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I was originally going to post this in the other Ballad of *** Tony thread but then I decided against it because I realized how long this got...
Just so you know any bleeped out three letter word in this thread is probably G@y.
Here's my personal review on the Ballad. (Note: There
are no spoilers about the BoGT story, but I do reference the Vanilla
GTA:IV story and The Lost and Damned story a bit)
The New Additions (the stuff that's new to the GTA:IV universe, but not necessarily the GTA one. In no particular order)
Parachuting
Buzzard Helicopter (Awesome minigun and rocket capabilities)
The other new Helicopter (san something, no cool features for it other then it feels like it handles quicker then mavericks)
Nitro for cars (in triathlons)
New weapons (scroll down)
Night Clubs
Golfing
Fight Club (Liberty City Cage Fights)
New radio content (songs and commercials/radio shows.)
Henrique's
ability (one of your new friends will steal and drive out some of the
new vehicles to you, kind of like Clay's special ability in TLAD)
Weapons
New handgun, 44 calibre if memory serves. Either way, it's pimp as hell man. Super powerful, nice sized clip, plus just look
at the thing. Damn. When I first came across this weapon I looked at it
on the ground for a good five minutes before picking it up. It is sexy.
New
gun for the shotgun slot. Well, it's an improvement on a gun from TLAD
technically. Remember when you got the auto-shotty in TLAD and you were
like, damn, guns can't get any better then this? Well, they did it. You
can now buy two types of rounds for your auto-shotty the normal rounds
OR explosive rounds. Yeah, these rounds upon contact let out a small
explosion, nothing RPG sized but enough that around 4 shots takes out a
helo. Plus it mangles the heck out of cars, you become a human car
compacter with this thing. New favorite gun?
New gun for the
sub-machine gun slot. Its basically a silenced P90. Large clip,
powerful as hell, feels like an assault rifle but with the ability to
carry large ammounts of munition for it. It's awesome. Downside though
is it's a two handed weapon which means it can't be fired from a
vehicle.
There is also another new skin for a gun that fits in the
sub-machine gun class, the gun that now looks different is (as far as i
can tell) exactly the same as it was in both TLAD and GTA:IV. I don't
want to delve too much deeper in it for fear of spoilers. Mainly, I
laughed pretty hard when I discovered it and I don't want the joke
ruined.
A new gun for the assault rifle class, called the
"Advanced Machine Gun" It's basically a SAW style MG with a 200 round
clip and moderately fast reload time (compared to MGs in other games)
it's perfect for those situations where you're facing alot of guys and
just need to cut through them.
New sniper rifle, it zooms
farther then the old magazine-style sniper rifle, but deals more
damage. Plus its easily the coolest looking weapon in the game.
New
weapon for the grenade class. Remote sticky bombs. Yeah, you toss them
at cars/walls/what have you and push down on the dpad when you want
them to explode. You can plant multiple and blow them all up at once if
you want. You can throw them and blow them up in mid air. They're
handy. You know when cars would be following you and you'd try to cook
the grenade just right before tossing it out and blowing them up? now
just toss a sticky bomb at the wall wait for the car to get to that
spot and detonate. However realize that theres a delay between when you
push the button and when the bombs go off (they beep like 3 or 4 times
before they blow up) but once you've got that mastered these can be
quite fun. Setting up ambushes for waves of enemies etc. They're just
real versatile.
The New Vehicles
The Buzzard
helicopter is great, the miniguns aren't explosive rounds like in the
avenger but they fire faster and fire more at once. They're great for
chewing through crowds or obstacles, or even for blowing up vehicles!
However with the new missiles you won't need to use measley bullets for
vehicles. The minigun firing is mapped to the A button whereas the
missile firing is mapped to X and man, these missiles shoot fast. You
just aim, hold down x, and see if your target is ashes when the smoke
clears. It is a little difficult to manouver the buzzard at high speeds
while trying to aim at targets and fire (specifically targets that are
below you as that causes you to dive as well). But hey, if skill wasn't
involved it wouldn't be fun. As well as the new buzzard helo, theres
another new helo that feels like it rises higher and manouvers quicker
then the maverick. Other then that, and the fact that it looks
different, that helo is exactly the same.
