Well time for another review and this time for a little change I'm going for a video game, and I thought I'd look at one of the Grand Theft Auto series, which is part of GTA: Episodes from Liberty City: The Ballad of Gay Tony. This is one of the expansion pack episodes, along with the Lost and the Damned, and as its part of the GTA IV universe, there are some crossover moments where we see some of the characters pop up from the main GTA IV game, such as the main character Niko Bellic, and some of the supporting characters such as Packie McReary. But let's have a look at the game more...
OK because of the length of the plot I won't (for once!) delve too deeply into the story of it, but basically to get a gist of what its all about. The game starts with its main character, Luis Lopez (Mario D'Leon) being held hostage as part of a bank robbery in Liberty City. In the aftermath of the robbery, Luis survives and is questioned by the police, and shotly after he meets up with his business partner, "Gay" Tony Prince (David Kenner), who runs two of the most prominent nightclubs in town, the Masionette and Hercules. However Tony is in serious debt with the clubs and owes money to various different people, one of which being Rocco Pelosi, who is a member of the Ancelotti crime family. Luis has other problems as well such as his mother, who has financial issues also, and she disapproves of his lifestyle. Luis also along the way meets up with other business associates, such as Yusuf Amir (Omid Djaili), who is a real estate dealer in Liberty City, through whom he does some crazy missions for such as stealing a tank, a military chopper, and even a subway carriage! Luis also meets Mori Kibbutz, a business enterpreneur, who is egotistical short ass, who bullies his younger brother, Brucie, and whom he also does some missions for. And eventually Luis does business with Ray Bulgarin, who is soon revealed to be the main antagonist in the game, who at the end of the game has a showdown with Luis and Tony at Tony's club.
The Ballad of Gay Tony is one of the most entertaining episodes from GTA IV, and in my opinion its more enjoyable that the full GTA IV game itself. As for me personally I felt the overall tone of GTA IV had become a bit too serious and sombre, with some rather heavy themes involving Niko Bellic's trek to Liberty City to seek revenge on a soldier who had betrayed him. In TBOGT (the abbreviation of the game title, saves many key presses! ;-)) the tone feels just right, as it makes a return to the fun of the series that was present in GTA Vice City and San Andreas. And what TBOGT also does well is inject a bit more variety into the series again, as GTA IV had a heavy reliance on gun missions. But in TBOGT Luis has the opportunity to do different things such as skydive (base jumping), go up in choppers (as I think GTA IV was all car orientated), steal tanks, play golf, and of course go into clubs and dance and shag women! And basically here the main character is expected to do a bit more than just try and survive a mission by point and shoot and running (although he does that of course).
The characters are all quite entertaining with Luis Lopez as the main one being quite a likeable guy, who is level headed and does what he can to try and keep himself and his boss, Tony above water, and Mario D'Leon gives a fine performance in the role. Luis's character is also rather amusingly portrayed as a ladies man, and he is seen in a few parts of the game, having casual sex with women in toilets, as well as one of the girls who works at the club, while you do the club management mission! (those bits are fun I have to say!) Gay Tony is an amusing character, voiced by David Kenner, who does a fine job in showing Tony's frantic neurosis, and actually resembles a gay equivalent of Ken Rosenberg from Vice City, as he is a drug addled wreck, who is up to his eyes in debt.
The supporting characters are also well catered for in the voice acting department, with Jeff Garner as Mori Kibbutz, the small man with the Nepolean complex and an ego the size of Australia. Mori is a big headed business enterpeneur who Tony owes money to aswell, and he gets Luis involved in racing among other things. Mori also bullies and goads his younger brother, Brucie, who in their last mission, snaps and punches Mori, who after his whole tough guy act, breaks down in tears. Ray Bulgarin as the main baddie is also well acted by Vitali Baganov, who has a bizarre habit of collecting rock memorabilia, and instruments such as guitars and drums, and he jams with his not so talkative henchman, Timur. And finally Omid Djaili steals the show (or the game) with his very funny performance as the ego-maniac, Yusuf Amir, although unlike Mori, he is more generous and likeable (as he ends up giving Luis the use of his military chopper as well as giving him one of his cars and a golden uzi). Yusuf also makes many racial slurs in the game such as "whatsup niggas!" to the general discomfort of Luis, and spends most of the missions also trying to impress his off-screen father, who is a respectable businessman.
Of course the game still unfortunately suffers from the somewhat frustrating flaws of GTA IV as it is still part of that series, the main one being the car control system which is generally very sluggish and annoying most of the time. This is mainly because steering and manoeverability of the cars aren't very good, and the breaks are also quite sluggish as it takes ages for quite alot of the cars to come to a halt, and especially when you want to make a u-turn. I also thought the police wanted rating system is still an annoyance as at times you can accidentally bump your car into a police car and all too easily you can pick up a wanted rating. Its also annoying that when you have a wanted rating, that when you try to lose the cops by going into the paint and spray garage, if the cops see you going in, you can't use the garage. But that's where Rockstar are trying to make the game a bit more realistic, as in Vice City and San Andreas, you could get away with that, but not now, but damn it, I prefer like that! ;-) I also think at times the game's targeting system can go a bit awry as you can easily try and aim at your intended target but it aims at another one instead. And finally when Luis is shot and killed or his health bar goes to zero, after he goes to the hospital, its infuriating how much money he loses, due to his healthcare bills, thanks to the cynical money grubbing US healthcare system! As he can easily lose about $8,000 every time he goes to hospital (probably based on how much money he has earned it can vary), which means you really have to reload your saved game so you can restart the mission again without having to lose all that money!
Soundtrack wise GTA IV overall wasn't as strong as its predecessors, and although there are still some good tracks to be heard, its more miss than hit here. Regardless there are still some good rock tracks to be found from such artists as David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, The Stooges, REM, Queen, Iron Maiden and The Doors. There are also some interesting tracks in there such as Terry Riley's "A Rainbow in Curved Air", which I remember being used in the original Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, as well Jean Michelle Jarre's "Oxygene "Part IV" which you will recognise instantly, as well as Philip Glass's "Pruit Igoe" which is also recognisable and what also used in the ads for GTA IV when it was released. And there is of course a large selection of different genres such as funk, rap, indie, hip-hop, pop, electro, ambient, disco, reggae, hardcore and metal. The radio chat stations are also quite amusing again and an improvement on San Andreas, as we have Laszlow properly back with his show Integrity 2.0, although this time he's far more sweary than before. Public Liberty Radio, which features three different radio hosts, and We Know the Truth, which also features a brief cameo interview with Ricky Gervais.
Also I can't finish without mentioning the graphics in GTA IV and TBOGT, which are terrific as the series by then had been given a massive graphical revamp into the world of HD. And in GTA IV, Liberty City looks incredible, and it is especially impressive when we see for example Luis do a base jump from a helicopter and we see the panoramic view of the city. But overall from the cars, to the buildings and streets, to the actual character models, the game looks terrific and its a vast improvement on the crude character models we had seen from Vice City and especially San Andreas, and as its now in Full HD, its a big step up. In fact I look forward to seeing how good GTA V looks on its release.
So that's it for now on my review of GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony, which is a very entertaining episode from the series, and it saw it get back on track, with its lighter tone than the full game.
And that's it!
No comments:
Post a Comment