GTA DLC "exceeds all mainstream media" News

'The Lost and Damned plot has more quality than most other mainstream media'

I dunno... dancing on ice and Coronation street are very high quality

To quote IGN,"OSCAR QUALITY!"

it was very good though

If it was anything like the narrative quality of GTA4 then... well, it doesn't.

I expect to see Rockstar's plane crashed in the Mountains of Hubris next to Sony's very soon.

Been playing it for a little while and.... kinda meh really. I guess it's the characters, they just don't gel as well as Niko et al.

I haven't got it yet though its on my list - after Halo Wars and Riddick.... and.more importantly..after I finish the main campaign..which i've just started playing properly at a leisurely pace after the hype has died down. In fact, the first thing I did was turn on the TV in Niko's flat and watched about and hour of tv - the Republican Space Rangers are SouthParktastic :)

if the DLC reviews are mainly anything to go by then they fully deserve a pat on the back

I'll wager they'll see a flood of buyers for more DLC if they forgo plot on the next one and chuck in a rocketpack, 'zany' missions (with midpoint saves of course) etc

I think they screwed up the achievement points distribution. I've only to finish the story and I'll have got all 250...what incentive is there to get 100%/seagulls/etc.etc. like the full game?

I'm enjoying the game, but to say the plot is better than most mainstream media is overstating it somewhat.

Hard to really quantify it without spoiling the game, but basically At one point Ashley told me to meet her at Rays to talk about the diamond heist and at the same time I got a call from her saying she was being held captive by some Drug Dealers who needed me to go and kidnap Roman Belic, which obviously makes no sense as those two events can't occur simultaneously

Gary A

Finished it in less than a week. Gutted.

I went to download this last night after finishing F.E.A.R 2 on my PS3.

I got a lovely surprise as my 360 decided to RRoD after about a month of not being used at all. I guess that last game of SSF2HDR must have really put some pressure on it.

Of course my 360 is out of warranty because it's a close-to-launch model. Good work MS, that makes 4 of the 5 machines we've had in the house here that have RRoDed. Must be nice to have such healthy console sales figures because people have to buy your piece of shit machine more than once. Thank fuck i found an Arcade model on Ebay for €150 delivered. Still pissed off about it though because i really wanted to play this today :(

I've not played the new GTA IV DLC as much as I'd liked, thanks to being addicted to several PC games at the moment, but what I have played of it - some half a dozen missions - it is absolutely superb. The story and cutscenes so far have been amazing with expressive, believable characters and wonderful voice-acting. They're so good that I never once felt the need to skip any even though there's been quite a few. Also the addition of a mid-mission checkpoint make the game less frustrating to play. Rockstar really have raised the bar for DLC I think as this the best one I've played since Shivering Isles a while back.

While GTA IV itself isn't exclusive to the 360, it might as well be, because Lost and Damned and the future DLC are just two of the many good reasons to own an Xbox 360 right now and not a PS3. I hope they do come to the PS3 and PC at some point though because it would be a real shame for those owners to miss out on it.

I'm enjoying the game, but I don't like most of these biker characters - so I can't really relate at the moment.

I'll reserve judgement until I've progressed further.

I'm playing to much other games right know, you like games that entertain me not disappoint, and GTA IV clearly falls in that category, so much more of the same does not interest me.

@spudsbuckley

No sympathy, as you knew it was a launch model, so should have claimed on the 3 year warranty already, or part-ex'd for a Jasper console (@ Zavvi they were £99 new before Chrimbo).

It has Frankie Boyle doing stand up, nuff said!

Bought it, played 1st mission and watched an hilarious episode of "Republican Space Rangers". Priceless!

You've hit the price out of the ballpark at least.

I'm playing at a very leisurely pace, and enjoying it. I miss Niko but the bikes are great.As to the censorship debate. There might be a bit less blood but I've seen far more flying flaming bodies that in the whole of GTA4. That's not plot I'm talking about just general carnage.

