Forum:Chinatown Wars for iPhone

About the upcoming release of GTA Chinatown Wars for the iPhone. First of all, do people think that it's going to be the full game, or a downgraded version? If it IS the full game, do you think it would have the stuff that was added in the PSP version, or just be the same as the Nintendo DS version? I have played Chinatown Wars on my friend's DS, and I don't like it much, but I would still like to play it, and the iPhone being the only one of the three platforms that I own, it would be for that (I'm not going to buy a DS or PSP for one (weak) game).

However, I have a few issues with how it might work on the iPhone. First of all, screen space. The DS version takes advantage of the second screen, making it Huang's PDA, holding the radar and stuff like that. I can't imagine squashing the radar in on a single screen, as well as controls (the iPhone having no buttons). My idea is that Rockstar could completely remove the radar, and just take advantage of the top-screen GPS from the DS version that shows the GPS directly on the road.

As for controls, the touch screen mini games will return (having been replaced by buttons on the PSP version), and weapon selection could be the same as on the DS (touching the picture of the current weapon to bring up the weapon selection menu, pausing the game in the mean time), just squashed onto the game play screen. On screen controls (like a d-pad) like in other iPhone games can be horrible, as you can't feel the buttons and can often make mistakes (especially if they are too small because they're squashed on to the screen), so my brother had a good idea that the d-pad could be replaced with the motion sensing capabilities of the iPhone, turn the phone to turn the car/protagonist. This can be hard to control, but is probably better than an on-screen d-pad, and you could get used to it. The other buttons ("run/accelerate", "jump/brake", "enter/exit car" and "shoot" can then be (untraditional) spread around the screen edges to be used by both thumbs (along with other stuff like the weapon selection button), not close together so that it's not easy to make mistakes, or they don't cover too much game area.

Whatever they did on the PSP version about the PDA (only having one screen) they would have to do again, did they have a button to open it or something? Does anyone else have any thoughts about any of this, or any of your own ideas? Thanks!