Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the XBox360 were released near the end of October 2009. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City consist of the two Grand Theft Auto IV games which are The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony.
The gameplay in The Lost and Damned is a lot of fun. It also has a lot to do with the biker gang that you are in which will make fans of people who loved The Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gang storyline. You can even call someone to bring you a bike, or shop for weapons out of a van at discount prices. The Ballad of Gay Tony’s gameplay is closer to the other Grand Theft Auto titles where you look out for yourself on the road without a gang watching your back. Unfortunately, The Ballad of Gay Tony takes away a little bit of the fun with its scoring system. After you complete a mission, you get a percentage given to you based on the requirements that you do not even see until after you complete the mission. You have a chance, later on, to re-do those missions to fulfill those requirements but what happened to get the job done whatever way possible?
The Lost and Damned are really easy. While some missions are hard, The Lost and Damned have a feature where you can call your gang for additional backup if you need it and then you got two guys who will shoot alongside you and ride behind you when you leave to make sure you get where you have to go safely. The Ballad of Gay Tony on the other hand does not take long to get hard. While the missions will not require fifty tries to get the job done, they can be annoying like shooting three small boats with a helicopter when you can not aim with the helicopter.
The controls are the same as in Grand Theft Auto IV. There are no problems with the controls and they have all the same functions so the controls are not hard if they were easy enough in Grand Theft Auto IV.
The two stories in the game do mix in with each other at one point and mix in with Grand Theft Auto IV. In Lost and Damned, you control Johnny who has been leading the biker gang since Billy who used to run it has been in prison. However, now that Billy is out of rehab, Johnny is supposed to fall back in line even if Johnny or anyone else does not agree with Billy’s decisions. Johnny was in Grand Theft Auto IV when Miko and Playboy X were doing a deal that turned out to involve an undercover police officer. In The Ballad of Gay Tony, you control Luis Lopez who was at the bank when Miko and company robbed the bank. Luis was the person who told the guy wearing a suit to not be a hero.
The graphics and sound are the same as Grand Theft Auto IV, nothing seems to be easier or harder to see although I’m not sure if you have the same problem with Hove Beach where the train tracks overheard make it hard to see because these two new stories have a lot more to do with the other two islands. One problem with the graphics in The Ballad of Gay Tony however is that when the name of the mission pops up, you get these little flashes on the title and it’s really annoying after happening once. Also everything in The Ballad of Gay Tony has a purple and pink color scheme which is also annoying, I mean Vice City’s color scheme was not colorful enough?
The Lost and Damned took just over eleven hours and even then the game isn’t completed because you have all these gang wars and extra missions to take care of. The Ballad of Gay Tony I have not completed as much but I’m sure features a lot of gameplay and will take some time to complete.
I give Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City an 8 out of 10. Rating each story separately though, The Lost and Damned I give a 9 because I thought the story should be a little longer. I give The Ballad of Gay Tony an 8 because of the annoying graphics and having to shoot three small boats from a helicopter without aiming.
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