Chinatown Wars Online Narcotics Trafficking

Earlier today we reported that Nintendo Power had published a quote by Rockstar Leeds' president Gordon Hall. He referrs to the narcotics trafficking as "standalone" and explains that it will be tied in with the Social Club. This sounds an awful lot like an interactive narcotics market, much alike that of Drug Lord.

If this is in fact true then how will it tie in with the GTA gameplay?

Chinatown Wars "Bigger" than PSP GTA Games

Nintendo Power is has published new information on Chinatown Wars. Rockstar Leeds President, Gordon Hall explains;

Chinatown Wars is much bigger than anything we have ever done before [in terms of scope]: more odd jobs, deeper missions, and more moments of over-the-top action. We have a huge interaction with the Rockstar Social Club, a massive [narcotics trafficking] game that would stand alone on its own. The list goes on and on; this thing is huge. We are very proud of all of the PSP games we have made, especially the two GTA games, but this game is far bigger.

I for one loved GTA on the PSP and I am interested to see whether Chinatown Wars can live up to the above statement, especially since they are claiming it will be bigger than the PSP environments despite the obvious hardware limitations.

Houser Brothers pick up "Entrepreneurs" award

Gamasutra.com has compiled a list of 2008's top developers. Obviously Rockstar picked up an award; second place for "Best Industry Entrepreneurs" category.

King of Hearts: The Housers, Rockstar

Sam and Dan Houser understand what very few others in the game business have managed to perfect -- that a combination of controversy and well-executed, stylish games add up to sales gold.

Sure, one might say that Take-Two division Rockstar Games overeggs the "rebel" card, but Grand Theft Auto IV's massive initial sales -- and a robust slate of other franchises, including Bully, Midnight Club, and Max Payne -- mean that the brothers continue to power much of their parent company's buzz and profits.

Unused Screenplays Grand Theft Auto: The Movie

LatinoReview.com have released the 2008 Hollywood black list, which is a collection of 250 film executives favorite scrips that were written or somehow related to 2008, however will not be released during this calendar year. Below is Grand Theft Auto by Jason Dean Hall, which is a remake of the 1977 film "Grand Theft Auto"

GRAND THEFT AUTO by Jason Dean Hall

“Facing foreclosure on his repo yard, a young ex-con resumes a life of crime only to get blamed when his uncle’s coke deal gets hijacked. Caught in double crosses between Russian mafia, Yakuza, and the ATF, the young ex-con kidnaps a crime boss’s daughter and steals car after car on a Vegas bound suicide mission to retrieve the stolen drugs.”

AGENT Creative Artists Agency –Jay Baker, Greg McKnight

MANAGER Management 360 –Darin Friedman

UNAVAILABLE. Fox Atomic. Stuart Parr, Roger Corman, Paul Rosenberg producing.

 

No GTA for Wii

With the Nintendo DS getting Chinatown Wars there has been talk (rumours) of a possible title for the Wii. In an interview with Nintendo Power Rockstar's Dan Houser discusses why the Wii wasn't chosen for the next GTA title.

Q: It seems like a more natural progression for the series to move to Wii rather than the DS. Is there any reason why you didn’t take it there first?

A: It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we’d done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues.

Credit to Nintendo Everything for the quote.

GTA Blamed for Sex Attacks

After last weeks report that a girl had saved her family from a flipped car, thanks to GrandTheftAuto, it was only a matter of time before yet another story surfaced blaming GTA for something that really... wasn't.

The Sun is reporting that Ryan Chinnery has appeared in court following a series of 'attacks'. The 19 year old prowled streets looking for women he thought were prostitutes.

From the Sun;

He attacked his first victim under a railway bridge, pulling down her trousers and touching her breasts. A month later he dragged another woman along a path before they fell down an embankment into a river.

He fled, apologising, after three lads hauled them out. The third victim was attacked as she walked home from work. Chinnery grabbed her arms and only let go as a man approached.

He struck the woman on the ear before running off.

Chinnery's most serious attack came when he seized a 42-year-old woman round the throat. She broke an arm as they toppled down a bank, but he made her remove her clothing, sexually assaulted her, and performed a sex act on himself.

Prosecutor Eleanor Laws said Chinnery's love of Grand Theft Auto "may go some way to explaining his attitude towards women". She said: "Prostitutes in it can be subjected to violence".  "There may be some connection with the defendant admitting spending a lot of time playing that game.".

To be honest I'd say over the years I've racked up a fair few hours of play-time on various GTA titles but can't recall going on any prostitute hunts; So is GTA to blame? One look at the photo gives me all the evidence I need...

Chinatown Wars Details Leaked

UGO has an interesting post talking about Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars; information that was aparently leaked via a user survey. Despite Rockstar's Chinatown Wars announcement a little under a month ago we haven't heard anything "official" about the upcoming Nintendo DS exclusive. It should be noted that the below information is not from Rockstar and merely speculation.

Aparently the game is played from the perspecive of "an outsider navigating the criminal underworld of a major city". As the player you control "a young gang soldier involved in the internal power struggle for control of his gang".

There are also rumoured to be four different game modes including a racing game mode, as well as a co-operative play mode. There will be 20+ hours of gameplay spanning 70+ missions with stylus-based gameplay for assembling sniper rifles, smashing locks and hotwiring cars.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who hopes every car doesn't require some form of manual-labour with the stylus, suffice to say Rockstar do have a knack for getting the right balance of realism so I shall let them handle the playability!

The UGO article has since been removed so special thanks to Kotaku for keeping the details alive.