Issue #234 introduces an unexpected subscriber benefit: alternate covers that strip away all that obnoxious article hype text. That makes this GTA: Chinatown Wars issue the first Nintendo Power cover in years to not include a giant plus sign! So grab your new collector-friendly edition and read-a-long!

Issue #234, November 2008
featuring Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Sonic Unleashed, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Avalon Code

GTA: Chinatown Wars. Nintendo Power delivers with an eight page article, including three solid pages devoted to an interview with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser. There’s plenty of screens showcasing the isometric viewpoint, cel-shaded graphics, minigames, and what looks to be comic book-styled cutscenes. Let’s begin with some phrases we don’t want the media to hear about this upcoming M-rated DS game:

• “…will have the option to sell and trade drugs around Liberty City.”
• “…the objective is to disable the police cars any way you can…”
• “By far the most outrageous and fun of the missions we played, [you must] exterminate the Jamaican gang members around the city.”

This is going to be the worst thing to hit the DS since PictoChat!

Chinatown Wars is trying to be as GTA as possible on the small screen, retaining the look and feel of the OG GTA while leveraging the featureset of the DS. As indicated by the title, this GTA focuses on the Chinatown section of Liberty City. The hero is Huang Lee, a member of the Triads. And although the game will feature “a good portion of Liberty City,” the map will not be identical to GTAIV.

The screenshots are difficult to read. Just like in the original GTA games, the onscreen people are so tiny and abstracted that it just looks like a jumbled mess of pixels. I suspect this will be much more impressive in motion.

Knowing they’re now on a portable, Rockstar has allowed mid-mission restarts should you fail, something sorely flawed in GTAIV. There will be radio stations, although NP offers that they will be mostly instrumental. At least five stylus-based minigames are listed, including one where you must trace a tattoo to a gang member’s satisfaction. Seems fine, but I’m more worried about the minigame for hotwiring a car, or the one that pops up when you sink a car in water and have to tap your way through the windshield to escape. Those sound like they could interrupt the experience if they happen too often.

In-game stats will be submitted to Rockstar’s Social Club site, which has been just barely interesting since it launched alongside GTAIV several months ago.

NP drops the DLC storage question to Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Karthik Bala of developer Vicarious Visions manages to put on a brave face. Yes, yes, you will be downloading your songs to an SD card… but you’ll still need to keep 200 blocks free on your Wii as a staging area for these tunes.

“Saving on SD cards is the way to go if you plan on downloading a lot of songs. The Wii system memory is then used as a “content cache.” This means you only need to have the free space for one song in the Wii system memory (about 200 blocks). … The game automatically transfers the song… plays the song, and deletes it when you’re done. … It all happens pretty quickly.”

So you Wii owners looking for World Tour may want to make sure you’ve got some space reserved. 200 blocks is a substantial chunk, roughly equivalent to one of the beefier N64 games. Anybody else nervous about Bala’s use of “pretty quickly”?

In slightly better news, the boss battles in GHWT will not have the power-up attacks that ruined the franchise’s credibility. But for those of you enjoyed Lefty Flip and Broken String (what’s wrong with you people?), the 2P battle mode will be much the same as in Guitar Hero III.

Bala also talks a little about Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades, a DS sequel apparently due out before the end of the year. Decades has 28 master track songs, and it will feature something referred to as “streaming songs between Decades and the original On Tour.” The interview doesn’t mention precisely what this does, but it sounds like you’ll be able to play multiplayer games across both titles by sharing songs.

Forget it. Sonic Unleashed will be just as crappy as ever. Even setting aside the Werehog thing that turns the game into “a full-blown beat-’em-up,” because that’s what we like in Sonic games (?)… there’s this troublesome hedging about the game’s alleged 2D gameplay:

“A good portion of the stages we’ve seen take place from a behind-the-back perspective (similar to Sonic and the Secret Rings or the upcoming Sonic and the Black Knight), which gives you a chance to try out some of Sonic’s new moves, such as the quick step (dodge left or right by holding B and tapping the Control Stick in the desired direction).”

Followed immediately by this:

“But with any given daytime stage, the action will shift seamlessly to a side-vewi 2-D-style perspective … as you boost on conveyor belts, slide along rails, bounces off of springboards, and collect seemingly endless streams of rings.”

Soooooo, not really a classic 2D Sonic game then? Mostly Secret Rings 3D with a camera change once he hits a loop-de-loop? If the screens of a rubber-armed monster Sonic slapping down baddies didn’t put you off this game, you may have just found your personal killswitch.

Virtual Console Staff Picks: Strong Bad Episode 1 (WiiWare), Mega Man (NES), Samurai Shodown II (NEOGEO)

Top scoring Wii review: Samba de Amigo, 9.0 (all scores out of 10)
Top scoring DS review: Kirby Super Star Ultra, 9.0
Lowest rated Wii review: NBA Live 09 All-Play, 4.0
Lowest rated DS review: Unsolved Crimes, 4.5

This was a huge month for reviews, so here’s some other notable scores: On the Wii, de Blob, Wario Land: Shake It, and the second DDR Hottest Party all received an 8.0. Poor Line Rider 2 (I guess the Flash original was Line Rider 1?) only managed a 5.0. And on the DS side, Spore Creatures, Legend of Kage 2, and Sonic Chronicles landed an 8.0. Meanwhile, Time Hollow, Viva Pinata, Lock’s Quest, and that SpongeBob version of Drawn to Life ranked at 7.0. Plus, you may want to read some more reviews before committing to either of those DS games that were pitched as having elements of Katamari Damacy in them; Prey the Stars got 5.5 and Tornado a 6.0.

Here’s one guy who doesn’t understand what “vegetarian” means: Reader Randy W. suggests that Link is a vegetarian because you never see him eat meat (except in Smash Bros), but then thinks that it’s okay for Link to drink ChuChus because “they are meant to be killed and drunk for recovery.” Ironically, that’s what some diehard meat-eaters say about chicken. Randy, if it has eyes, a truly veggie Link wouldn’t kill-and-quaff it.

Fatal Frame 4 Release Deathwatch: A sidebar article about EA working with Suda 51 on future projects does not mention Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse as one of Suda’s credits. Since this collaboration is focused on creating new horror games, wouldn’t a mention of Suda’s latest horror game make sense?

I’m So Depressed Now: Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, two of BioWare’s founders, were both practicing physicians before forming BioWare. These guys are like five years older than me, and they’ve already been both doctors and video game designers.

Next month in Nintendo Power… Well, if NP is to be believed, we shouldn’t expect any killer surprise holiday announcements from Nintendo’s presentations during Tokyo Game Show. Because the next issue teaser is all about “the season’s biggest Wii game,” Animal Crossing: City Folk. Me, I’m uber-excited, but I can understand if your mileage varies on that one. See you next month, where I make my usual gripe-joke about having to collect the Green Furniture Series again.