Remy said:I've clocked about half an hour, so perhaps I can give some quickly impressions:
Graphically, it's amazingly smooth. On par with the footage I've seen of the PSP version. My only problem has been that since I tend to keep my iPhone at near minimum brightness, I occasionally can't see much of anything. Easily fixed, though.
Control wise - the virtual buttons work pretty well. When you're on foot, there's an analog control stick on the left and three buttons (punch/kick/jump) on the right. Driving gives you a set of left/right buttons on the left and gas/brake/shoot on the right. Contextual buttons appear when you near things (the in/out of car button is center bottom, searching dumpsters or talking to drug dealers is a little notification popup). Interface wise, it's very close to the DS version - the GPS is really easy to use, as is most of the stuff in the hideout. All the mini games from the DS version are there.
Load times are pretty good. From springboard to being inside the apartment, I clocked it at 9 seconds on my 3GS. I'm still trying to suss out how the save system works exactly - it looks like it's auto-saving after mission completion, but if you have to drop out of the app mid-mission it looks like you'll lose your progress.
So based on about an hour of play, it's got the performance of the PSP version with the control benefits of the DS version. Easily worth $10 given how much the PSP version costs.
Thanks for the impressions.
I'm sure the game plays well, but I've never played GTA Chinatown Wars, and was curious about the game itself. Is it really VERY much like GTA?
Perspnally, I've only liked GTA3 out of all the ones I've played, and mostly because it was mind blowing at the time. I liked the sandbox style of play with amusing missions. I liked having that feel of being in a 'real' world. San Andreas and GTAIV were obviously a lot better, but I didn't play them as extensively, I just liked messing about and murdering people.