You're arousing suspicion!

The PSP console controls for this really, really aggravating puzzle are worse than normal. You can tell by the unusually large number of snarky fanboys who'll gleefully tell you they beat it the first time they tried. Yeah, right.

I'm ready to give it a rest. Found all the dealers, all the security cameras, all the blue swirls, and made my second million euros, but I can't beat this grumble. Maybe I'll be back around Christmas...

Dragon Haul ZzzzZZZAP!

The Nintendo DS version of this mission was enough to tie your dodger dog in knots but the PSP edition shall we say...(caff caff)...suffers from excessively mediocre knurly button clotpoll glombongle raving stickleback saxifrage garglebark, or, iow, goes north when you shoulda gone south fuming loon buckle... AAAAAAARRRGGGGHHH!

Mel Bytes The Fuss

GTA CW on the PSP gives you two extra Chan Jaoming missions, bookends for three extra Melanie Mallard missions.  The final cutscene is a bit moody, as though it weren't all sound and fury, nothing signifying, after all.  Nice touch, R*.  A bit like class, almost.



Melanie, Marcy and Cherie could be sisters.  Hmmm...  Same voice actress playing three different roles? My guess is either Meg Ryan or Theda Bara.

I found a curious glitch in the second Wade Heston mission. If you fail to stay on the tail of the Korean car, and take your time restarting the mission, Wade demands his "2 bags of coke" ... which you've got, and brought with you twice now. The game founders, Titanic-like, on a floating impasse. A message comes up saying you still need 64491 bags of coke. (Bear in mind, 50 is your carry limit!) O-kaaay....

You get two more bags from the usual sources, to no avail. Wade still thinks you're stiffing him, the game remains stymied, and the message rather snidely comments that you still need 0 more bags of coke. Yes, zero more bags! Wow, simultaneous Tea and No Tea, anyone? I guess the lesson is, always use more than one Save slot, so you have a way to Restore.

The Unseen Hand of Ling Shan

In GTA: Chinatown Wars, Ling Shan is the short-lived weapons master who trains the newbie (you) on a few killer moves.  It's a bit of a bummer that she gets rubbed out so soon.^‡

Even so, the entire game feels her overfluttering presence.  Ling has stashed weapons in the red dumpsters scattered all over Liberty City, so everything you need in the manslaughter department comes, free like beer, out of Ling Shan's playfully filial foreviolence.

There's lots of dumpsters. It's a chore to find all the red ones^&dagger — some GTA players consider dumpster diving a fun mini-game, but the unbalanced few who tumble early to the fact that dumpsters, if and only if they're red, always spawn the same kind of weapon make it a full-scale mission to classify the diversity of available mayhem in each location.

Green dumpsters by contrast have interesting or allegedly comic contents, no telling which; otherwise no connection to plot or Ling Shan. The green ones do sometimes contain small neatly-wrapped packages of incidental pharmacopoeia dumped there by panicked dealers on the lam, one supposes.

^‡R* cell-shaded Ling Shan on tons of promotional advertising before CW was finally released to the North American market IRL...then, ungratefully, killed her off in Act One, Scene Two. She was, in other words, a virtual objectification of a purely fictional character in an alternate universe that exists only in the minds of fourteen-year-olds boys playing a game rated M. Magritte a un mal de tête...

^†GTA scholarship being what it is, the exact locations of all those red dumpsters is a matter of closely guarded handwaving — "Dude, they're in alleys everywhere!" — but so far, I've only found enough of them to fill my Favorites list with red stars (cf. the 110% perfectly accurate IGN map here).

GTA: Random and Incoherent and Darwin

It occurred to me this morning that I've never read Charles Darwin's Origin of Species from cover to cover. That's because, though I worship Darwin dearly, it's boring. When I tried to read Voyage of the Beagle under the misapprehension that it's the kid's version of evolution, I fell asleep in Argentina. Now that I'm old, I realize that we've got people to do those jobs, and life is short.

In a connect-the-dots sort of way, I suppose there's even a plausible pathway that leads from Darwin to Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, but only in the sense that maybe it would have been better to see the PSP version before the NDS version. There are evolutionary lessons to be learned. E.g., the PSP has only a vestigial scratch card interface, because you no longer have a DS stylus to scratch with (or a DS microphone to blow away the scratch crumbs). That's evolutionary! Graphics are cooler though. Maybe. And the PSP game has Melanie Mallard, sort of an Archaean revolution in its own right.

_{Melanie's Theme seems vaguely reminiscent of Gerudo's Theme from Ocarina of Time. Unfortunately, she gets blown away in her last mission, so Rockstar has missed a substantial bet for the future. They do these things for the gratuitous shock value, but life is no game either, I suppose. Hence: Darwin. But I hate R* for killing off Ling in her second appearance!}

Update: 12/23 Finally got past Raw Deal...!

