Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned (Xbox 360)
“Well, I think what I’ve learned is, there’s always a man, dude,” the outlaw laments. “He just…wears a different uniform.”
It’s a missive that the player will quickly comprehend when Rockstar asks him to trade-in the brown sweatshirt and track pants for a leather jacket and boot-cut jeans.
The Lost and Damned, released the morning of February 17 on Xbox Live Marketplace, is the first of two announced Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable episodes Rockstar is creating to expand last year’s wildly successful Grand Theft Auto IV. While gamers often lament the poor-value of downloadable add-ons, The Lost and Damned sets a new standard for DLC by providing players with a fresh Grand Theft Auto experience for a remarkably reasonable 1600 MSP ($20 USD).
Johnny Klebitz stars as The Lost and Damned’s protagonist, usurping Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic in this chapter of the ongoing GTA canon. Klebitz is the vice-president and temporary leader of The Lost Motorcycle Club, a gang of savage road warriors who aren’t afraid of breaking every law on the books. For all their flaws, The Lost are unflinchingly loyal to one another and their president, the psychotic Billy Grey.
The game opens with Grey fresh out of court-mandated drug rehab. Not fazed in the least, Grey is quickly back to his old tricks: snorting, smoking, drinking, and engaging in other assorted (and unmentionable) acts of debauchery. Klebitz wouldn’t seem to mind, if it didn’t feel to him like Billy was going out of his way to incite old feuds with rival motorcycle gangs and undermine all the hard-earned business advances Johnny accomplished during their leader’s absence. The two men, half-deranged maniacs to begin with, clash frequently and fervently during the game’s brilliantly orchestrated cut-scenes.
The humanity, near-civility, and principles that Klebitz and his brothers demonstrate at times presents a striking contrast to what players of Grand Theft Auto have grown accustomed to. For one, The Lost are Liberty City’s only mixed-race gang, openly mocking the white-supremacist Angels of Death. Klebitz himself is Jewish and suffers numerous scathing epithets hurled at him during cut-scenes- unsurprising, given the company he keeps.
Johnny will also find himself coming to the rescue of Ashley, an old flame, during short side-missions. Ashley suffers from a debilitating drug dependency that’s left her a sorrowful shell of a woman and the cut-scenes featuring the two are among the game’s most affecting.
Beyond adding new missions, characters, and storylines, The Lost and Damned enhances and expands the fundamental gameplay of Grand Theft Auto IV in several crucial ways. By riding his chopper in proper formation with his brothers, Johnny will receive health, armor, and bike repair bonuses, plus engage in entertaining and profanity-filled conversations. Klebitz can phone his brothers to provide firepower or vehicle support during or between missions, or to purchase discounted weapons out of the back of one’s van.
The more frequently The Lost fight alongside Johnny, the better their weapon damage and accuracy becomes, persistent over the entire course of the entire game. Finally, players who become frustrated from dying during lengthy missions will be pleased with the game’s new mid-mission checkpoints, which allow Johnny to quickly revert back to a safe point during the mission should he bite the dust or otherwise screw-up. The option to replay a mission through the standard text messaging system is still ever-present.
More subtly, Rockstar has noticeably refined the motorcycle handling and physics. It’s a welcome adjustment, as any savvy player will be spending the vast majority of his time getting around Liberty City on one of The Lost and Damned’s dozen different bikes, including Johnny’s own heavily modified and finely-tuned Hexer. The DJs at Liberty Rock Radio, Radio Broker, and Liberty City Hardcore added forty new tracks to their respective playlists, including masterfully-selected songs by Deep Purple, The Doors, and Nazareth, Brazilian Girls, Magic Dirt, and The Yelling, and Sepultura, At the Gates, and Cannibal Corpse.
Rockstar satiates even the most rapacious bloodlusts with the six new weapons it has added to the game, including a powerful grenade launcher and an AA-12 inspired automatic shotgun that can shred vehicles with a few blasts, as well as a sawed-off shotgun and automatic 9mm that are perfect for firing from a bike. The fundamental combat mechanics have been kept the same from Grand Theft Auto IV, including lock-on aiming and an effective cover system, but this time, the player will more often be joined by NPCs during missions.
The Lost and Damned benefits from a more focused and corporeal storyline during its more manageable dozen hours of play. Further still, both major and minor plot points in The Lost and Damned intertwine brilliantly with that of Grand Theft Auto IV proper. In some instances, the player will even be replaying the same mission from IV, but this time from the perspective of Johnny.
The biggest shortcoming in The Lost and Damned’s approach to storytelling is the dissonance that exists between how Johnny presents himself during cut-scenes and how his actions unfold during actual gameplay. While Johnny takes a levelheaded, business-minded approach to the Lost’s affairs as compared to their hot-tempered leader, the ceaseless, unscrupulous brutality the player is required to engage in as Klebitz during missions contradicts the message that Rockstar undoubtedly wants to deliver. One minute, Johnny is spurning so-called “civilized” society, the next, he’s assassinating a crooked congressman’s own uncle for the cash. The disparity that exists here can be jarring.
The Lost and Damned appends Grand Theft Auto IV’s already extensive list of competitive multiplayer modes with six new ways to wreck virtual havoc among friends on Xbox Live. A new motorcycle-only race mode will have players reminiscing of EA’s classic Road Rash as they club their way to the finish line. The Lost attempt to gun down a busload of witnesses being escorted around Liberty City by NOOSE agents in ‘Witness Protection’. And in the absurdly fun ‘Chopper vs. Chopper,’ bikers will try to reach checkpoints before opponents in helicopters can eliminate them.
It’s fascinating to imagine while playing The Lost and Damned that Niko may be out there, somewhere in Liberty City, at any given moment. There are times when one might expect to see the unshaven Slav barreling down the avenues of Algonquin in a Turismo sports car, an army of LCPD patrolmen in hot pursuit. The universe Rockstar has created with Grand Theft Auto IV and subsequently, The Lost and Damned, is so rich and substantive, that there are virtually no limits on what the player should expect from the games.
Rockstar hasn’t taken a single shortcut with The Lost and Damned; no other sole piece of DLC adds as much finely-crafted original content to an existing title. With this episode, the studio has presented gamers with something truly unique: an opportunity to experience what’s become a familiar world through the eyes of a different playable character.
Which is what Grand Theft Auto titles have always been about: beyond the deep narratives, extensive collections of vehicles, and heart-pounding shootouts, remember, there’s always a man.
Primotech Rating: 
