There's still a distinct style there, sure, but it has a less clear visual identity than, say, Saints Row. From GTA 3 on, the series has presented its cities as pretty realistic.
There's just something more toy-like and playful about it, like you're sowing chaos across a big diorama.Ī rotatable camera made it feel like an evolution rather than just more of what we'd seen in GTA 1 and 2, but the real growth came from the art style. GTA 3's change to third-person shooter was obviously the right move for the series, but Chinatown Wars gave us a glimpse of how the series could have developed if it had stuck to the old ways.
It wasn't until I picked up Chinatown Wars for my DS in 2009 that I realised how much I missed the top-down perspective of the original GTAs.