It is more of the same but with knobs on, and since GTA 4 is genius this can only be good.

13 quid can buy an awful lot of DLC for other games combined, so it better be good!!

'No sympathy, as you knew it was a launch model, so should have claimed on the 3 year warranty already, or part-ex'd for a Jasper console (@ Zavvi they were £99 new before Chrimbo).'

Well, if you actually re-read my post, i said it was a close-to-launch model, one of the ones which they said they'd originally fixed the problem in. Not that it matters really because the new ones die as well anyway, we had a brand new Elite die after two months here. Oh yeah, and that Elite was bought to replace a refurbed launch model that had died. So of course i'm in the wrong for my machine dying and i should be glad that MS allow me the honor of buying a new console to replace the one that broke because of their shitty design.

The 360 is the only console i've ever had beside the Xbox (stopped reading discs but still turns on) that has died on me and i've owned pretty much every major console since the NES. MS know how to market a console and get the right dev's on board but they really should leave the manufacturing of the actual unit to people who know how to do it.

Interesting.

It seems that games like GTA, Fallout , Rock Band & friends are becoming platforms for content delivery in their own right.

I'll be curious to see how successful this ends up being. While having variably-sized content is a very good thing, I worry about:

*The audience for addon content being automatically limited to those who own the parent title.
*Diluting the core game - especially in the case of mulitplayer games when you end up with a fractured audience.
*Masses of available downloadable content becoming innavigable.

They must have too many mirrors in that office if they remotely think the quality of their product is that good.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed GTA IV as a game, but after the first 8 hours Nikko about faces from being a likeable rogue whose forced into regrettable actions, into a money motivated reprehensible thug with no moral code for the rest of the game and that's completely the opposite of what he claims he's trying to be. By and large the bulk of the in game characters were cliché 101, the dialogue was predictable, the overboard toilet humour adverts, billboards etc tiresome (time to grow up a bit we're all adults here) and let's not forget pretty much all women must be portrayed throughout as stupid, greedy, deceitful whores, and the ones who aren't don't put out (the uptight bitches!!!).

Back in the days of GTA III when R* were working with the Renderware engine and everything looked like moving lego bricks I can appreciate the playing it for laughs approach to the game setting, but with GTA IV they make a beautiful game world and then proceed to cover it in juvenile shit. Checking out the writing credits it pretty much seems everything ingame comes from the 'creative genius' of just 3 men, namely Dan Houser, Rupert Humpheries and Laslow. Personally I think it's way past time they got some proper writers/creatives in who can not only come up with believable characters, but also ensure their actions are consistent throughout the story as well as not feel the need to run to obvious, everytime they want to make a 'comment on society' ('Americas top hooker'....yes we get it..all women are whores!!!).

GTA IV good game, but it sure as hell isn't remotely anywhere near the quality of The Wire, or Deadwood.

@ Ryze: that's a tad harsh. It's not his fault that he didn't try to fob off a tired console onto a retailer. He shouldn't have to keep getting new units just to make sure that he can continue to play his games - that's entirely MS's fault.

'It has Frankie Boyle doing stand up, nuff said!'

Quality!! Much better than Ricky Gervais :-)

I don't know about that. I loved GTA IV, mainly cause Niko rocked, but Johnny in the DLC just feels too much like a pussy. Bad choice for a motorcycle gang main character

I smell something distinctly fishy, and I'll tell you why.

"If you put The Lost and Damned as a movie script, man, it would be crazy, and we want the gamers to realise that"

If it is true... you won't HAVE to TELL gamers to realise it, because they will realise it when they play the DLC. And if they don't realise it.... its possibly just not true.

It like writing "this is the bit where you should be scared" in a horror novel. If I saw that in a novel, I would wonder why the author felt it neccessary to tell me so and why they didn't just trust in the text.

"I think people are seeing this as the future of gaming, and we see it"

Translation.

