Developer – Rockstar Games
Publisher – Take-Two Interactive
Available on – Xbox 360

If you were like me and thought that Grand Theft Auto IV was the biggest disappointment of 2008 (if not your life), then it may be useful that you can obtain both expansion packs on a disk, thus allowing you to play them without the accursed original disk to GTAIV that you traded in at your earliest convenience. The two Xbox 360 (timed) exclusive DLC packs add approximately eight hours each to your game-play and both follow new characters instead of Niko from the original title. The Lost and the Damned (tLatD) follows Johnny Klebitz, a prominent member of one of Liberty Cities Motorcycle gangs, The Lost MC. The Ballad of Gay Tony follows the story of Luis Lopez, right hand man to the owner of both Liberty Cities most popular gay and straight nightclubs.

The Lost and the Damned contains 22 story missions in which you try to keep the motorcycle gang running it’s various income sources (mostly heroin related) and continuing the virtues of freedom of expression and bad-assery whilst following the orders of the recently paroled leader of the Lost, Billy Grey. Over the year that Billy has been in prison Johnny has set up a truce with the rival gang to ensure peace, continued survival and profit. Billy quickly destroys this truce and the resulting gang war is the basis for the rest of the campaign. Whilst GTA IV was not a technically lacking game, tLatD has not improved any of the games mechanics or features. The realistic controls of GTA IV (in comparison to Saints Row) coupled with the extensive use of motorbikes causes spending any amount of time driving between or during missions to be very difficult and often cause the failure of a mission. Failing missions is the main reason this expansion reaches eight hours, retrying missions over and over again is not an uncommon occurrence and it made tLatD a very tedious and un-enjoyable experience for at least one gamer. With that in mind I’m still aware that a large number of people consider this expansion the better of the two, which is not my opinion, so it all comes down to whether you think you can empathize with a whiny Harley-rider (aka FAG).

The Ballad of Gay Tony on the other hand was the silver lining on the gray cloud that was GTA IV for me. It contains 25 story missions with a much larger range of objectives. Some minor mechanics/features have been improved, such as the radar on helicopters, which helps to freshen up the UI. Unlike the other two parts to GTA IV the story is not only easy to follow but genuinely interested me and intrigued me to continue. A lot more of the characters from the original game appear, some of them more prominently then others, although there was a considerable change to one character that didn’t seem to fit with the original time-line. The missions are in no way repetitive and many interesting (although somewhat single-serving) features have been thrown into them, such as a golf driving range, climbing along the top of a train etc. As well as side-activities such as underground fighting tournaments, Base jumping and visiting either of Tony’s nightclubs to participate in drinking or dancing mini-games. The game is considerably less difficult to its’ previous expansion and it’s not until close to the end that re-attempting missions becomes an issue. Overall I would recommend trying tBoGT over tLatD if you were only to try one but definitely muscle through tLatD first if you have “Episodes of Liberty City” as some of the missions from tLatD reappear from the other perspective in tBoGT.

Most of the issues I had with these expansions where issues that I had with the original game. The movement controls are quite difficult. It’s almost impossible to find somewhere to buy food to heal. Ammo doesn’t replenish when you retry a mission after dying. Money can be quite scarce if you spend to much on weapons and ammo that don’t get used effectively or for mucking around with. Both games left me feeling better on completion then GTA IV did but I definitely could have survived without ever having played tLatD. If you loved GTA IV then you probably already downloaded these as they released, but if you hated it as much as I did then if you can find this cheap enough it’s certainly an experience that shouldn’t be missed lightly, as it’s not going to give you as much enjoyment as Saints Row 2 does but it’s definitely going to take away some of the pain of GTA IV.

Episodes from Liberty City

70%

The Good -

• Creates availability to expansions without original/terrible game
• The Ballad of Gay Tony
• Appropriate expansion story length
• Works perfectly into existing story and contains lots of cameos.

The Bad -

• The Lost and the Damned
• A lot of basic issues from GTA IV