When Grand Theft Auto 4 arrived on shelves last year, Rockstar treated us to a sprawling city with realistic graphics and an improved animation system. We were put into the shoes of Niko Belic, a refugee trying to track down a man who wronged him in the past. Throughout his adventure he runs into new and interesting characters. In the The Lost and Damned, we are put into the boots of one of those characters, Johnny Klebitz, vice president of the motorcycle gang the Lost. As an expansion to the Grand Theft Auto 4 game, players can experience another side of Liberty City that they only caught glimpses of from Niko’s eyes.

Gameplay

The expansion, The Lost and Damned is essentially a small-scale story told in a large-scale city. Players start the game with Johnny taking the Lost to pick up Billy, the president of the gang, from prison. Johnny was the acting president while Billy was in jail and had kept the gang together and managed some truces with rival gangs. Once Billy takes over things change drastically as Johnny watches Billy end the truce with the rival biker gang the Angels of Death as well as take on assignments that jeopardize the gang itself.

From the beginning players will notice some new things that The Lost and Damned brings to the Grand Theft Auto setting. Since Johnny is a biker through and through, Rockstar has fixed the motorcycle physics so that there is better control as well as survivability for collisions. This is by far the greatest aspect for Rockstar to work on since The Lost and Damned brings with it a bevy of new motorcycles that in a way are characters themselves. Each has unique handling and Johnny’s bike is one of a kind.

The Lost and Damned plays pretty much like Grand Theft Auto 4. The controls are the same, the interactions are the same and aside from the improvement to the bikes, nothing much has changed. In a way that is for the better since we have become used to the control scheme and this causes less headaches when switching between Niko’s GTA4 and Johnny’s GTA4.

Of course it wouldn’t be a GTA add-on without new weapons. Players can expect to arm Johnny with not only the standard weapons but incredible ones like a full-auto pistol, a sawed-off shotgun that can be shot while on a motorcycle, a grenade launcher and some handy hand-to-hand weapons like a pool cue (finally). Unfortunately these weapons do not carry over to Niko’s Grand Theft Auto which seems like a massive disappointment until you realize that playing a tough-as-nails biker with an affinity for gorgeous motorcycles is a lot better than being Niko at times.

Some missions you take on as Johnny will have you riding around as a pack with your gang members. Depending on the mission, a shield will show on the ground and staying within that shield will repair your health and you’ll hear some added commentary from your allies. Here you’ll notice that the AI isn’t too smart with formation bike riding. Often they’ll crash into cars, poles, each other and even you. One bike ride turned into a mission of frustration as I had to physically push the bikers back on to the street because they were too dim-witted to go around a wooden fence.

Also added on is an experience system for your gang members. As you take on gang wars and missions, members will join in with you and gain experience. Once again though, the AI isn’t exactly too bright and there really isn’t any noticeable difference between an inexperienced biker and an experienced one. In addition they die too easily either way and you never really connect with the “red shirt” gang members.

One of the biggest additions is mid-mission saving. No longer will you suffer through starting a mission over because a soccer mom got mad and blew that red light and ran you into a wall. Die or fail a certain part of a mission and you’ll start at certain checkpoints. Unfortunately this doesn’t carry onto vanilla GTA4 as it is sorely needed.

Rockstar saw fit to add some new multiplayer modes for The Lost and Damned and are all varied and equally fun. There is the standard race, but on motorcycles and when armed with weapons, plays akin to Road Rash of the past. Chopper vs. Chopper has to be one of the more entertaining of the additions, as you’ll race point to point as another player tries to take you out while flying a helicopter. My personal favorite was the game Lone Wolf Biker. One player is designated the “Lone Wolf” and must avoid the other players for the longest, much like keep-away that you’d play during recess at school. Whoever kills the Lone Wolf then becomes it and must race away to avoid being turned into road kill.

Overall, the gameplay and storyline are well-implemented. You’ll do some missions that intertwine with the original GTA4 storyline, sometimes teaming up against Niko and friends. Rockstar promised more than ten hours of gameplay and that is if you power through the missions non-stop. There are many other ways to side track you this time, with the shooting of seagulls for bonuses and doing races and gang wars to get new bikes and weapons.

Graphics

Graphically The Lost and Damned is verbatim of Grand Theft Auto 4. This isn’t much of a problem since GTA4 was already graphically impressive and not much could be done to improve graphics without a new game to begin with. The Lost and Damned does add a noise filter to make the game grittier looking to fit with the style of the gameplay. At first it does add a nice touch to it but after a while I grew tired of it and switched it off.  Aside from that, there are some style changes to the text and the minimap but over all nothing has changed.

Sound

The Lost and Damned still uses the same sounds from GTA4 with the addition of new weapon sounds for the new weapons and of course new voice actors. Character voices are the important half of GTA characters and The Lost and Damned doesn’t let us down. The acting is impressive and your biker gang buddies sound like true bikers, complete with their dirty mouths and accents. I would say that this time around the language and content is much more mature and vulgar than vanilla GTA4’s.

The Lost and Damned also brings in new radio tunes such as Styx’s “Renegade” and Kayne West’s “Love Lockdown”. You’ll also hear new advertisements and talk radio discussions. Never has knocking skulls while riding a motorcycle to Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” felt so good.

PlasmaFactor

Rockstar is planning on making “episodes” for the GTA4 world. Seeing as The Lost and Damned was in a way, a foot testing the waters, it was done very well. The game itself is cheap enough and yet has enough new content and stuff to do in it that it feels like a solid episode. The story isn’t too campy and wacky yet just crazy enough to fit in the world of GTA4. With the new additions of enterable locations, weapons and vehicles, it should only be a matter of time that the content should be able to be used in vanilla GTA4.

Conclusion

The Lost and Damned is, overall, a very solid add-on. You have your fun missions; you have your bad missions. You have awesome weapons and vulgarity and insane characters. The Lost and Damned brings episodic content to a more respected level for console gamers and we can only look forward to new episodes coming out in the future.

Let’s just hope there will be less full-frontal male nudity.