Finally bit the bullet and bought this gem (and yes, I know it's been out for a long time). What an amazing game! I can't stop playing it. Well worth the $10 price tag, in my opinion. It wastes a lot of my day. I'm a teacher and I am constantly awaiting a prep period to play a few missions. Man, this is great.
Just beat the game and I absolutely loved it. Great story, ending Spoiler shocked me. Controls were really great and graphics were excellent, even better then the PSP and DS versions. Even after completing the story, buying all the safehouses, completing several taxi, police, and ambulance missions, and helping out random people, I've only finished about 60% of the game. What else do I have left? The unique stunt jumps? I've finished only 7/30 of those. What else besides that? Should I just keep doing more police and ambulance missions?
Chinatown Wars HD for $2.99! Not sure if this is a mistake that will be corrected soon, or legit, but myself, and a few others I know just snatched this for $2.99. Get it while its hot.
For controls, the PSP version can't be beat in my opinion. However, I played the iphone demo of this game and didn't care for it. And I consider the ipad version my favorite version of the game (having owned the DS and PSP versions, and played it on iphone). Controls in general are better on ipad, though that may be because of the larger size of everything. And it looks fantastic, like the PSP version rendered perfectly to a laptop monitor. Easy integration of music from your library (make a playlist called GTA and there you go) from the radio is a plus. Controls are fine, but driving takes some getting used to. That said, driving was a bit touchy even on the DS and PSP anyway, so the brief learning curve isn't too severe. I highly recommend at this price (3 bucks for a game I bought twice at like $29.99 and again at $9.99? A steal!).
I'd agree that the controls are better on iPad than iTouch because of the size. I have both versions. That said I've also played this on my DSi and in direct comparison, driving is definitely harder with touch buttons. However it didn't take me too long to pick it up. There is a ton of content in the game too, so for $3 you can spend many hours even if you only play the story missions and ignore the entire drug trading minigame, stunt locations, and so on.
I noticed the price drop this morning on my way out. I purchased this way back when it came out and I have to say it is one of my favorite App Store purchases. If you don't have it yet you are crazy not to purchase it for $2.99. The discription says the sale goes until Sunday July 31.
I think this game is worth the 2.99 just for the dope wars mini game included! Also it displays very well on the iPhone 4
Have they fixed the atmosphere and voices issue? Liberty City sounded super quiet in the iOS version compared to any other version of GTA.
Damnit. I did an in-App purchase from the lite version. I thought I'd get auto-rights to the paid one like on XBLA. Not the case. Now I've got the lite app sitting here staring at me. I hate not knowing if it'll charge me again for in-app if I delete and reinstall.
Controls are terrible. Maybe not for an iOS game, but the PSP version is the definitive version. It's the only version of this game that truly plays the way the game was intended. Put it this way. There were numerous missions fairly early in the iOS version that took many, many, many attempts for me to beat them. Certain missions were taking 30 mins or more. Timed driving missions seemed virtually impossible. On the PSP version, I beat every single one of those missions on the first attempt. The difference in terms of playably between the PSP version and iOS version is night and day. The DS version has less screen to work with then the PSP, worse graphics and the mini games actually work better without a touch screen.
