The Ballad of Gay Tony

The Ballad of Gay Tony is the last thing released for the Grand Theft Auto IV DLC. You take control of Luis Lopez, business party and bodyguard to Gay Tony, a club owner with a drug problem.

It starts off during the bank robbery that Niko Bellic is involved with in the main game. However you take control of one of the hostages during their crime. But Luis gets away safely, unlike some of the other people involved. And then you call your boss Gay Tony, who's just explained that he's borrowed money from the mob to pay for his increasingly expensive drug-addled lifestyle, and being the good friend you are, you run all over town doing missions for varying-leveled people of the criminal underworld, just like every other game in this series.

It's a fun little game though, slightly longer than the Lost and the Damned, levels capping about 25 or so. There's more side quests to do, this time you can go parachuting off of buildings or from helicopters at various points throughout Liberty City, which is fun one time, then I never wanted to do it again. The other thing is you can go on Drug Wars, which is with two childhood friends who now sell drugs and kill people. Just like you!

Something they added, which I thought was a good idea, were continue points. It's great when you die doing a mission and when you continue from your phone you start right before the point you died at. Yup, that's pretty super-duper...

Overall: C-, Okay, really this one is well made and everything, but something about it feels kind of phoned in. Like one of the folks at Rockstar suddenly realized that they had a couple of loose ends to clear up at the end of GTA 4 and decided to make another expansion. It's nothing special and I think I had more fun using a motorcycle gang, waaaaaay more fun actually. I mean, this story was interesting, had its moments anyway, and some of the new guns were pretty cool. But, at the end of the day, it's really just the same old shit.

Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and the Damned

I've been playing GTA 5 Online pretty much since it came out. If anyone wants to join my crew, here's the link: http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/crew/serial_killerkillers

The Lost and the Damned is the first of two downloadable side stories to add to the overall experience of Grand Theft Auto 4. In it, you play as Johnny Klebitz, vice-president of The Lost, a notorious biker gang.

At the beginning of the story, The Lost's president, Billy, is released from prison, he insults you, kills rival gang members, insults you, drinks at the biker's bar and hideout, insults you, has sex with your girlfriend, and then, oh yeah, he insults you some more. I don't know, the amount of times Billy makes fun of Johnny and basically makes him out to be a loser piece of shit, it just kept making me think "Aren't I vice-president? Why is he treating me like some kind of new recruit?" And this keeps happening right down to when (spoiler alert) Billy gets arrested again for stealing drugs from rival gang members and being an overall miserable asshole. Then you become president, which makes sense to me, you've basically done all the work for everyone since day one. Hell, do you even need the rest of your gang?

Actually, your gang can be pretty handy. On every job except the first few you can call up your pals Tracy and Clay to help you out, and considering how many of the main missions in this game are based around just killing a whole bunch of dudes, coming into them with three people is waaaaay better than going in it alone. I recommend doing it right after every single mission briefing that doesn't already have your gang following you.

With Niko in the main storyline, I would almost always avoid stealing a motorcycle like they were infected because he would basically go flying off of them, barreling end over end through the air with even the slightest bump into the smallest child. It's much better with Johnny, you only go flying with head on collisions, and he's much better at driving the motorcycle as well. But, he's terrible at driving cars and seems to have Niko's disease of flying end over end whenever he gets in them.

I have one final complaint, and that's the number of missions. Niko had over 90 missions to plow through, here there's just over 20, what's up with that? I guess there's gang wars and races added, but it just seems like there could have been so much more.

Overall: C+, it's alright, not enough missions to make it really substantial and compared to everything Rockstar's ever done, this doesn't really stand out as a great achievement or anything. Good, passable anyway, but nothing special.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Wow, I have not been on here in a minute. I want you all to know that I have been beating games and I could probably review one game a day for the next week.

Hmm, maybe I will...

Anyway, GTA 4, Grand Theft Auto has come from a long line of great games. Rockstar is one of my favorite game companies. Ever since I played Grand Theft Auto 3, I knew this company would come far.


The story of GTA 4 is this: Niko Bellic, badass psychopath from Eastern Europe (his accent is similar to Russian) after hearing from his cousin Roman how great America is, decides to catch a ride on a big ol' freighter and come over to Liberty City, which has nothing to do with New York City at all. Nope, definitely not New York City. I don't know, I guess I never really saw the point in pretending to be a nonexistant city when everyone knows that Gotham City is really New York anyway, so why hide it.

Anyway, once Niko comes over to America, he finds out that the American Dream really only looks good on TV and in reality it's just a bunch of blind consumerism, so it's on to doing jobs for crazy assholes like you do in every single GTA game. Also, killing random people on the street of course.

GTA 4 has its problems. The driving is really klunky, I think they were trying to make it more realistic or something, but really it's just more a pain in my ass. Basically, if you've ever played any GTA before this one, you're going to have to retrain yourself how to drive in these games. Also, look up how people do quick turns with the hand brake in real life, then do it over and over again in this game until you've got it down. It will make things a lot easier.

Before I move on, one last thing about the driving. Niko is flat-out terrible at it! Unlike San Adreas where you can level up all your stats, Niko's driving ability never changes. So every time you get up to speed in any vehicle it's like you've just become the worst driver in the world. Every slight turn you make could suddenly send your car careening out of control, oh and here's something I'm not sure why they added, every time Niko hits something even slightly, he goes flying through the windshield of his car. Just to remind us that in the GTA universe, they never invented seat belts.

Other than the driving though, this is actually a pretty great game. You can make friends and then take them out to the theater or bowling or whatever. You do jobs for crazy people all over Liberty City which is now  twice the size of San Andreas which was supposed to be a state if you all remember. I suppose I was a little disappointed that many of the missions are just there for the sake of it. After the first section of the game, it's not so much a story anymore (except for the occasional mission for Roman here and there) as it is just more criminal activity. Niko isn't really a human being as he is a dog, just going out and fetching or killing whatever anyone wants him to, just so long as he gets paid. No morals what-so-ever.

Overall: B-, the last mission in this game is just about the most frustrating thing ever, the story sucks sometimes and the driving blows, but other than that I had a really fun time playing through this game, and just like every GTA, it has enough side stuff to do that it practically guarantees for hundreds of hours of gameplay.