Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on March 05, 2009

Review: Get lost

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Since you play as a biker, you will naturally spend most of your time on a bike. But don't worry; Rockstar has wisely tweaked the bike physics so they are much easier to handle and won't throw you at every opportunity. You can still get thrown off your bike but it's much harder to do Ц a good thing since there are many gun battle pursuits and high speed races. While in GTA IV you tended to avoid bikes like the plague, you will do the opposite in TLAD and avoid cars for their relatively slow and sluggish performance.

The new bike physics are especially welcomed in the new online multiplayer modes. In addition to Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Free Mode, you can also compete in the same Road Rash style races as in the campaign, bashing your friends with bats while leaving them choking in your dust. Lone Wolf Biker has one player as the Lone Wolf who must navigate a check point route only he can see, while the other players try to kill him and become the Lone Wolf. Chopper vs. Chopper is a two-player variation of this where the Lone Wolf is on a bike while the other player tries to gun him down in a helicopter. The former is a blast but the latter is something you'll only try once or twice thanks to the twitchy helicopter handling and aiming.



Club Business is similar to Mafiya Work in GTA IV where you have to complete various tasks to raise your standing in the gang. Own The City has you compete for territories but the catch is each territory is filled with AI gang members of the occupying team. If you own a territory, this frees you from having to defend but if you try and capture a territory, you have to clear out the enemy AI first Ц oh, and you can never tell if that's a dumb AI bot you see or a more intelligent (and deadly) live player.

Perhaps the most fun new mode is Witness Protection which is similar to Cops Сn Crooks. One side plays as the N.O.O.S.E. and must safely deliver several witnesses to different police stations across the city, while the other team plays as the Lost and must kill the witnesses before they get inside. The prisoners are in a heavily armored bus so trying to destroy it is pretty difficult. The best strategy is to follow the bus and wait while it parks outside a police station, where the hapless AI witness is exposed as he runs from the bus to the building. This mode is a blast and encourages strong teamwork as both sides need to work together in order to win.

All of the cool new weapons are also available in multiplayer, so feel free to shred your buddies with the automatic shotgun or blow the crap out of those wussy camping snipers with the grenade launcher.

The humor has been updated as well, with several new radio commercials and Internet websites all poking fun at the current economic downturn. Heck, even the main characters talk about the recession. It's funny stuff and cool to see how Rockstar is keeping up to date on current events.

Speaking of the radio, you can now listen to 54 new tracks added to four stations (LCHC, The Beat, Liberty Rock Radio and Radio Broker) and a new Martin Serious talk show on WKTT. Of these, Liberty Rock Radio (my favorite!) gets the most new songs with 18, including Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, The Doors and many others that are perfect toe tappers for cruising on your bike.

As much fun as it is, there's a big downside to TLAD: none of the new content Ц weapons, songs, vehicles, multiplayer modes, bike physics Ц is available in GTA IV. You can only experience these in the separate TLAD world, which is a huge mistake on Rockstar's part. Okay, I can understand keeping songs separate (damn you, complex licensing issues!) but everything else is just added code; every other game can add new vehicles, weapons, multiplayer modes and tweaked physics so why not here? Doing this would add tremendous value to the package and ensure gamers keep playing GTA IV for months (if not years) to come, not to mention encourage gamers to buy the next expansion pack. Rockstar really dropped the ball here and I hope they fix this either with a patch or in the second DLC pack.

As well, the missions are pretty much straightforward GTA Ц in other words, don't expect anything radically different. It's basically more of the same, which is great if you loved GTA IV Ц but if you weren't so impressed in the first place, odds are you'll want to save your money and skip TLAD.