Theres also the helo
(I can't remember its name either) that is used for towing items,
(vehicles) it picks stuff up and moves it. But at this point in my
playing I'm not sure if it's flyable as i've only seen it used by NPCs
in missions. (I tried highjacking it even, but well stealing a moving
helo is easier said then done). We will see though, I'm sure that
rockstar didn't create a whole new vehicle only to not let you use it,
still I've never actually been behind the controls so I can't say.
There's
also a plethora of new cars, and even a couple new bikes, these new
vehicles all represent real life ones pretty well (though not as
blatantly as say the Coquette :P) and they all have their own
individual merits. I must say though, as I own a 2008 Mustang, that the
car designed to look like a mustang actually reminds me of driving it,
from the sounds it makes to the weight with which it handles. I was
impressed.
There's also the re-introduction of Golf Carts, these are pretty fun. Hitting people with these is a personal favourite.
Of
course I can't forget the APC, the NOOSE tank. It's a light tank. which
is different then what they had in past GTAs, and it features a turret
that fires in a manner comparible to that of the buzzard. Smaller
explosions then an RPG but faster. I'm a fan of the new APC, it handles
a little awkwardly but with the command of something like a tank.
Running into stuff doesn't cause them to just explode like older GTA's
had, and the tank does "die" alot easier then it used to (BTW when the
vehicle "dies", the manner in which it catches fire is awesome).
The Story
First
and formost, your characters name is Luis Lopez, he's mexican. He's ***
Tonys business partner/friend and describes his relationship with Tony
as "The father I never had" (I'm purposefully being vague by the way, I
don't want to give away the actual story so i'll keep it to a
reflection from here on out). The actual story line featured voice
acting/dialogue/characters with a high level of technical excellence
that GTA:IV has led me to expect, it doesn't feature the same intensity
that I felt in the Niko storyline (that mission where he saved roman
from kidnapping and his voice was cracking "Don't f**k with my
family!"...man that was intense) but the dry sarcasm Luis uses and his
outlook on life was awesome. However, don't be fooled, this story arc
is hillarious. Some of the dialogue and cutscenes that went on? Epic
funny. Two characters inparticular that are introduced, one of whom is
just funny as hell on his own, and the other whose interactions with a
past character make him worth the inclusion. Really though, after
Brucie and Roman I never thought I'd have a new favourite character,
but BoGT did exactly in introducing this new guy (whose name starts
with a Y....I'm really trying not to spoil anything haha).
You
know how you can call a guy inbetween missions and you just talk about
stuff? Like you'll reflect on what happened in the last mission or two
etc. without actually progressing the story anymore. I never actually
did that until the BoGT just because the dialogue was that funny.
The
story starts out at the time where Niko and Packie and the boys rob the
Liberty Bell Bank in the Three Leaf clover mission, just so you have a
sense of where chronologically it takes place, and it does a very nice
job of intertwining you with the characters and story of the past
missions. It answers a couple questions you may have had like "How did
this mission in TLAD end up with the police involved anyway? or
the very classic Whatever did happen to those diamonds?" The story does
a nice job of staying involved in the other two storylines while still
being its own. And you start to have a feeling for the other side of
the spectrum (as you should, cause you play as all three sides of the trifecta).
And now...The Missions
These missions are really a cut above.
You
remember how in GTA:IV there were those certain missions that just
flowed so nicely and were so epic they stood out? Things like the bank
robbery mission, or the last mission etc. Well in BoGT nearly every
mission is like that. Thats not an exageration either. Maybe 3 or 4
weren't that epic, but the other ones really were. It was so chalk full
of them all that it was incredible. I guess since it's a smaller story
arc then that of GTA:IV its understandable that they don't have
bullshit "drive here, shoot this guy, chase this guy, repeat" missions
that GTA:IV did but still. The scope of some of these missions....just
incredible. Also, certain missions you only can access at certain parts
of time (ie: night time/day time missions you receive from Tony will
change). PLUS! BoGT has this new "Scoring" of missions, where it will
rate you based on how you did in the mission. There are some default
paramaters, (Time, Health lost, vehicle damage, accurcacy, # of
headshots etc.) but they also include certain bonus objectives (IE:
Land your parachute in a boat, shoot the target out a window etc.) and
each mission has different targets for these paramaters that you can
view, and based on how you did you get a percentage and based on those
percentages you can unlock achievements. PLUS! BoGT allows you (upon
completion of the ballad) to go back and replay any mission through an
interface in your phone. I've fooled around with this and unfortunately
it appears that you don't get to see the opening cutscene through this
option :( could just be the missions I had selected to replay though.