"Most of the industry has realised that DLC is more profitable and less risky than only investing in full titles, and we want gamers to see DLC as the future, so we can keep making it"

I should mention, I have nothing against DLC at all. It can provide lots of quality gameplay and be a total plus for gamers (and it IS the future of gaming)... but I also know why devs like it so much too.

@Kadayi - Neither The Wire nor Deadwood have gameplay to match GTA IV. ;)

You have to be realistic here. GTA IV is a *game* first and foremost, you're not meant to sit down and just watch it: you play it.

The plot and characters are just the icing on the cake that help set the scene and immerse you in the game. Anyone can write a plot and come up with characters, few can write good dialogue and believable characters like those of GTA IV in my opinion. Fewer games still include voice-acting as exemplary as GTA IV either. GTA IV shows me that games can be mature *and* professional too, they don't all have to have poor acting, flimsy plots and 2D characters.

One of the things I love about the GTA games is the wonderfully written conversations that characters have while en route to a mission, they're just brilliant, frequently amusing and flesh out the characters while you're doing something other than watching a cutscene. They also catapult the games above second-rate wannabes like Saints Row.

GTA IV is both a great game to play and one which has a brilliant script. Both of those are what helps make the game so memorable, long after I've forgotten why I was playing Saints Row 2 for example.

Saints Row 2 was better than GTA4 though. Don't get me wrong, GTA4 is a great game and i'm very eager to play the DLC ,but SR2 had me grinning like an idiot pretty much 100% of the time i was playing it.

The over-the-top-ness was what made it great.

Rockstar are too far up their own arses.

I enjoyed SR2 as its more purely just game and doesnt try to win oscars, but GTAIV does have a more stronger focus on story and missions, but still yet the actual gaming is quite enjoyable.

I m thankful to Rockstar to make bike physics a lot better, I was worried that i would fall off and get on bikes too much to enjoy the game but no only did it once so far. Agreed that the conversations with other bikers and NPCs during the driving to the mission is one of the highlight of the game.

Great that you dont need to redo the driving to the mission when you fail, you start immediately at the start of the actual mission and for some reason I do prefer Johnny to Niko. I m not sure why, but no nothing to do with any homo tendency!

Shit is better than Diarrhea.

Still completely bemused as to why this is so popular when it's soo inferior (in my opinion obviously) to previous gta games (which i loved)

This is generic too. High quality generic, though.

Bring back the humble DMA, really. Oh yes, bring on All Points Bulletin. :)

Pah, Saints Row and the sequel had their moments - some of the mini-games were amusing and silly; I loved the sewerage spraying one for example - but the overall package was a bit lacking and amateurish IMO. The characters and story were forgettable, the visuals were workmanlike, there's no real character or personality to the game (the city itself is pretty generic) and, to top it all, the game itself was way too glitchy and unstable.

I've never once had GTA IV crash on the PS3 or 360 in over 80 hours of playtime between them but Saints Row 2 crashed three times during the 15 odd hours I played it before I got bored of it. Apart from some nice ideas like the ability to store cars in garages for easy retrieval, the very handy ability to call up gang members, the decent targetting system and the extensive custom character editor, Saints Row is inferior to GTA IV in every way IMO. It's competent, occasionally fun outside of the bland (as far as I played) storyline but completely soulless I thought. It was cotton to GTA IV's silk really. ;)

>I've never once had GTA IV crash on the PS3 or 360 i

I've only played gta4 to about half way through.. and have walked through a number of walls into gaming oblivion (requiring a re-start)

As the discussion has turned down that road, I thought SR2 was far superior to GTAIV as an overall package. Quite simply IO got bored with GTAIV and stopped playing.

Somewhere in between the very repetative missions and the undrivable cars (don't anybody dare use the word realistic in this this thread - the driving in GTAIV is nothing of the sort) I just stopped having fun. Whereas SR2 always remembered that me, the player, having fun, was the most important thing in the world. So it served fun up in large piles.

SR 1 was fixing stuff GTA should have fixed ages ago, and SR2 just kept on doing the same thing.

