As a native New Yorker, the claim can be made that while Liberty City is only based on New York, it really does capture the look, feel, and spirit of the city. Easily the most brilliantly conceived urban landscape ever devised for a piece of interactive entertainment, it's a thrilling place to just drive around and see. Playing through this new story, one is reminded that the marquee star of GTAIV, and its spin-offs, is the city itself. While no game, or game publisher, has yet come up with the magic formula to keep players hooked with regular infusions of downloadable content, the two Grand Theft Auto IV add-on packs (The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony) have both done an excellent job of creating new content for fans, without having to build a whole new game from scratch. Like visiting old friends, it's always nice to make a return trip to Liberty City. We could do with more of that across the industry. Gay Tony is the best console game value of the holidays, no doubt-it's more of the same, without a high price tag, like a second helping at half price. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but if GTA aspires to be a crime saga as opposed to pop culture, it's going to be a hard road. Gay Tony seemed from the trailers like it would be over-the-top, but a lot of the actual story and dialogue sometimes aims for grittier David Chase-style realism, without the true grit. Still, I miss GTA's more deliberate satire from the earlier PS2 days.
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