by: Michael Ogunnubi

November 11, 2009

For a more in-depth review of The Lost and Damned click here. For The Ballad of Gay Tony, click here.

With the release of The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, Rockstar was finally getting somewhere in respects to giving fans that great GTA experience GTAIV lacked. You can indeed now play golf on that floating driving range, you can also base jump off specific buildings as a challenge or merely buy a parachute and jump off anything you want. Tanks are back too…well kind of; it’s just an APC tank. Rockstar slowly returned in making Liberty City a more fun sandbox; it just sucks that it took this long as The Ballad of Gay Tony will be the last episode for GTAIV. With regards to these two episodes, well you can't go wrong. Both are typical GTA fare with varied missions and great story lines. There are some nice cross-over moments in the stories that will make you smile, especially that ever so present impossible trinity.

With TBOGT you have specific optional targets to do in each mission such as a time limit or how much damage you take. The nice thing about the way this works are the new, very extensive mission checkpoints, something massively lacking from GTA IV. However, there's a penalty for using a checkpoint - if you use a reload then your mission objectives and scores aren't saved. You can still complete the mission and continue with the story but there's an actual incentive to replay each one and do better each time. It's a great game mechanic that satisfies players who prefer to blast through the game, as well as for those who wish to fine tune each play-through.

GTAIV’s graphics were fine-tuned somewhat for each episode to match the perfect setting and overall theme for both. Also, there are considerably less little glitches and pop-ups in TBOGT over TLOD and the original. It's recommended that you do install the game to the HDD if you buy the disc version, regardless of which episode you play.

Rockstar should be commended for allowing folks who buy the disc version of the episodes to not need the original game. Of course, if you decide to download the content you will need GTAIV in order to play them.

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Overall, Episodes from Liberty City is one heck of a package containing two amazing and action packed games for only $39.99 MSRP. You can’t go wrong here.

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