Episodes from Liberty City Review

Episodes from Liberty City contains two short stories of new characters in the same city featured in GTA 4. Although the city is almost identical during both episodes they introduce some new features and characters to make them just as enjoyable. The first story, The Lost and the Damned, stars Johnny Klebitz who is part of the motorcycle gang called “The Lost” who disagrees often with the recently released leader of the Lost. This episode has a much grittier feel and focuses on working with your gang members to get through missions.

Luis Lopez is the main character of the Ballad of Gay Tony, in which he acts as the muscle behind a drug addicted nightclub owner Tony Prince. When Tony isn’t passed out and Luis isn’t on a rampage they will probably be chasing diamonds or getting out of trouble. The episodes have their own style and feature some iconic characters crafted superbly by Rockstar. There are several cameos from prominent characters in Grand Theft Auto 4. Naturally there are new weapons and vehicles to use, some of them packing more punch in comparison to those in GTA 4.

Stay in formation gang!

Johnny Klebitz is the vice president of “The Lost” and was in control of the gang until the President is rehabilitated and The Lost gang is restored to its former glory. That glory is short-lived as The Lost undertake some shady tasks that bring much tension between the two leaders. Many of the game events takes place on a Motorcycle and you will be required to drive one for many of the missions, the game will give you one directly in most cases but you can always call one in. Many of these missions are done with groups of other bikers and this means you will travel to a mission location with them in formation listening to them banter. This formation also gives you a minor health and armor boost before missions when you move in the correct position. You won’t need to read the map much as you can just follow the leader to the obscure locations but this slow riding is rather tedious and you will probably know the city very well anyway. You can during missions call for backup from other Lost members, and they can be quite helpful when they aren’t having trouble navigating around objects or through traffic.

Some of your fellow bikers will get stuck on cars or on road objects but they will teleport quickly into position so you won’t notice it much. It is perhaps the races that become the most fun with bikes, now you can use a baseball bat to knock other riders off but beware they also have this ability.

Who needs driving skill when you have a baseball bat?

The problem with “The Lost” is that the story doesn’t feel complete after it comes to an abrupt end. A few story pieces are just thrown at you with little explanation. The game also features some rather long and dreary battles against Angel biker members. One new weapon included is a grenade launcher unfortunately it takes a few of these to take down enemies and far too long for it to explode. To compound this problem there are numerous missions where the game will send many waves of these enemies at you and the cover mechanic is a little unresponsive when enemies duck in and out of cover. The story, weapon and character weaknesses in the Lost are greatly reduced in the second episode.

The Ballad of Gay Tony is in contrast a much more light-hearted romp through Liberty City. Tony and Luis will have to deal with problem after problem caused by both of them when they go rogue. Together they can get themselves out of trouble but only if Tony can compose himself enough to walk. The characters in this second episode certainly seemed a lot funnier, with many racist and sexist comments thrown in for good measure.

Luis will be taking flight in some helicopter missions and come plummeting back down with a parachute handy. Disappointingly the helicopter controls with the mouse are atrocious and you will need to resort to using just the keyboard or a 360 controller. The parachuting is quite entertaining and various challenges across the city will have you landing on a moving vehicle or through air targets. New weapons in Ballad are also much better than those in Lost, a shotgun with explosive rounds makes light work of vehicles and sticky bombs are very handy when in a vehicle.

Police are really cracking down on fare evasion

The second episode does aid in making the Lost and the Damned a more concluded story and there are many mission crossovers from GTA 4 that feature characters like Niko and Brucie. It also includes a great feature of being able to instantly replay a mission once you have completed the story. The phone will be used to access the missions and you are transported to their starting location with full health and armor. One of the GFW Live achievements involves scoring highly on these missions which are rated on completion time, accuracy and headshots among things. Favourite missions can be easily replayed numerous times but replaying any mission also brings to attention the depth in the dialogue. When you replay missions much of the dialogue can be swapped out with similar themed, but sometimes very different, conversations. This makes replaying the missions a lot more enjoyable when a new joke is heard.

Perhaps the biggest change to the gameplay of GTA 4 would be the inclusion of a checkpoint save system. Anytime you perish during a mission you can use your phone to bring yourself back to the last checkpoint. This can greatly reduce the travel times for longer missions when you make a silly mistake. For harder missions though it’s not a huge help because once you perish you lose all your armor and any ammo you used since the last checkpoint. If you keep repeating checkpoints you’ll just reduce your ammo to zero. So for the gunfights you’ll probably need to get some ammo and weapons anyway or just reload your last save.

Just like Little Jacob in GTA 4 Rockstar have assigned one of your friends in both episodes with a “gun van” that serves as ammunition shop called in a few blocks away. It is a pity however that there is a cool down associated with its use. Another change you don’t immediately notice is the fact that friends don’t call you much to “hang out” possibly related to having fewer friends in the episodes but still a big positive.

My RPG? No officer that was lying on the street before the car exploded

In continuing with the trend of Grand Theft Auto 4 the mission variety is good but it is the characters that keep the game fresh. It never fails to surprises me how far Rockstar pushes the stereotypes and in which directions. Great voice acting wouldn’t be as successful without the witty dialogue to match it. Both episodes together will probably take you around half the time it took to get through the GTA 4 main story. There are of course lots of little side missions to extend playtime including drug wars, gang wars, racing, parachuting, dancing and even golf.

Ballad of Gay Tony undoubtedly feels superior in terms of characters and missions but Lost should be completed first as it makes more sense from a connected story perspective. Ballad is also a longer game excluding the side missions. The performance of these new episodes is not much different from GTA 4 on the PC. The episodes do have far better looking shadows (also patched to GTA 4) so you are getting better visuals for the performance. If you enjoyed the great adventures in GTA 4 then these episodes will provide more then enough entertainment and are great value.