The fun comes from bumping into story threads that characters from the past games and episodes. The slurs and racial insults are simply mixed in with the rapid-fire patter of the game, and while there is sure to be stories about those evil video games, this episode actually trusts the player to understand the language of the criminal underworld. Certain themes may be dealt with in Rockstar's usual satirical style, but this is one of the most well-portrayed openly gay characters in gaming.
Luis gets as much crap for his ethnicity as Tony does for who he sleeps with. While the branding of this episode may be all glitter and bright colors, Tony's sexuality is treated matter-of-factly. You'll be blowing up boats, jumping off buildings, bare-knuckle brawling, and getting into helicopter fights before you know it. You're Louis Lopez, and it's your job to watch out for Tony's interests. Owning the most popular gay and straight bars in Liberty City should make a man happy, but he seems to somehow fall into bad situations, bad debt, and bad decisions. Releasing two expansions to take advantage of the work done on the front end, creating the miles of streets that make up the city, may seem like a money-grab, but the amount of work put into giving each episode its own character and flow shows that this isn't just a cheap cash-in.
The Grand Theft Auto games feature some incredible storytelling, but more than that we see just how the work put into creating the world of Grand Theft Auto IV has paid off. A standalone disc with both the "Lost and the Damned" and the "Ballad of Gay Tony" expansions that doesn't require Grand Theft Auto IV, this is a $40 way to play both episodes without the hassle of downloading them from Xbox Live.Īfter playing both games for a number of hours, it's apparent what Microsoft paid for when it "bought" this exclusive content for the Xbox 360. Think of it as Motorcycle Simulator.The retail release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City is a weird beast. The other expansion ‘The Lost and Damned’, didn’t quite hit the heights though, running in a similar fashion to that of playing through GTA IV: the characters weren’t engaging enough, the colour palette, while creative and matching of the atmosphere, was dull, and the missions were too boring. Which is good for players like me who played TBOGT on the ‘Episodes from Liberty City’ disc, which features the two expansions for GTA IV not the original game. The story does loosely relate and tie-in to the main GTA IV story, but not to an over-saturated point. And that is from somebody who didn’t even play through the entirety of the core game.
With many tools and vehicles at your disposal, and the expected excellent dialogue between characters as you drive through the night-filled Liberty City to protect Gay Tony, which is more probable than not considering his favourable streak to get along with pretty much no-one, this expansion easily stands out as one of the best. This DLC recaptured my love of GTA: San Andreas as a playground waiting to be explored and exploded.