On the Subject of Episodes from Liberty City

Perla/Simi

As I reported previously, GTA4 was a surprise hit for me and so it was inevitable that I would pick up the Episodes from Liberty City expansion. Naturally I did so immediately before it was sold for tuppence in a Steam sale. You'd have thought I would have learnt that lesson by now (cf Grid, Dirt 2).

Anyway, after completing the original game (no thanks to the fucking stupid helicopter bug in the final mission which still hasn't been fixed as far as I'm aware), I was straight into The Ballard of Gay Tony. In hindsight that was possibly a mistake, as TBOGT is superior to The Lost and Damned, so I would have been better off getting the latter over and done with first.

First things first, and Rockstar somehow managed to cripple the engine with the release of EFLC. It's supposed to feature fancy-pants clever shadowing trickery, but ultimately makes the game run like shit compared with the earlier version. Unfortunately this shittery now applies to the original game too, thanks to the patch which was released alongside EFLC (and which is of course mandatory if you play through Steam). After a lot of dicking around with graphics settings and turning down shadow quality, I was eventually back in business.

Since this is an expansion, there's not too much to say. It's the exact same game world, and there are some clever crossovers between the three stories, especially regarding a central diamond heist. To be honest I prefer Niko to either of the expansions' protagonists, who are slightly one-dimensional in comparison. On the other hand, TBOGT in particular adds a lot of variety to the game play, often involving a parachute. I cannot fucking stand the helicopter sections though, that fucking thing is virtually unflyable, or at least it is when you're trying to shoot something else at the same time. And doubly so when that thing is also in the air. During one particularly annoying mission I kept having to land and take out persuing choppers with the (ludicrously overpowered) automatic shotgun thing (don't ask me), before taking to the air again to continue. Fucking awful.
Still, there's not too much of that, and plenty of the standard-issue infiltration and general carnage. With a slightly worthless rhythm game tacked-on in the nightclub. Speaking of the nightclub, I believe there's supposed to be some sort of "nightclub management" mini-game, but despite being asked to show up at the club by the doorman, and despite the woman being in the office, it never seemed to trigger for me. Didn't seem to make any difference in the end, at least it didn't prevent me from completing the game.

So in TBOGT you run around clearing up the mess made by an over-the-hill, coked-up club empresario in freefall, and in TLOD you're a biker gang-member who's chief has gone off the rails and is running the club into the ground for no apparent reason. To be fair, TLOD did pick up eventually and does has its moments, but it doesn't offer the variety or the humour of the other campaigns and feels a bit flat.

Together they form a pretty satisfying extension to the game, and overall I had a lot fun. I suspect that when I do dip back into the game in the future it will be into the original story rather than the expansions, but that's not a criticism of the expansions as much as a vindication of the original.