Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned

Enjoy our spoiler-free verdict on the first of two new episodes of GTA IV. Can a bunch of bikers beat the Bellics?

	Version Xbox 360	Developer Rockstar North	Publisher Rockstar	Genre Action

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There's a good amount of crossover with characters we already know in Liberty City, particularly the Italian mobster Ray and especially drug dealer Elizabeta, whose back story we learn more about in the expansion. You'll come across Niko and Roman more than once, although in the case of Roman we'd have liked a little bit of follow-up on how our actions intertwined with the main game's story.

There are other new characters introduced as well, including Congressman Thomas Stubbs who has a mutually beneficial relationship with Johnny and a certain freedom to, shall we say, express himself primitively. The first encounter with Stubbs is in fact the most alarming scene in the entire game, including anything in the original GTA IV. If you want to know why, (and do not even mouseover this link if you don't want to know) head over to this separate news piece, otherwise we won't spoil it here in the review.

This is not the only scene in the game where the shock factor has been upped a little. Some of the scripted casual violence has been tuned up a notch, including two notable torture scenes involving a motorbike and a blowtorch - in fact even Johnny comments at one stage, "that's intense", which can be argued is true for a lot of the game, including the gameplay action as well, in fact. You really don't enter a half-arsed gun fight once, and battles are brilliantly laid out and enjoyable as ever. It's headshot heaven as players deal with some of the largest quantities of enemy in one time as the series has ever seen, with three or four epic fights on the scale of the Four Leaf Clover mission from GTA IV.

It's not just the shootouts that make TLAD's missions a blast to play through, with the addition of the on-rails mission (as detailed back in our hands-on preview) joined by some really nice search-and-destroy missions where you hunt down moving targets who do their best to outmanoeuvre you across the entire map of Liberty City. The missions flow really well and there are plenty of side missions to get involved with too, so really you can play at your own pace and for some players it may be twenty hours to go through the game in a thorough manner.

In addition to side missions (represented by 'male' or 'female' on the map) you've also got 25 special 'gang wars' side missions - a good way of seeing how your members have toughened up, if you care - as well as optional races. The 'social' aspect of doing activities with friends is also back, although I have to admit I didn't bother with this at all (I learnt my lesson with that bitch Michelle) - although I did give Lost pal Terry a call on a few occasions, since he can be summoned at many points during the game with a van full of weapons. Not that I was able to afford many for most of the game, as there seemed to be fewer big monetary scores than Niko managed.

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