If you don’t like The Sopranos way of things - stay away.
Here we are with the second piece of promised DLC for GTAIV. Exclusive to the Xbox360(for now, if rumors are to be believed that is), for 20bux off of the Xbox Live Marketplace, or on the “Episodes From Liberty City” disc. Which is 40bux but it also comes with “The Lost And The Damned”. I liked this DLC even more than the last one, this gets a 9/10 from me.
The Good – Rockstar has really gotten the whole storytelling thing down, everything from the dialog, the voice acting, heck, even the way the cutscenes are directed…all top notch and masterful. Wanting to find out what happens next really keeps things moving. Liberty City remains a lively gaming world with plenty to keep you busy. While GTAIV toned down alot of previous GTAs’ insanity in favor of a more realistic crime drama style, TBoGT has some new activities that brings back some of the craziness of San Andreas that are fun as hell. Stuff like parachuting, helicopters that pack some serious artillery, even the police APC.
New weapons turn the fun meter up a few notches too. Machinery like the automatic shotgun with explosive shells and the silenced machine gun just tears things up with a prowess that makes sure the enemies hide from YOU. Radio stations, a GTA staple, have been updated with newer songs that keeps you draped in the atmosphere of the character(Luis Lopez) you’re playing. Luis has part ownership of a couple clubs that Gay Tony owns, you have to option of running one of them certain times at night. Again, the feel has been fitted to a tee. The thumping music, people dancing, drinking, the whole package. Some cool mini games for dancing and drinking are there as well.
The campaign is lengthy and the mission’s fun to frustration ratio is the most minimal yet. You’ll hardly come across a mission that’ll give you a hard time, the feel and pacing swim along just right. It’s nice starting off and your character already has a nice place to live, nice clothes, and he’s already established in the city. No need to build up, you just jump right in. I know some people who fell outta love with GTAIV, they felt the story just took too long. Not an issue here, the fat’s been trimmed, so to speak.
The Bad – Basically, if you’re not a GTA fan to begin with, this game ain’t changing your mind. While driving still feels great, it would’ve been nice if the on foot controls were updated/tweaked. They get the job done, but nowhere near where they could/should be in feel. With the disc version of the game, licensing issues prevented Rockstar from carrying over all the music from the original GTAIV game, to make up for it they threw in 3 new radio stations. While the downloaded version gets access to ALL of the original disc radio stations/songs, but not the new stations, it’s too bad this small feature separates the two since music is such a big part of the GTA experience.
The Ugly – If you don’t like The Sopranos way of things, or any crime drama of that sort….stay away….The title of the game has “Gay Tony” in it, and you play as a latino character in quite an ugly crime underworld. Take a guess at some of the things you’ll hear from some of the game’s less than savory characters.
