Grand Theft Auto 4 is the perfect example of how developers should be doing downloadable content. In the past we have seen many games come out with downloadable content that consists of costumes or a few maps which is not exactly worth extra money to most people. Rockstar North could have easily added a few guns, cars, etc and put a 10 dollar label on it and suckered in fans of the series to make some profit. Thankfully that is not the case, what we did end up with is 2 downloadable contents that could have been considered a good game on their own. In fact Rockstar has been smart enough to release both as a standalone game saying many people precious hard drive space.
The two downloadable contents consist of The Lost and the Damned as well as The Ballad of Gay Tony. In both you will find added vehicles, motorcycles, and weapons but the best part is your getting two very good stories to go along with it all. Rockstar North even went through the effort to tie in the stories of the two dlc’s with each other as well as the original story where you play Niko. They even went as far as to add more side items to do like base jumping in TBOGT and a road rash style racing side quests as well as gang wars in TLAD. You can easily find yourself playing these two for over 20 hours for the cost of 40 dollars, a deal compared to many games being released lately. Did I also mention that your able to buy them both together as a stand alone game and have the GTA 4 multiplayer with added features? well you can, if your on the frugal side you can even look around for deals I have seen it being sold as low as $25 new.
Some design decisions that I really like about the downloadable content are first how they intertwined the three stories to give Liberty City more of a lifelike feel and how a small thing like reskinning the menus, interface, etc make the game feel like more than an expansion. The other main point is the fact that they altered the friend system to how it should have been in the first place, you are no longer bothered by your friends constantly but you are able to call them for things you need (Motorcycles, Weapons, backup, etc). It is understandable that they tried to immerse the player into the game with the friend aspect but that turned out to be the games biggest downfall.
Some items that I do not like on the other hand is that they have yet to fix the camera problems the game had originally. Many times while driving especially the camera will become very sporatic and you could end up with close ups of the back of your car or other bad scenarios like that one. Enemy health is another problem you could unload a clip into an enemy then all he would do is fall down and get back up in a few moments, I am not sure how they calculate it all but it always appeared to be get a head shot or prepare to waste a lot of bullets.
Overall these are small complaints to have considering the scope of the game. If you liked GTA 4 you will love these expansions. Also if you hated GTA 4 because of your friends calling you every second it is now fixed, if you were also in the group that was angry for losing features from San Andreas you can be happy to know that some like the gang battles and base jumping have returned.
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