Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City

Excellent, excellent, excellent. That's the personal review over.

Two games both with different stories based in the same city as GTAIV and there's nothing bad about that.
Graphically its the same as GTAIV - excellent. Maybe somebody has experienced this little nag I have. I have quite a high end machine and it handled GTAIV without a hitch but in this game when I am on water or near water the frame rate drops a little. Not a problem just thought I would throw it out and see if anybody else has had this problem.
Sound is fantastic, every detail of the city life is alive.
Now to the games.

Ballad of Gay Tony...by far the better game. Excellent story line with good characters. Remember in GTAIV there was Ricky Gervais in the comedy club? Now we have Omid Jhalili doing the voice for one of the main characters Yusif. Funny stuff.

The Lost and Damned...good game but not in the class of Gay Tony.

Both stories tie in nicely with the GTAIV story. Nico and Roman make a couple of appearances and Brucie returns with his older bully brother. Luis (main character in Gay Tony) ribs him a lot about his size and over-tanned body. "Shut up you orange imp". There is a mission with Brucie and his brother towards the end of the Gay Tony game. There is an excellent racing game where you sky dive then get in a boat and finally race to the finish in a car.

What's new? New games include arm wrestling, cards and cage fighting. A few new weapons appear which are very good. Some new cars are included and unlike in GTAIV where you have to wait a few missions to get your hands on a decent fast car, they are available almost from the beginning. The 'check point' system is a huge relief. In GTAIV some missions required you to drive across the entire city to get to the mission and if you failed you would have to start all over again - another long drive. In these two games if you fail a mission it takes you back to the start of the mission action (you don't have to drive all over again). After completing missions you can replay them for better results by accessing them from your phone.

All in all for £15 you can't go wrong. One good game and one great game. GTAIV fans will love it.

Update - My brother a 'console is King' person had only played this game on the Xbox because he said keyboard and mouse was too much hassle. I bought an Xbox controller for PC (also works on Xbox) from Amazon plugged it into my PC, instantly recognised and installed without drivers, loaded this game and my brother was in heaven. He had Xbox controls on a PC game which graphically blows the Xbox out of the water.

If you played and enjoyed GTA 4 or San Andreas you'll enjoy this. Great stories / missions, funny in places and superb graphic with plenty of game play.
Admitted, the games, even together, aren't as long as GTA 4 main plot but still great value for money.

Having now completed this game, a continuation of GTA4 with two new characters, I can say it is a real winner. It may not have the colour and fun element of GTA San Andreas, but what a sequel to GTA4. Five stars.