GTA IV: Episodes From Liberty City Review [X360]

Posted November 22, 2009 by Benjamin Blank in Featured, Featured Home, Reviews, Xbox 360.

Reviewed on Xbox 360

I don’t know why, but retail discs are always so much more enticing than downloadable content. Maybe it’s just me, but the opportunity to physically own something and add it to a collection is half the appeal to a lot of gamers. Hell, if it wasn’t for the retail disc I would’ve never bothered with the Watchmen bundle, and until the GTA IV expansions were announced for a retail disc release, I had no intention of getting them.

But well they’re here, and after so much fuss about exclusive deals with Microsoft, was it worth it? The answer is yes, yes in every way possible. To put things into perspective, it took me around twenty hours to play through the original GTA IV, and in total I put around the same amount of time into both the expansions combined on only completing the stories.

These expansions are as much full games as anything else on the market — not just new weapons and modes, but fully realised sequels in every sense of the word. The first of the two expansions, The Lost And The Damned (TLAD), follows a notorious biker gang known as The Lost, as their leader, Billy, is released from court-ordered rehab.

What follows is a string of anarchy, mindless violence and sheer chaos as the bikers are thrown into gang wars, drugs and murder. You play as Johnny the Jew, who while Billy was in rehab, acted as president for the gang. It isn’t long before Billy’s wild nature and taste for chaos begin to drive the gang into its own civil war. With Billy on one side and Johnny on the other trying to avoid any unnecessary violence while keeping everything together.

Like Nico’s story in the original GTA IV, it’s a great premise with a lot of promise and is pulled off by some outstanding performances from supporting cast members. The biggest appeal is how when playing TLAD, Rockstar has done a brilliant job of really making you feel like part of this gang. You’ll ride in unison with other members for health bonuses, call in back up from them and genuinely begin to appreciate Johnny’s position.

However, where Nico’s story was somewhat lacking in an overall arch (falling apart by the third act and not offering anything that really built up after introducing some interesting characters). The story in TLAD builds up brilliantly, to an extremely satisfying conclusion. The ending is actually quite impactful because of just how real these characters seem, and thus because of how much you care for them.

However, a large majority of the missions do get bogged down with consistent fights and don’t offer nearly as much diversity as either Gay Tony or Nico’s. Plus an issue that Gay Tony shares is how the city is weaved into the story itself.

With the original GTA IV, a lot of simply being a citizen of Liberty City was explored. In either of the expansions, the city itself takes a back seat. While all the options are available, they are not presented as part of the actual story itself; new things to do are here, such as Air Hockey and gang wars, which are great additions. However they feel far less important then they did before, and come off as a simple distraction rather than part of the whole experience or story line.

In the end TLAD has a far stronger narrative than GTA IV, simply because as a story arc it’s built better and the biker gang is a much brighter and personality driven lot than even Nico and his crazy cousin.

Gay Tony shares this as well, and is actually the strongest of the three. You play as Luis Lopez who, in part with Gay Tony, owns one straight and one gay, nightclub. As the club scene has died in recent yeas, Tony started gathering investors and debts that you as Luis have to deal with. Eventually you become entangled with the mob, the Russian mob, Bruno’s (from the original GTA IV) brother, and a crazy Iranian, (voiced by Omad Djalili) who is probably the funniest character to ever appear in a GTA title.

As the investors start calling in their favours, Luis is on hand to sort things out, help Tony and resurrect their dying clubs. The story, like in TLAD, is superb and builds up to a decent climax. The main appeal comes from just how funny most of the supporting cast are, and how diverse the missions are in comparison to not only TLAD, but GTA IV as well.

Luis as a character is quite entertaining, with a lot of personality and a rich backstory that is hinted at every now and then. However, at about half way through the game there are two completely random, and unnecessarily graphic depictions of sex/sexual acts that come out of nowhere. While sex is nothing new to GTA, it has always been a choice, not forced down the throats of the gamers.

Why Rockstar decided to suddenly throw these in is just odd. Even worse these scenes take themselves so seriously that it’s almost as if you’re playing a completely different game all of a sudden and come across as slightly disturbing for it. It seriously damages Luis as a character and leaves the experience somewhat tainted.

However, aside from that the story is still stronger than what you got in GTA IV, with the same level of diversity in the missions. What is especially endearing is how all three of these stories cross over from time to time, and in the end they highly compliment the original experience for it. While each story works on their own, there are answers, and hints that another will give you, making both the expansions actually necessary to understand the full scope of the GTA IV storyline. And for that Nico’s story actually becomes a lot stronger.

In the end the new modes, both online and off, are welcomed and can be quite fun, but the real appeal is how the expansions actually complete each other and the original story. What you end up with is one extremely strong story, full of brilliant characters and told from three different perspectives. If the GTA IV story didn’t originally grab you then what the expansions bring to the table quite possibly will. For everyone else, GTA IV just doesn’t feel complete until you’ve experienced Episodes from Liberty City.

Tagged as Episodes from Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto IV, The ballad of gay Tony, The Lost and Damned, Xbox 360