The Ballad of Gay Tony is definitely worthy of your time. It adds the basic features you'd expect from an expansion: new guns, cars, and other features (parachutes, for example), as well as an entirely new campaign. And , is it awesome.



This review is going to mainly focus on the key differences from a presentation standpoint. Everything in the game has had an 80's-makeover, and it really makes the game that much better. Tons of new 80's music has been added (including a new radio station, Vice City FM), streets names are now colored in pink and yellow, the loading screen now has a pink font with sparkles, and at the end of every mission, the statistics come up in front of a rainbow background. This 80's theme keeps the focus of what this expansion wants to be, and it makes the game that much better.

The story is definitely the highlight of this expansion. All of the characters are funny, engaging, and realistic, and the ~10 hour campaign is filled with some amazing cutscenes. The characters are very likeable and have motives for what they're trying to do. The main character, Luis, has a rags-to-riches story, Gay Tony is a failing businessman (who's addicted to coke and in case you didn't figure it out, gay), and there are tons of supporting characters like Evan, Tony's boyfriend, who ends up being very funny, and Yusuf, a stuck-up over-confident man who is probably one of my favorite characters from the GTA IV world. Hell, even the bouncer at one of the clubs is great.



No new islands have been added, but three new clubs are now available, and you're free to access them. Gay Tony owns two of them, Masionette 9 (a standard club) and Hercules (a gay club). At these clubs, you can bounce (standing at the club looking for trouble, which is honestly pretty boring), dance in a new mini-game (and her if you win), take shots (on the house, and very funny to watch Luis stumble all over the place), and even compete in a Champagne Battle. It's all filled with the typical Rockstar humor, and fits perfectly in GTA IV's world.

There are also a lot of side missions to take part in, and this doesn't even include everything you can do in a club as well as the random people you can help out in the street (seen as Male/Female avatars on the mini-map, just like GTA IV). There's a fighting arena where you can, obviously, fight. There are Drug Wars where you can kill a bunch of guys for drugs (which is always fun), and even a base-jumping mini-game (using the new parachute) where you try to go through a series of targets floating in the air. And it's not as easy as it sounds.



Like I said before, there are new guns (such as a high-powered machine gun and shotgun with exploding bullets), new vehicles (an APC similar to a tank as well as a missile/machine-gun-equipped military helicopter), and much much more, remote explosives and the ability to hit a guy in the balls with a golf ball to name a few. There's also an entirely new scoring system that gives you goals for each mission (time, damage %), and points for each objective, and after beating the game you can replay any mission and try to improve your score.

Did I mention there's also multiplayer?

And how much is this gigantic adventure that's better than many full-priced games? $20. 1600 Microsoft points, and you have access to this entire game. $20. If you loved GTA IV, you probably already bought this. If you like GTA but didn't like IV, give this a try. If you don't like GTA in general, youu're an idiot. Buy this, and experience one of the best games of all time. $20.

Recommended Price: $59.99. It only costs $20.
Review Score: 9.5/10
Final Score (factoring in price): 10/10

I love this game.