GRAND THEFT AUTO: EPISODES From LIBERTY CITY -REVIEW (XBOX360)

Nothing is quite as good as a Grand Theft Auto game for blowing off steam. It’s almost TOO good for blowing off steam; so much so that I often find myself blowing off the missions. I usually end up finishing a couple at the beginning and just spend the rest of the time going on rampages. I find that in GTA, you need to go through a bunch of exceptionally easy/basic missions, and then a bunch of hard/frustrating missions before you arrive at the really fun missions where you get to blow lots of things up. Well, those with low attention spans REJOICE! Now you can get both GTA4 expansions on one disc known as Episodes from Liberty City, and since the two games are basically mini-GTAs you’re sure to get to the action much quicker.

Pros

If there’s one thing that made me really dislike GTA4, it was the fact that Rockstar removed a lot of awesome content that we had in San Andreas… Like several weapons and the ability to skydive. Well, Episodes from Liberty City makes up for both of those things; you just have to pay more this time around. First off, the weapons. In Lost and Damned you get possibly the most fun sawed-off shotgun of all time, pipe bombs (glorified grenades), pool cues, grenade launchers, assault shotguns, and automatic 9mms. With the exception of the sawed-off, none of these weapons really blew me away (pun intended). In Ballad of Gay Tony, however, you get some fantastic gear. You get advanced versions of the pistol, sniper rifle, SMG, and assault rifle. On top of that, you can get a shotgun with explosive rounds that can turn vehicles into exploding swiss cheese, sticky bombs (which beats pipe bombs by a landslide), and to top it off a golden SMG. Oh, and did I mention that you can parachute in Gay Tony? With all of these weapons combined, you end up having a massive arsenal that completely makes up for the loss of content GTA suffered between San Andreas and GTA4, and using all of them  on Liberty City’s unsuspecting populace gives new meaning to the word “rampage”.

This paragraph is dedicated to an element I would only consider a pro for Lost and Damned. I really dug the story in LaD; more than I’ve liked any story in a GTA game for awhile. Maybe that’s because bikers are awesome, but I think there’s more to it than that. For one, you feel more attached to the characters because you’re all in the same group. That, and the characters are just interesting. Jim makes for a perfect loyal, best friend-type character. But the one who REALLY shines is Billy, the president of the club who constantly bickers with your character about how the gang should be run. He’s gruff, mean, and possesses an unusually extensive vocabulary… He even invites a guy from a rival gang to participate in a “libation” before shooting him in the head. Anyway, I think Lost and Damned’s story is the best that GTA has seen in years, and that makes Lost and Damned very worthwhile indeed.

Since the last paragraph was dedicated to Lost and Damned, why not highlight one of Ballad of Gay Tony’s good points in this one? Gay Tony is all about the missions. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll parachute off the tallest building in Liberty City, drive around in a car with a tank full of nitro, and steal an unstoppable tank and destroy so much police property that they decide to leave you alone. If Lost and Damned surprised me with its gripping story, Ballad of Gay Tony hooked me with some amazing missions that really made me remember the downside of just going on rampages all the time.

Cons

The good points that I mentioned about both expansions are mirrored by the bad; Lost and Damned’s missions fall short of being tons of fun, and I just couldn’t get into Ballad of Gay Tony’s story. On top of Gay Tony’s less likable characters (except for Yusuf who is awesome), some of the extra content ends up being pretty lame. For one, the club management side-missions basically involve wandering around a club for a few minutes, finding and throwing out a drunk, and getting some random mission where you have to drive somewhere… Not what I imagined when I first caught wind of “Club Management”. Another disappointing aspect of Gay Tony is the dancing minigame, which is boring, too simple, and mind-numbingly easy. Other than that, though, I can’t find many bad things to say about Gay Tony; the rest of the missions are pure GTA goodness.

One thing I’d like to point out about the expansions is that they’re missing the REALLY hard missions. Though I had a little trouble with a couple of missions in Lost and Damned, I do detect an overall lack of challenge in both LaD and BoGT. Usually I’m one to shy away from games that make me want to break my controller against the nearest available surface, but these expansions never even make me half that frustrated. Oh well; at least there are the gang/drug wars, which eventually throw so many enemies at you that it’s very hard -not- to feel challenged; but couldn’t we have had that level of difficulty in the missions as well? Maybe just a fraction?

Here’s the deal

It would be a tougher call for me to endorse getting these if they existed only as downloadable content for GTA 4 (because GTA 4 wasn’t as good) but since they’re also available on a disc of their own I highly recommend them. Lost and Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony come much closer to what I envisioned for what would come after San Andreas, and though they have clearly visible flaws when apart they’re a powerhouse when taken together. Back to back they’re not QUITE as long as GTA4 is on its own, but the gang/drug wars and races should keep you entertained long after all the missions are finished. Mike D. 9/10

~ by consolecreatures on November 15, 2009.