GTA IV liberty city

GTA IV Liberty City.

It’s strange to think that, as of this writing, Grand Theft Auto IV is more than a year and a half old. It’s even stranger to think that the story it began is finally complete, with the two downloadable episodes – The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony – filling in plot holes and offering up inventive new ways to explore the city that most GTA fans probably thought they’d exhausted of possibilities by now.


Above: Looks like you’ve got some more exploring to do

The episodes follow the stories of biker-gang lieutenant Johnny Klebitz and club-owner flunky Luis Fernando Lopez, both of which take place in roughly the same timeframe as, and run parallel to, the events of GTA IV. The three storylines frequently intersect, and only by playing through all three of them can you really get a complete picture of what happens, and why.

If you haven’t downloaded either add-on yet, then you might want to consider picking up Episodes from Liberty City, which collects them both on one disc that you don’t need Grand Theft Auto IV to play. It doesn’t offer any new features over the downloadable editions, unless you count a static game-select screen as a “feature,” but if you lack the time or the bandwidth to wait for the lengthy downloads, or just don’t have GTA IV, this is the best way to get your hands on them.

Above: Not that Johnny is exactly a saint, of course