How do you follow up the biggest game of 2008? If you're Rockstar Games, you use downloadable add-on content to give gamers Grand Theft Auto 4.5 for the bargain price of $20.
That's not to say that Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, released Tuesday exclusively for Xbox 360, deserves the sort of gushing, endless praise heaped on its predecessor by gleeful critics drunk on the euphoria of receiving yet another edition of Rockstar's infamous interactive crime drama.
In fact, Lost and Damned magnifies Grand Theft Auto IV's main flaw: It lacks the scope of the previous games in the series. Your enjoyment of Damned will directly correlate to your enjoyment of GTA IV — not how you enjoyed it last April when you were frantically tearing the cellophane off the package, but how you enjoy it now, nearly a year later.
I hope you didn't get too attached to GTA IV's Eastern Bloc expatriate protagonist, Niko Bellic, as Damned almost immediately dumps his permanently stubble-ridden mug. Niko makes a cameo in the first few minutes of Damned, and some of his exploits are obtusely referenced during this adventure, but otherwise this is an entirely new story.
Instead, Damned puts you in the leather boots of Johnny Klebitz, a biker who happens to be vice president of The Lost Motorcycle Club. As the story begins, you're tasked with picking up Billy Grey, the club's president, from prison. Immediately upon reuniting with Billy, you begin to butt heads over how the club should be run — Johnny's profit-driven, business-first ethic versus Billy's sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
It's not exactly Shakespeare. As with Niko, whose character alternated between likable and deplorable, Klebitz is hardly a stone-cold killer, but neither is he a thug with a heart of gold.
I respect Rockstar's team of writers immensely for avoiding Hollywood cliches in a series that could so very easily follow them to the letter and still make bags of cash. But it can be difficult to sympathize with a lead character that lacks any compunction about racking up a personal body count to rival Robocop's. Then again, the wild success of GTA IV argues that most gamers either gloss over such details or are perfectly fine playing an antihero with a heart of pitted copper.
Though Lost and Damned's gameplay is superficially similar to that of its predecessor, the expansion does pack two key additions — gang warfare and a decidedly darker story.
As veep of his very own motorcycle gang, Johnny can explore the city and kill rival bikers with his posse. Once you gain access to The Lost's clubhouse — much like GTA IV's safehouses, if they were equipped with arm-wrestling mini-games and internet access — you're able to recruit members to follow you around the city.
As you complete missions with pals in tow, their skills as felons increase, making them more effective backup when you inevitably come to blows with rival factions. If they die, they are replaced by other members, but their carefully honed skills are lost forever, which gives you a reason to treat these computer-controlled extras as valuable commodities instead of simply cannon fodder.
You'll immediately notice that Damned's tone is darker than Niko's story. In the game's opening 20 minutes, Johnny grinds a mechanic's face into a spinning motorcycle tire shortly before the bloke's jaw is bashed in by a sledgehammer, courtesy of Billy. Rockstar has never shied away from controversy, and here, more than ever, the company seems to be courting it — no doubt to the delight of fans who adore the series for its stark violence and sexuality.
When Johnny isn't being offered jobs by local crime syndicates, you're free to wander the streets of Liberty City. However, as with Grand Theft Auto IV, this freedom is both a blessing and a curse.
Liberty City is still easily the most immensely detailed cityscape of any of the Grand Theft Auto games to date. What it lacks, however, is the scope of previous games. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, by comparison, allowed players to tour parodies of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the redwood forests of Northern California.
There are good reasons why the latest Grand Theft Auto eschews quality over quantity, but Lost and Damned won't suddenly give GTA IV fans the unending game they seem to crave. The storyline is as layered and enjoyable as any stint from the original game, but once you're finished with it, you're back to wandering the streets of Liberty City, punching old ladies and performing other acts that anger your senator.
I'd recommend dropping the $20 on The Lost and Damned if only because it is the latest example of Rockstar's increasingly skillful ability to tell a complex crime tale, and because terrorizing the city with a gang of bikers is more entertaining than doing the same solo. But if you're completely burned out on GTA already, this is not the answer to your prayers.
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