Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony Hands On

Although the GTA series is very adept at putting us in the shoes of losers on the fringes of civilized society, Rockstar is cutting us a break with his one. The latest instilment of GTA IV lets you play as a bonafied success story, a man who currently sits in the top tier of Liberty City’s elite. Luis Lopez is the antidote to Niko’s solitary despair and Johhny’s misguided sense of brotherhood – Luis, filthy-rich, might as well have the key to every seedy part of the sprawling metropolis.

To give Luis the status of king, however, would be taking it too far. Top Dog honour goes to one Anthony Prince, aka: ‘Gay Tony’ (as the name suggests, he is openly homosexual). Luis works for Tony, and between them they run the two most lucrative nightclubs in Liberty City: Maisonette 9 (straight) and, ahem, Herclues (gay). Luis and Tony, shrewd and opportunistic, have not built their empire through the purest of means; these nightclubs have all sorts of corrupt investors attached who are desperate to exploit Tony’s success.

And therein lies the ‘hook’ in GTA: The Ballad Of Gay Tony. Luis and Tony must still contend with all the drug dealers, sociopaths and eccentric weirdos in Liberty city in order to protect their house of cards – albeit on the other side of the velvet rope. Luis has access to fast cars, advanced weaponry, and almost unlimited cash; lucky for us, he’s allowed to play with all of it.

The first mission we tackled involved Luis parachuting from a helicopter into a skyscraper. He preceded to blast his way through the building with a P90 sub-machine gun, leap out of a top-story window, release his parachute again, and land on top of a moving truck. Another mission saw Luis on top of a moving train, shooting down police helicopters with an automatic shotgun (equipped with explosive rounds) as he attempted to steal it. The entire train, that is.

GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony feels like the Die Hard to GTA IV’s Taxi Driver: Luis’ missions are loud, aggressive and grandiose – you wouldn’t catch him doing drug-runs for petty thieves. Even his side-missions feel like exercises in wealthy frivolity; at any time Luis can go base-jumping, scoring points for every hoop he parachutes through successfully. More playful still is the addition of scoring every mission with ideal completion times and bonus objectives, pushing the incentive to replay them over and over again in order to beat a previous score.

There is a fear that the heart of any good GTA game – its narrative – might get lost in all the bravado and spectacle. Let’s face it: GTA’s strength has never been in its gameplay. Thankfully, the few eccentric characters we met in this hands-on recalled Rockstar’s grasp on storytelling and wicked-dark sense of humour. In one mission entitled ‘Sexy Time’ we were privy to this choice piece of dialog: ‘hey man, I got a couple of girls upstairs, hot ones, not cheap’. It turns out that Liberty City’s wealthy are just as dunderheaded and deluded as its poor, every single one of them still fixated on the pursuit of one thing: money.

Released in New Zealand on October 29th, GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony will be both downloadable (from Xbox Live only) and able to be purchased as part of the Episodes From Liberty City game disc, which pairs it with GTA: The Lost and the Damned, retailing at $69.95. From what we’ve seen, Ballad could be the most fun you’ve had with GTA: IV so far. And if that sentence doesn’t sway you, this one might: tanks. They’re back.