E.g. If I am trawling around 3 of my homies and I get into a two seater car, what happens? In SR 2 the spare 2 gangsters commandeer their own ride and follow me along the street. In GTAIV people get left behind.

And lets face it, as soon as GTA decided I couldn't ride a BMX off a mountain and then base jump to safety... it was dead to me.

Well, it is 200+% better than any downloadable Horse Armor BS.

If you like American Chopper then you might enjoy playing this.
And if there are going to be comparisons; GTA4 (and Lost and Damned) is maybe more like the movie Taxi Driver whilst a game like Saint's Row (2) is maybe more like Lethal Weapon.

@Darren

Oh I see what you did there, you made a (irrelevant) funny and therefore (in your own mind) completely invalidated my argument.....

...yeah right. Also simply stating the opposite of whatever I've said (no it is mature and believable!!) is not a valid counter argument. Don't mistake high production values for actual quality, a polished turd is still just a turd at the end of the day no matter how much money you throw at it. Don't get me wrong, I don't think GTA IV is a bad game, but it sure as hell isn't what it could be in the right hands. I'd take the Witcher (boob cards aside) over GTA IV when it comes to picking a mature title everytime (R* could learn a thing or two about handling choice and consequence from CDprojekt as well tbh).

Seen LA confidential? There's a great scene in it between Kevin Spacey & James Cromwell that comes completely out of nowhere and knocks your socks off. Nothing, not one event that happens through out GTA IV remotely shocked or surprised me despite all the twists and turns the storyline takes, from Michelle working for the Fed through to Roman getting wacked. Obvious events every step of the way. How is feeding players the predictable remotely good writing?

The story/characters/script/acting didn't come close to the main game, which really was brilliant.

I've never once had GTA IV crash on the PS3 or 360 in over 80 hours of playtime between them

Lucky you. While my PS3 version of GTA4 never crashed, the DLC (for which I traded that version with the 360 one) is constantly hanging itself up mid-game. It's so annoying because I absolutely love TLAD. Imo, it has the some of the best and most authentic characters ever in a video game.

Well, I guess Ryze is going to explain to me why I suck and not the company who's build an unreliable P.O.S hardware.

"GTA IV shows me that games can be mature..."

I feel like that too. It might not be quite there yet compared to other "grown up" media but its head and feet above 95% of games which are still designed for teenage geekboys.

Darren is a CUNT!!

Proper storytelling in games is still relatively new. Movies have had alot longer to evolve that ability, books far longer than that and other mediums as well (radio, theater, etc).
GTA4 does this very well, both the original and the DLC. The fact that there is so much storytelling is in a DLC such as this is a feat on its own.

Perhaps I am just easily amused. Or others just hard to please. Either way, I win and they lose.

The acting and plot in GTA IV was at times terrible. People thinking that games are a better medium for telling stories through voice and acting are crazy.

I'm considering getting SR2, I found GTA4 rather dull and only got maybe 30% of the way through it. I will still try to finish it though.

And yes, the cars were so shit to drive I found myself dreading any upcoming corner.

Saints Row 2 and GTA IV are not really directly comparable. Stop scratching each others eyes out.

Saints Row 2 (or Saints Row 1.5 as it should be called - it just expanded the existing city and added improved graphics and more side games) is frivolous fun, like Vice City and San Andreas. GTA IV is deep and detailed, like Vice City and San Andreas.

SR2 is a lovely little sandbox that keeps giving you treats but at the end of the day these are all fairly meaningless.

GTA IV (the main game) has a seemingly overstretched and convaluted plot. What TLAD crucially brought to the table is that this is the Pulp Fiction of video games - Johnny Klebbitz and Luis Fernando Lopez, along with other seemingly minor characters from the main game and minor events concerning major characters like Roman are filling in the blanks in the plot, and filling out the story and minigame quotient.

Essentially, if you want to fully understand and appreciate GTA, you need TLAD and DLC2.

@Rodchenko

You fucking suck, dude!