Busted!

Don't get busted, get wasted^† instead. Nobody confiscates your stash or weapons that way, and your medical bills are a pittance of the bribe you have to pay the cops to overlook this little contretemps.  Ain't no get out of jail free card, foo, what you talkin'?

Security cameras are a hoot. They hide in plain sight, and you can't believe you were so zoned you never saw them the first time. I've only found 23 out of 100, so far.

^†Best way is to immolate yourself in a Molotov firestorm, always works.

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Update: BUGS There seems to be a glitch or two in the Nintendo DS vision of Grand Theft Auto, e.g., I've found 73 out of 80 "traders" (drug dealers) according to the stats, but there are 80 dots on my little in-game map. Makes sense: NO CREDIT. But it's annoying. My enthusiasm is waning fast...

Hmmmm... I can't count it seems. Got all 80 drug dealers ("traders") and the Titanium Briefcase. Yup, they're all there, all right. Sorry 'bout that. Right now, I'm chasing one million virtual bucks... halfway there.

Blue Suitcase Blues

Finally made it through the rigors of Wheelman and Tricks of the Triad, so fait accompli. But scratch cards still seem easier than drug dealing. Found the gun club, found the rhino, found the jetski and the rampage on a pedestrian overpass, got 16 safehouses (and learned to envy the iPhone graphics for this DS game), learned to toss a Molotov cocktail, watched Marcy muff her big chance and helped Alonso on his quixotic quest, awarded the Golden Binoculars and the Wooden Spoon. A whopping 23.95% complete, and for a' that must've missed a turn somewhere. No idea which plot thread to follow, the game is wide open. Choices, choices...

Metaphysical question of the day: Is a GAME worse than, say, Nagasaki? I don't think so. If you play the game, you begin to notice the scathingly sarcastic satire on urban blight, private upscale utopias and drive by souls that notice nothing wrong.

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On a nonce equitorial note, I notice that Argentina has joined Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and many others, European and Asian — in recognizing Palestine within its 1967 borders.

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"Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow." — sig seen at Slashdot

GTA Chinatown Wars: How to set a player-defined waypoint

Figure 1. North Holland

Short answer? Tap the map. If that doesn't do it for you, read on.

GTA Chinatown Wars features a global positioning system (GPS), which can be toggled on and off, and which can be used to drive along plotted routes to known (or discovered) destinations — or to places on the map which the player has never been to. (No driving in water; you need to find a boat.) You can also mark a place and "add it to your Favorites."

Well, dudette, it ain't that simple if you've just picked up the game and slotted it into your DS. After hours of playing time, I can report that all that promised stuff is possible. I've done it. What I can't say is exactly how I did it! For some reason, it gets confusing...

So, its a project with me. I'll try to identify all the widgets and whatsits involved, and how to use them. E.g., in the bottom window, bottom left, we see the Radio Tuner. This goes from the BL corner right to the Helicopter Camera toggle. The radio is only active when you are in a car, as is the helicopter view camera. The three icons to the right of the radio are Brief, Email, and Stats. Tapping the About button (upper right corner, looks like a cameltoe) reveals that I am playing Version 534 of the Badger OS, which probably explains why my email and stats buttons look slightly different from Figure 1.

Ignore the gun and grenades icons, and also the cash on hand dollar amount. Throwing a grenade, Molotov cocktail, bundle of dynamite, etc. is explained during one of the missions. The numbers under the gun seem to reveal the amount of available ammo divided among available clips.

If you are just starting the game, the cash on hand will be close to zero. You need to slavishly follow the story line to get a little cash ahead. After that, your options open up somewhat. Short of drug dealing (you'll need to complete a particular mission to activate that), your cash options are: murdering pedestrians (or picking up stray cash on the street left over from muggings or hit-and-runs), rampages at various places around the city, the deadly-deadly HoboTron on Colony Island, and Scratch Cards.

I recommend Scratch Cards if you have the patience for them; there is no house percentage, unless technically the house is You. The best card, IMHO, is Liberty Lotto, which pays off $10, $100 or $1000 — and the $1000 amount always seems to pay off eventually. With a stake no larger than $250, you can work your way up to $15,000 or more, doubling every 20 to 40 minutes. The green I'm Rich card has a three house payoff, which cab bet you a fancy uptown safehouse. After that, the best it can yield is a $200 payoff — the house icons can't match after the first hit.

The date and time display in the middle of the top edge show game time, not real time. There is also a WiFi connection display just left of the About button, top-right.

