BUH-ruther Hood, a Lost and Damned Review.
So I downloaded the first of the exclusive DLC for the 360, The Lost and Damned, and i gotta say it's pretty good. The episode stars Johnny Klebitz, the Vice President of the Alderney Chapter of The Lost MC, that was briefly in GTA IV. My overall playtime with Lost and Damned was way shorter than GTA IV and I actually like the more focused narrative. I also liked Rockstar's decision not emphasizing the friend social network this time around. Makes sense since Johnny has already established himself in Liberty City and it was probably done to keep the player from getting tired of calling friends and going to a strip club 30 times.
The missions themselves are on par with GTA IV but are really freakin' hard at times, don't be surprised getting a four star wanted rating early on, really surprised me a bit. Not even 10 missions in you'll be fighting agains SWAT by yourself. The story is well written really giving a the player a sense of the highs and lows of being a BUH-ruther in The Lost MC. Billy Grey, the chapter president is easily one of my favorite videogame characters with his interesting annunciation of the English language. The new weapons are very fun to use with the streetsweeper easily being my favorite new gun.
The controls are similar to GTA IV so if you shouldn't have a problem if you played the regular game. Johnny still relies on the cover mechanic and stop and pop shooting, just as Niko did before him. The only notable difference from GTA IV is the slightly tuned bike handling, Johnny is less likely to fall off his bike if you hit a pole or a wall at high speeds. The new gang riding features are cool but get silly at times. There are times when you ride with your gang and the a.i. will hit objects and really loses the badass feeling you get of riding in formation. Johnny Klebitz is not always a one man army like Niko Bellic and rides with several dudes for many a mission. It's helpful to have some backup but in the end you'll need to take the reins and take out the majority of the bad guys.
The Multiplayer is there for those who want it. I had fun and plan on playing some more matches of Witness protection. Had a hard time finding matches though. Multiplayer has your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch along with Biker takes on co-op such as Club Business, in which you and several BUH-ruthers do your dirt, competing against each other. The added music is good adding some 70s rock and a few songs to Radio Broker, The Beat and even the talk station with some obvious nods to Howard Stern. Overall I recommend The Lost and The Damned if you either enjoyed GTA IV, or if you want a smaller bite sized taste of GTA IV. For 20 bucks you really do receive plenty of content to digest, 6-8 hours of single player content and biker themed multiplayer, you can't go wrong with that.
