The Grand Theft Auto games are among the most popular and best-selling series in the industry. GTA Episodes From Liberty City was the first real downloadable content for the series. Rockstar isn't really much of a DLC-heavy developer, but when it adds downloadable content it goes in all the way. Their game-length DLCs are famously huge, and this game includes both available for Grand Theft Auto IV. So, what did the company do with one of the best games in the series to make it even bigger and better? Let's talk about that:
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City includes both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony together and does not require a copy of the original Grand Theft Auto IV to play. In The Lost and Damned, experience Liberty City as Johnny, a veteran member of The Lost, a notorious biker gang.
Just like in the basic Grand Theft Auto IV, Episodes From Liberty City takes us into a two-episode completely new story into the same New York-inspired city. But this time, our adventure won't go by Niko's hand. These two episodes include new and original missions that will connect to the main game and between each other. The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony are pretty much two small games with the same quality of GTA IV.
In The Lost and Damned, we play as Johnny Klebitz, a biker of The Lost gang. Johnny is a close friend of the gang leader who just got out of jail. Due to the constant rivalry between criminal organizations and gangs, the glory days of The Lost are fading. Even its leadership is questioned by its own members.
As for The Ballad of Gay Tony, we play as Luis López one of the grunts of Tony, the owner of the two more prominent night clubs in Liberty City. But even with such success, Gay Tony has a ton of debts and gets involved with criminal organizations to get his stability back. Now Luis has to solve some problems for these criminals to pay for Tony's debt.
Rockstar did an amazing job when creating these two extra episodes. And soon again they did it again with their next game. For Red Dead Redemption, they did a similar thing when creating Undead Nightmare. The downloadable content for Red Dead Redemption would pretty much become a game all on its own.
Sure, in Episodes from Liberty City they didn't add zombies or the apocalypse, but the narrative takes place in the same city. But of course, even though Undead Nightmare is a huge game, it's still the same main character.
These two episodes are really amazing, their narrative is excellent just as any Grand Theft Auto Game. The characters are unique and charismatic, and the missions are exciting and full of drama and fun. Johnny Klebitz and Luis Lopez are completely different characters with different skills and abilities. Not only are the stories different, but so is the gameplay.
Different mechanics and characters make each expansion a completely new experience. They even got a physical release separate from Grand Theft Auto IV. and bundled in together.
Graphics and visuals: They have the exact same visuals as GTA IV, which means it looked great. One of the best-looking games of its time actually. And not only that, but the UI is also different and more attuned to the main characters in the expansion.
Gameplay: The gameplay is excellent too, and the new abilities of the characters make it a new experience even though you're technically playing the same game. There are plenty of missions and extras just as in any GTA game, so there are a lot of game hours ahead in these games.
Sound: As Excellent as you'd expect. They added more songs to the radio stations to fit with each episode's personalities. And the original soundtrack is completely amazing too. The voice acting, sound effects, everything is simply stunning.
Here's a weird one for you! It looks like overnight, some players on Xbox have received a free copy of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. The problem? It's the Japanese version.
This is being reported by a handful of Xbox players on both Reddit and Twitter, with no confirmation as to why it's happened - although there are indications it might be something to do with a recent store update.
https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/i1mfxa/japanese_version_of_episodes_from_liberty_city/
How do we know it's store-related? Well, it doesn't appear to just be affecting Episodes from Liberty City - some players have also noticed multiple versions of Far Cry 2, Star Wars Republic Commando and Toy Story 3 appearing in their download queues, suggesting there's a definitely some kind of bug in the system.
And unfortunately, even if you were lucky enough to get GTA: Episodes from Liberty City for free (check your games library), it doesn't look like there's any way to switch languages in the game. Hope your Japanese is up to scratch!
Have you received a free copy of GTA: Episodes from Liberty City? Let us know in the comments.
[source reddit.com]