There are two ways to get to GPS. Either tap the "radar screen" (round map) with your stylus, or click the PDA button, then click GPS. They both take you to the same global positioning screen, i.e., the entire bottom panel replaced by a map view and many controls.

Clicking the top-left-ish yellow i button ("information") sprinkles this panel liberally with circled yellow question marks. Since we are trying to get information about PLAYER-DEFINED WAYPOINTS, pay close attention to the Help on the top left, and far bottom right.

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When the top-left Help says, "Touching this button will center the map on your current position or your GPS destination," the or mentioned here is the exclusive or (L. vel), meaning EITHER your position (Star Trek emblem) OR your GPS destination (the green checkered flag)! Also note that what this button does is CENTER THE MAP — it does not define a waypoint! It toggles between current position and destination each time you tap it, and centers the map. That's all it does.

That's a big hint about Waypoints, and here's another: Suffice to say, it's possible to drop a checkered flag, a "player-defined waypoint," anywhere on the map. It seems to take a double (or triple, or quadruple) tap of the stylus, but after that the path to your destination is marked on your radar screen (and also on the top panel, depending on your PDA settings.) I don't know what causes the delay. Persist.

Once you've got a "player-defined waypoint," examine the Star icon on the left edge of your GPS screen. Your waypoint is listed! Click the blue question mark to add your waypoint to Favorites. From there, you can select it like any other destination with a charted route; or you can delete any Favorite if you feel so inclined. This ad hoc waypoint will vanish when you reach your destination, if you don't save it.

You may also tap any object on the map — such as a blue or green house icon — for a charted route.

The astute reader may notice some details I've glossed over — how to erase a waypoint without going through the Favorites overhead, for example. I suspect toggling the GPS on/off, but I'm sure there's more to discover.

So, meanwhile... Hope that helps!

Figure 2. The Statue of Happiness, on Happiness Island (where else?)

Addendum: In Re Cop Cars

Cop cars have good handling. They corner very well. Good on acceleration and speed. Drive a cop car. The horn button toggles your siren. Select gives you cop radio. If you screw up while masquerading as fuzz and accidentally commit vehicular homicide, any regular cops nearby will probably give you a pass on that. Pretty subjective, I know. BTW, if you act like a bongslacker the cops gang up fast. I took out four or five patrol cars (not counting the one I was in) and still had five on me at the bust. U rok, GTA!

Objet trouvé: Message in a Bottleneck

"Hit Start when you're back on the streets, then go to System, then arrow left to New Game."

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Synopsis Sophomore Jet Li meets Hymon Roth and gets pixelated for tiny screen. Space opera without up. Campbell's condensed car chases. I Love Lucy Liu, without Lucy Liu. Crouching hidden tiger dragon bobbleheads. No discernible sex. The nightmare everyone's had, helpless and lost in a maze of unfamiliar streets in an unrecognizable city. (Oh, sure, the minotaur you hear creeping up on you is your own beating heart, but we'll leave that for Psych 102.)

I can usually tell in 15 minutes whether I'll like a particular game, but Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars had me groping for the reset button in 15 seconds. This sucks! How do I start over!!?? Where's my @$%#! INVENTORY??!! Where's the REAL instruction manual?? Universal experience, evidently, getting sucked into profanity. Is there nothing to like?

First, I like the Chinatown angle, not so much the Chop Socky ethnic cliches. Second, I think it's odd that nobody talks about the game, only about the game interface — the controls are hidden, but complete, maybe (where's that inventory?!) No hand holding! Is there a conspiracy of silence, or is everyone just reamed out about how thick this load really is? My theory is, Rockstar deliberately chose a 1980's style of human interface guidelines to filter out intelligent young adults with modern expectations, before they're propositioned by the allegedly ubiquitous hookers.

I suspect this Nintendo DS money loser (released 2009) may be trading on its pennyweight of infamy on other platforms.

But wottheheck... I got GTA: Chinatown Wars for $5 less than zero, on trade-in at Video Games Etc., so we'll see. As Alexander Pope said, nobody breaks a butterfly on a wheel. But I wonder, what's the attraction? Obviously, a guy thing... (What is this "female demographic" of which you speak?)

The trope is simple. Anarchy destroys itself. Power abhors a vacuum. If there is no khan, the strong devour the weak. To preserve his own hide, a khan must rise and establish hegemony — to extend the benefits of law as widely as possible. War is lawless. War is fought to decide who gets to lay down the law. Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Huang Lee's lost treasure is a fake heirloom sword, Yu Jian, stolen by thugs who killed his father. Huang must retrieve it, and give it meaning. Is Yu Jian worth dying for? Is revenge? To make a real heirloom out of worthless junk, Huang must build order in Liberty City's anarchy, starting Kung Fu-like within himself.

Lotsa verbiage for an urban burn shootout...