Written by: Ian

 

 

The first GTA episode was an excellent addition to 'GTA IV' when it came out around 9 months ago. Does the second episode still stack up with the game being over 18 months old? Several other open-world games have been released in the meantime- so is "The Ballad Of Gay Tony" (TBoGT) enough of an improvement to cut it in the all-important DLC market?

 

As always, Rockstar has brilliantly combined the storylines of the new episode with both previous GTA IV games- so you constantly run across reminders of both Jonny and Nico’s previous exploits in the city- in fact, many of them parallel to those events. That makes some of the other decisions more questionable.

 

Many of the jokes and references highlight the current world recession- but the game takes place in a fictionalised 2008, before those events, so it makes little sense in the context of tying the game into the other storylines.

 

 

One small issue aside, the game carries on from the first downloadable episode by upping the humour and outrageousness even further- which is no bad thing, given the slightly dour attitude of GTAIV when it first came out. Some missions are frankly ridiculous, but that’s perfectly fine with me- it is a game, not a life simulator, after all.

 

The Lost & Damned episode made several gameplay improvements compared to GTA IV, and TBoGT is no exception here. In the same way that bikes were given a handling upgrade, here helicopters have been given an upgrade, and also given an altitude meter to help you fly with too.

 

There’s also some new gameplay elements too. You can now base jump from several locations, and take part in drug wars around the city. On top of that, there’s a dancing mini-game in the clubs as well. However, it does seem a little bit like Rockstar is either holding off with new ideas, or is slowly running out of them. Whilst most of these little additions are fun for a while, they do feel like they’ve been tacked on a bit to be honest. And in addition, the mission structure is still generally the same as ever- drive to place- shoot it up- escape cops- drop off homies.

 

Rockstar have tried to add replay value by giving each mission a score. Personally I hate this system. GTA has never been that much about replayability to me, and in addition, all of the episodes in GTAIV have been really tough. The scoring system just makes things even worse, forcing you to drive quickly, take little damage, get loads of headshots, and complete any shooting sections quickly too. It’s a kind of neat idea in principle, but Rockstar have applied too much weight to it- nearly half the episode’s achievement points are tied to getting good scores that will be out of reach to all but the most hardcore of players.

 

 

This is, in itself, a little bit of a shame, because much of the actual content is good. As mentioned, the story is more outrageous, and so are many of the missions, which involves more C4 explosives than you can shake a stick at, the return of missions where others drive and you ride shotgun, blowing stuff up, throwing people out of helicopters, and destroying luxury yachts in military grade helicopters. It is, for the most part, a blast, although I still think that a slight drop in difficulty would be worthwhile.

 

It should also be noted that whilst there are more side-quests, that the main story does seem a little shorter than the previous downloadable episode. I guess just the fact that this kind of thing has gone from being extraordinary to routine also ruins the charm a little bit, but I won’t let that fact take the sheen off of the game too much!