f you read the name "Car Jack Streets" and think "Grand Theft Auto," you're exactly right. This is an ambitious, if not wholly original, clone of the popular sandbox car-stealing design by Rockstar, shrunken down to portable size and made into a digital download. Fans of last year's incredibly well-realized DS debut for that series, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, could easily find their next fix here courtesy of "cover band" developer Tag Games.
Car Jack Streets places you in the role of Randal, a small-time criminal with a big-time debt -- he owes over a million dollars to a local mob boss and will be hunted down and killed if he doesn't make timely payments of at least $50,000 per week to keep the hitmen's guns holstered. This is Car Jack's novel feature, though -- the "per week" is actually real-time, not some accelerated in-game clock. This game is intended to be played a little each day, as you turn on your DSi, play a couple of missions, earn a few thousand and keep on target to hit the $50,000 mark every seven real-world days. It's an inventive idea, and one perfectly suited to the pick-up-and-play strengths of the DSiWare format.
The gameplay is just as you'd expect from a GTA clone, most similar to the first Grand Theft Auto from 1997 or Chinatown Wars, in that everything's viewed from above. You shoot people up, steal cars, gamble and rock out to the radio while cruising around the decently-sized city, advancing through the storyline little by little. The control works well, the game looks great (with solid 3D effects), the sound is spot-on and it just gets the GTA vibe right all around.
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