Ever since Rockstar reinvented its Grand Theft Auto franchise with 2001’s threequel, the word most associated with series -- aside from, er, violent, controversial and fun – has been ‘big’. GTA III offered the then-biggest ever city sandbox while San Andreas ballooned to cover an entire state. GTA IV was somewhat smaller geographically, but content-wise it was the biggest yet.

Well, Rockstar has now thrown it into reverse and shrunk Liberty City down to fit onto a Nintendo DS – though Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is still one of the largest portable games ever made.

Just as the recent "Lost & Damned" expansion explored LC’s biker scene, so does GTA: CTW look deeper into the series’ peripheral Triad criminal culture. You play as Huang Lee, a spoiled gangster’s brat sent to America to deliver your murdered dad’s ancient sword to your “moody and power-crazed uncle with a penchant for exotic pornography and impersonating people from kung-fu films.” (Did I mention you prolly shouldn't leave the game in your kid’s DS?) Needless to say, shit goes awry. You get ambushed, the sword gets stolen and you’ve got to do a bunch of jobs to get back in the good graces of your uncle and the ruling Triad.

The game’s structure is split between the dual screens – the stylized anime-esque cut-scenes play out on the bottom touch screen while the upper offers an isometric top-down perspective that’s a knowing throwback to the first two games from the late-90s. The DS is no graphical powerhouse, yet the cell-shaded presentation still boasts Rockstar’s flair for the cinematic and the city feels almost as alive as in GTA IV. Same goes for the soundtrack, which can’t obviously hold as much music as a now-gen game but does wonders with its Chinese-inspired radio stations.

Rockstar also made some improvements, including a save-anywhere PDA and a “skip trip” function saving you drive time when re-doing missions, which should be incorporated into GTA IV right away.In fact, even not taking into account this is Rockstar’s first foray onto the DS, this is a monumental achievement in portable gaming. It’s not perfect—the narrative ambition has been downgraded and the touch-screen controls are flawed since you can’t really play with stylus in hand.

But rather than emulating a console game, Chinatown Wars offers a unique and immensely entertaining portable experience that doesn't succeed despite the DS’s low-tech but because of the creativity and ingenuity used to transcend it.