This review is taken from the tales of liberty city disc, if you would like to view our Lost and the Damned review then please click here. 

 

We have finally come to the end of what can only be described as one of the best journeys in gaming history this generation, Grand Theft Auto IV. From the six month delay till 2008, and then another 10 months before the first expansion was released, it has been a long time coming. Now at the back end of the 2009 the game is finally over, but not without one last explosion!

 

The Ballad of Gay Tony puts you in the shoes of Luis Lopez, co-manager of two nightclubs in Liberty City. Hercules, the all-gay club is a low class club, whereas Maisonette 9, is a very high end club. While the placing of these clubs is a bit lazy (same road for both clubs and safe house), Rockstar have certainly made up for it. Inside the clubs, you can take part in dancing mini-games, which could lead to some romantic ‘treat’, champagne drinking games, which make you incredibly drunk and club management games, which involve walking around and watching a cut scene now and then. This is not the most exciting mini-game but gives you a sense that you own the club.

 

 

The story is a bit erratic this time through. You are simply just assigned missions to fill in gaps of GTA IV and The Lost And the Damned storylines. The game starts off at the bank robbery in GTA IV storyline, and finishes around the same time as GTA IV does, but there are a few crossover missions, like diamond robbery at the museum, to name one. The game does however make up for the weak storyline by including an excess amount of fun in each mission. Blow the crane up with a sticky bomb, steal a subway train, start a police riot, or bomb a boat. There are however some really bad missions, like driving to an internet cafe, posting a comment, and that’s it. Not impressive, and certainly just another way to waste some missions when the ideas stop.

 

Each mission is graded up to 100%. There appears to be a few glitches such as in easy missions like in the one above where you should get 100% but for some reason the timing does not match the quality of the mission. How do you drive from Broker to Alderney in under a minute without damaging your car? It does give some replay value, but gets incredibly frustrating after a while.

 

By the mid-point in the game, you will have unlocked some base jumping based missions, drug wars, golf and fight club games. The base jumping means you can jump off a building, and parachute onto a target. Drug Wars is a replica of The Lost and the Damned Gang Wars, but without, y’know the gangs. Golf mini-game is challenging, but equally quite boring, and the Fight Club has random AI, sometimes really easy, sometimes really hard. All these games need to be completed once to go to 100% tariff, but none of them are broken and certainly add more to the length of the game.

 

So the missions are mostly fun, with ridiculous targets, but there is an excess amount of extra stuff to keep it ticking over its short life-span, however the game has a few threatening glitches. The game has an annoying knack for car popup. It can be a clear road and then suddenly there are thousands of cars which you go crashing into, possibly ruining your mission goals. Also AI tends to be coded to run in front of you regardless of whether you are shooting or not, again leading to a possible failure in your mission. The game is also showing a sign of lackluster graphics. The HUD looks out of place, the buildings are quite grainy and blood isn’t really effective. There are some really cool songs on the soundtrack, but no new radio stations (except on the actual Tales from Liberty City disc with includes one new station), so it can be hard to find these songs.

 

 

Multiplayer wise, the game features everything from The Lost and the Damned and GTA IV and puts them all into Free Mode, along with underpowered tanks and missing helicopters. Death match has been updated with new weapons, and new payouts per kill, and racing is adapted for the brand new Nitro. It’s pretty awesome stuff, but takes a while to recharge. Plus Liberty City streets are so short, you really need more straight road races to get the most use out of it. There are no major glitches in the game though apart from connection lag and the like.

 

Truth be told, I was expecting much more from this expansion, I would have expected the game to be thoroughly tested before release, and some improvements made in terms of graphics and storyline. It is fun for a while, but when you reach the ending you know it’s over and that’s probably for the best. If you’re a fan, go buy this now, but if you are over GTA IV and Liberty City after 18 months, maybe this is best avoided.