. I went from being broke to having nearly 100,000 in a couple of hours, which should last me for the entire game(if I don't buy every house), so at least it doesn't overstay its welcome.
I still need to play more missions, but it's basically what you'd expect from a GTA from the era. I like the characters even if the edginess is a little too try-hard. Rampages are back and that's cool. For a GTA it should definitely be more popular, it's a rather fun game, but I'd still place it below the Stories games and the main entries(except 5, of course).