More crazyiness = more fun
GTA4 second downloadable content is The Ballad of Gay Tony and my oh my was it a fun Ballad. I really enjoyed this content much much more than the lost and damned. Like many other reviews say, it goes back to the San Andreas feel of having the player do a lot of crazy things which was why many people were disappointed that GTA4 didn't have much of that. TBoGT takes care of those people even though the plot lays a little thin.
The story is somewhat simple. You play as Luis Lopez upcoming businessman who has spent time in jail for selling drugs. Luis works with Tony, a gay businessman who owns several clubs. But the clubs aren't doing well so Tony has taken loans from mobs and are getting into even worse problems. This leads them through numerous adventures of them helping people, stealing diamonds and all that. The story is weakest of the GTA4 series but thats not to say its horrible. I was still engaged in the story and what happens to the diamonds (since they kept popping up in Niko' storyline and Johnny's storyline) since they finally show here what happens. What made the story so engrossing is the characters you meet and work with, they are the most interesting characters in the GTA4 universe and are very entertaining. If you need to justify on spending the extra $20 its to see the characters.
With such lively characters it leads to lively missions and they are they lively. Right from the get-go you are shooting up all over Liberty City and you begin to use a lot of choppers, tanks and jump off a bunch of places for some base jumping. All of this is extremely fun especially all the base jumping. Controlling the chopper at first is a little hard but in the end you start get used to it. They have also added new weapons most notably the auto shotgun with explosive rounds which became my favorite weapon and they give a lot of ammo so you tear up anything in your way. Since clubs are a new feature there are club minigames like dancing with girls, drinking games and managing clubs to kick out annoying people. All of these are nice minigames in between all the missions. Also each mission now has certain targets to meet so you can compare to other players using Rockstar's social club and see how you fare on certain missions. You can do all these missions again to get better scores. They also added stranger missions which i really enjoy. It looks like this is something of a norm in Rockstar games since it was heavily used in Red Dead Redemption.
I must also say that more music on certain channels have been added. I really like all the dance music, a genre i don't know much about. The music they had set the mood to the game.
Gamers who miss the San Andreas style GTA will feel right at home with Ballad of Gay Tony. If you enjoy sandbox games all the downloadable content that has come out for GTA4 should not be missed. I really hope in Red Dead Redemption or GTA 5 they continue to have storylines from different perspective and have them weave through other storylines. It really makes the world a living breathing place with unique people other than the one you are playing with at the moment. And for $20 (probably cheaper now) this is a game that should not be missed.
