Similar to The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony centers around a new protagonist in Liberty City and tells a tale that runs parallel to both Niko and Johnny's stories. The DLC also adds new features and activities to the game, stretching the playtime of GTA4 even farther.
The Ballad of Gay Tony centers around Luis Lopez, workhorse and business partner of Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince. Tony Prince is well known throughout Liberty City as the owner of two of the hottest night clubs in the city. Unsurprisingly, a great amount of trouble comes along with the wealth and glamor of the night life in Liberty City. Luis is Tony's right-hand man when it comes to taking care of such issues.
The second episode of DLC for GTA4 follows Luis and Tony as they seek to repay debts incurred as part of business. Unfortunately, Tony has gotten himself into debt with the wrong crowd and, as a result, Luis is forced into working jobs for the various undesirables to which Tony owes money. As a possible solution to their troubles, Tony seeks to buy a pouch of diamonds to later resell for more money. What follows is what can likely be called the central problem encountered by all three protagonists throughout the GTA4 saga as they each struggle to gain ownership of these diamonds.
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| Let's play spot the protagonists! |
Throughout the episode, Luis works with many familiar faces and actually meets some characters we have only heard of by name so far in the saga. The Ballad of Gay Tony fills in even more background to the diamond deal gone wrong, and even sheds some light on what ultimately happens to the diamonds. One thing I found incredibly interesting in the DLC is that by getting to know a new character through Luis's story and working with him for a few missions, players gain a new insight into why a main character from the base GTA4 game displays so many psychoses.
The Ballad of Gay Tony introduces a number of new features and activities to take part in. The DLC expansion adds around 26 new vehicles to the game, 6 new weapons to use, and even more seagulls to hunt down. Luis will also find himself given the opportunity to enter into a cage fighting championship, work the floor at one of the hottest night clubs in town, take part in "triathlon" races in which racers fly helicopters, drive boats, and race cars to the finish line, go base jumping, tee off in a golf-like game, and, in the most substantial addition, assist old friends with their blooming "business".
The addition of "drug wars" to the GTA4 game gives Luis a chance to help some boys he grew up with in cutting their teeth in the crime game. Spread across all three major islands in Liberty City are "drug war" locations which play out like mini-missions. Each war has a randomly selected task to complete, be it stealing a drug-loaded truck or taking out rival dealers. For each 10 drug wars completed a new weapon will spawn in Luis's apartment for easy access.
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| Luis gets all the hard jobs... |
I found all of the activities to be relatively fun, though the cage fighting never really kept my attention. The drug wars were actually the only mission-related feature in the DLC that I had a problem with. While the missions seem to be randomly generated, they rarely consist of anything more than drive here, shoot this, drive home. In addition to their lack of depth, the same two or three dialogues play out between Luis and his friends as they drive to their objective every time you play a mission. Add in the fact that there are rewards for completing 50 of these wars and you can see how annoying and tedious things can get.
I found The Ballad of Gay Tony's story to be lacking when compared to Niko's and Johnny's. I found myself often confused as to what overall goal Tony and Luis had in mind up until the final few missions. This lack of direction made it easy to lose interest in the story, something that is surprising considering how raptly I payed attention to the stories of the other two protagonists. This being said, the story is still worth experiencing as it definitely delivers some memorable moments, including a very cool finale.
As a whole, the DLC really ramps up the action in the game. The addition of parachutes to the game seems like a small addition, but it really changes what Luis is able to do in the city. Some missions in the game see Luis fighting his way through enemies before hopping into a helicopter and parachuting down on top of a highrise building only to make his way through even more enemies as he seeks out a target on the lower floors. Playing these missions definitely brought back good memories of some of the crazier missions in previous Grand Theft Auto games. The Ballad of Gay Tony, with all of its additions, will last the typical gamer around 8 hours, though the 8 hours are full of explosions and insanity. Rockstar games has also added a new scoring system to missions which tracks your performance throughout each mission and gives you goals to accomplish along the way. Replaying missions to increase your score will add even more playtime to the already large expansion.
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| The Ballad of Gay Tony is so extreme that even the streets are explosive! |
The annoying control issues and graphics hiccups are still present in this DLC episode, though I already criticized the base GTA4 game for these issues. I actually think that the texture pop-up is quite a bit worse in The Ballad of Gay Tony than it has been in either of the other two parts of GTA4. I'm not sure if this is due to the game running off of the Xbox's hard drive rather than a disc or if it is just poor programming.
Overall, The Ballad of Gay Tony introduces a number of new and fun features to an already great game. While a few issues which lessen the fun had playing the game still persist, the DLC provides more than enough quality gameplay to make the DLC worth purchasing. I can't shake the feeling however that while I enjoyed this DLC and all of its crazy missions, I really didn't enjoy the story or atmosphere nearly as much as I did the other two parts of the GTA4 saga.
Amulets and Ale Rating:
From an observer's standpoint this game seemed like "Luis, go here, bang that, shoot this, then parachute". Just saying
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