If you liked Grand Theft Auto IV, chances are you will have purchased The Lost and Damned expansion. And if you liked Grand Theft Auto IV, chances are that you will enjoy playing The Lost and Damned. More interestingly though, is that those who did not enjoy GTAIV could end up liking TLaD.

The Lost and Damned – Review

February 17, 2008 February 17, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned
Developer: Rockstar Games
Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed)

In The Lost and Damned, the player takes control of Johnny Klebitz, the foul-mouthed hard on the outside, slightly less hard on the inside Vice President of the Lost Motorcycle Club based in Liberty City. The game starts with you picking up the President of The Lost, Billy Grey, from a rehab centre. Almost immediately after being released Billy inserts himself back into a life of crime and drugs. This causes large clashes between him and Johnny as both want to see The Lost run in different ways.

The story is ironically ‘more GTA’ than the GTAIV story was. Its over-the-top ridiculous and humours yet contains enough moments of gravitas to keep you immersed. The story syncs with the gameplay in a much more playable fashion than its originator. Playing as a pissed-off biker randomly causing havoc around the city is much less detracting because it fits the character and storyline in a much more convincing way than GTAIV.

With the exception of new bikes, a few new semi-interesting weapons, improved bike handling and a slightly tweaked camera, the world and gameplay of Liberty City is much the same as it was before. You will spend most of your time on various motorcycles thanks to the vastly improved handling and seemingly superglue smeared saddle. The majority of side-quests can only be attempted whilst at the helm of a trusty hog. The only other major addition is mission checkpoints that negate the need to replay large chunks of a mission you have just failed.

The side-quests essentially amount to gang wars and bike races. The gang wars see you team up with some other bikers from The Lost, leading them to some rival bikers, and slaughtering them. A few select bikers can be upgraded to be more useful in fire fights and can eventually be bought along as back up for the storyline missions. This gives some incentive to level up these characters, but they only really act as distractions for the enemy allowing you more time to shoot the enemies. The bike races are the standard circuit street races only the racers wield baseball bats which can be used to knock the opposing racers off their bikes. These races feel fairly contrived and no matter how much progress you seem to be making, one small mistake and you will be watching the entire field go speeding on by.

The bike races are just one of the six new multiplayer modes. The modes feel kind of tacked on and everyone is bound to try each mode at least once but they do not posses anything revolutionary to invest any length of serious time in. There are also a few minigames and activities added but again, they will most likely be tried once and then forgotten.

Despite having great original content and a brand new 8-10 hour story, TLaD cannot escape what it is. It features the same aggravating issues that GTAIV did as players will become stuck in the landscape, react in the wrong ways and suffers from some frequent frame rate issues. The funniest problem is that the cut scenes including The Lost characters that are just making up the numbers will blurt out The Lost catchphrases for no good reason. This can prove to be (albeit unintentionally) hilarious to see one of the more serious scenes interrupted by someone yelling: “Lost MC for life motherf*cker!”

 

The Final Word
The Lost and Damned is a great expansion to Grand Theft Auto IV. It brings 23 new missions into brand new story that feels well worth the entry fee. If it were stretched out to the same length as the original GTAIV story, then the story and characters might have deteriorated, but TLaD does a such great job of introducing a concise, satisfying adventure in the Grand Theft Auto world, that is not a problem. If you found Niko’s adventure too serious and / or depressing, then Johnny Klebitzs’ The Lost and Damned could be just what you need.

– MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent

 

By Andy Jackson