GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (TBOGT) is Rockstar’s love letter to all its fans who thought GTA IV was too serious, sober and boring. It’s everything GTA IV should have been, and then some more. By that I do mean it’s totally outrageous and over-the-top in every way possible be it in the form of characters or core gameplay.

In TBOGT you play as Louis Lopez, a Dominican who’s just made it big in Liberty City thanks to his mentor and “business partner”, Tony Prince AKA Hay Tony who’s one of Liberty City’s most successful club owners owing the town’s hottest gay and straight bar simultaneously. Sadly his rep has been diminishing in recent times and business isn’t doing too well. To make matters worse Tony finds himself embroiled with all the wrong kind of people thanks to his flamboyant, drug-fueled lifestyle. And here’s where you, Louis step in to save the day.

GTA IV was all about living the American Dream. The Lost and the Damned (the 2nd batch of DLC) was a gritty look at the gang life in LC and BOGT shows you a side of Liberty City you haven’t seen before. It’s all about LC’s glamorous night life, fast cars, hot women, etc. Since you’re a business partner/bodyguard to a club owner you can visit any of Tony’s night clubs at any given point in time where you’re free to drink (in the form of a mini-game) or seduce the local women on the dance floor (a mini-game once again) with your smooth moves. Wooing a girl on the dance floor yields some highly favorable results.

Missions structure overall in TBOGT is still the same but this time round they’ve been amped up tenfold. You’ll be doing some crazy stuff through the course of your 10 hour romp with the DLC that’ll make fans of San Andreas feel right at home. On the flip side there are a few highly annoying Buzzard missions that were highly exasperating. Luckily, they don’t reach GTA IV levels of frustration thanks to mid mission checkpoints implemented in TLAD. Still it’s pretty annoying since Rockstar has vastly tweaked and improved vehicular control since GTA IV but chopper control is still as stupid and annoying as ever.

New to the GTA IV universe are a bunch of mini games, the first of which is Fight Club (cough*Saint’s Row 2*cough) where you enter an underground fighting ring to take on wave after wave of fighters until you land up in hospital or defeat all of them becoming reigning champion in the process. It’s nothing earth shattering but it’s a good break from “Go here and Kill X” kinda missions.
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Next up is the much publicized base jumping that appears in various missions throughout the game’s plot. It’s pretty liberating jumping out from a helicopter, free falling towards the city only to pull out your parachute at the last minute landing safely on the ground or a moving vehicle. There are tons of base jumps all over the city for you to explore if you find yourself fascinated by this activity.

And finally you have Drug Wars, side missions where you help your two childhood friends acquire and sell drugs earning a bit of extra dough in the process. Besides all the above mentioned side quests you’re also free to hang out with them in a club or in a restaurant but I think we’ve had enough of hanging out with friends after GTA IV.

Like all GTA games, character development is key to TBOGT. Gay Tony comes across as an annoying and whiny old wreck of his former self while Louis, his loyal lieutenant stands by him through thick and thin. Like both Niko and Johnny, Louis is more anti-hero than most video game protagonists but he must do what it takes to survive and I for one liked his character. He reminded me a bit of an older and wiser CJ. And then there’s the totally awesome Yusif Amir, the coke snorting, gold loving Arab tycoon who wants to recreate Liberty City, voiced most excellently by British comedian, Omid Djalili. Besides the above mentioned pivotal characters pretty much everyone does a good job, including certain recurring characters from GTA IV.

Visually the game’s been touched up a bit and it looks a lot brighter and vibrant as compared to GTA IV that felt pretty brown. With all the frantic action, the frame rate tends to dip a bit but it never quite renders the game unplayable. Of course it’s still the same engine that was used by both GTA IV and TLAD and it doesn’t hold a candle to some of the stuff we’ve seen in Uncharted 2 but it’s still a good looking game.

The bottom line is that TBOGT is an excellent addition to the GTA IV series. It packs in nearly 10 hours of gameplay (even more if you indulge in all the side quests), bringing in some real cool stuff to the table and offers players a diverse amount of activities in Liberty City. If you’re a fan of the GTA IV series, this DLC is a must have. Even if you didn’t particularly like GTA IV, I would still recommend giving this a shot since like I’ve mentioned before, BOGT feels like an ode to San Andreas which we all know can never be a bad thing.

If you’re not too keen on downloading this DLC for 1600 points you can wait and pick up the disc version of both BOGT and LATD when Episodes from Liberty City hits stores this week for Rs. 1999 exclusively for the Xbox 360.

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