Yes, fellow gamers, The Balad Of Gay Tony, the long anticipated gta4 expansion came out on the 29th of october. This is the 2th expansion of the highly succesfull gta4 series after the Lost and damned expansion. Again this game surrounds itself trough the streets of New York, just as in the original and 1st expansion, but that doesn't matter, cause i guess most gta4 players admit that this new york city area is much better and more fun than in the original gta3 liberty city.

The best advise i can give, is 1st to complete the original GTA4 and then the Lost and the damned, before starting out with this expansion, but if you don't care, well you can buy this part and start playing as well of course. The price of this expansion game is $20 just as the previous one, or if you use microsoft points trough xbox marketplace, you can instantly download the game for 1600 microsoft points, downloading the game, takes about 10 to 15 minutes and is well worth the waiting. And in case you can't wait, play another game whilst waiting).

In The Balad Of Gay Tony, your character is Luis Lopez, the business partner of Gay Tony, and as the game starts out with its usual great made movies, you see that gay tony is a succesfull night club owner and you are kind of his bodyguard/handyman. And what would a gta4 storyline be without someone f*** things up, so yes, you may expect those again in this game. I am not going to tell to much about the story line here, if you are a gta 4 player, then you are well aware of what you can expect of the rockstar studio people.

What i am sharing with you though is that , the game provides new music, cars, weapons, and places to visit, more things to do, and is a very lenghty addition to the original gta4. The price of $20 is well worth it, as this expansion is larger than the lost and the damned.

Another new fact is that after every mission, you get some kind of scorecard, after completng the game, you get the opportunity to replay these levels or missions to increase your scorecard scores. It brings something new to the game, but to me, that isn't so important. What i like more is that you can go fighting for money (fight clubs) you can go golfing, and if you like some adventure, you can climb up the highest buildings in Liberty City and go skydiving.

As a mather of fact, there are 10 buildings you can skydive from, so if you find these, dive the heck down, and you'll get a nice achievement bonus. Yesterday i climbed up on the empire state building all the way up to the peek of the tower, trew some c4 charges down to  the streets, detonated the stuff and saw the cars blowing up, wanna come down, jump!.

  Now to me, this is a great and addictive storyline, and i instantly liked this addition of the game more than the previous one, but not all can be good of course, the graphics of the game are still equal to the gta4 game, what on itself is a good thing, yet, they are getting old and it's noticeable. Specially when you see, how other game graphics are developing, and getting more and more realistic, gta4 keeps the same latter.

Of Course it is pretty normal, since it is only an expension game and not a full game. For the multi player game lovers, there are new multi player game options added, but there isn't much new to that added.

All by all, this game delivers what gta fans are used to, and rockstar Game studios has managed again to make a great game.

pros:

+ Luis Lopez is a great protagonist

+ Lengthy storyline with loads of varied missions

+ New vehicles and weapons freshen up the familiar gameplay

+ Option to replay missions for leaderboard high scores once you beat the game

+ More new content than many full-priced games

Cons:

- Visuals are starting to show their age

- Little in the way of new multiplayer content

Achievements:(xbox360, playstaion???)

-Gone down-- Complete all base jumps    5G

-Diamonds Forever-- Complete the trinity  5G

-Four Play-- Hit the flag in a golf game 4 times  10G

-Bear Fight--Win the L.C. Cage Fighters championship  15G

-Catch the Bus--Dance perfectly in both Tony's nightclubs  15G

-Snow Queen--Complete 25 drug wars  20G

-Adrenaline Junkie--Freefall for the longest possible time  25G

-Maestro--Finish the Ballad 30G

-Past the Velvet Rope--Score 80% or above in all missions  45G

-Gold Star--Score 100% in all missions  80G