With those features replay value has just increased intensely.
Really,
the option to replay any mission? If that was EVER implemented into the
past two episodes (TLAD and GTA:IV I would cry tears of ecstacy, sadly
I HIGHLY doubt that will ever happen. Unless God realllllly likes me?
The Bonus Missions
So we have different bonus missions/bonus stuff you can do.
The new BoGT has a whole new slew of Unique Stunt Jumps to challenge and frustrate you (achievements for the jumps also).
I
have also seen Seaguls around the city to shoot and kill, however I am
not sure if these are different then those of TLAD (The only reason I
say this is because GTA:IV had pigeons, TLAD had seaguls, so i assumed
BoGT would have a different animal, however they are just Seaguls and
since I never bothered to kill all the Seaguls in TLAD, or even a
decent ammount, I cannot fully say that they are different then those
of TLAD).
Theres also Base Jump missions where you parachute in different circumstances. There are three (technically
four) different type of base jumps. Target Jumps, Vehicle Jumps, and
Heli Jumps. There are 15 Base Jumps in total, 5 in each of those three
categories.
In Target Jumps you jump off a certain building and have
to pull your chute and manouver Luise to hit a pink target on the
ground, based on where you land in the target you get a score. However
as long as you HIT the target it counts as complete, 3% or 100%
accuracy, doesn't matter. The accuracy score is mainly just for replay
(Trying to beat your best score etc.)
Now Vehicle Jumps have 2
different types, the more common type where you jump off a building and
try to land on a moving flatbed truck. The 2nd type only appears 2ce,
once where you start off on a roof and try to drive your Sanchez off a
jump, bail off the sanchez at the right time, open your parachute, and
manouver Luise onto the back of a moving flatbed OR the other which is
the same except you land on a boat instead. These are my favourite type
cause they're reminiscent of Evil Kanevil (sp?). Your score is based
off how you land on the vehicle (ie: the middle of the flatbed or do
you just tick the side and face plant off)
In Heli Jumps you start
off in a helicopter, bail out the side, pull your chute and have to
manouver through various floating pink circles in the sky, after you've
gone through them all you have to land in a pink target succesfully to
complete the jump. Your score is based off how many of the circles you
hit in the air, AND how you land on the target.
Base Jumps are placed in various places throughout the city and appear on your map.
There
are the Drug Wars, you and two of your friends go to an area, fight,
steal the drugs, and leave. Kindof like the gang wars of TLaD except
you have to actually steal the drugs and extract to complete them.
These are placed in various places throughout the city and appear on
your map.
Then we have my favourite addition, and probably the main reason I pop in GTA:IV months from now. Triatholons.
These are awesome.
You remember how shortly after the Bank Robbery Mission in GTA:IV you
hear on the radio about a crazy group of racers jumping from
helicopters swimming boating and driving throughout the city? Well I
remember that radio commercial well, I always assumed it was
referencing the Online play where you can have Helicopter races, or Car
races, or Boat races, but now I'm almost 100% positive it was
referencing the happenstances of BoGT (which means Rockstar had this
intented since GTA:IV itself). You start off in a cutscene in a
helicopter, then you (along with your three competitors) bail out and
thats when you take control of Luise. You have to parachute to the
boats below (sometimes though, they're not "below" exactly..) and take
control of one. Not all of the boats are the same though, so you better
get their before your favourite type is gone! You then boat around the
city, hitting ramps and checkpoints along the way, after a bit of
boating you beach yourself and get out to take control of cars. The
cars follow suit in not being all the same time, so if you really want
that Comet you better be fast in your boat. Now you race cars, before
you say oh racing cars! That's beein in GTA for ages! HOLD UP and
realize that there's a twist. Nitro. That's right, GTA has NoS. You
start off with a full "tank" of NoS and you can use it at any point,
(and I must say I ADORE the NoS in this game, how your car responds
etc.) but when you run out maintaining a high speed will refill your
"tank", once your tank gets past the line you can either use it again
or refill it more and then use it (note: Once you get past the line
your NoS fills slightly faster). Basically you just drive your car
through the checkpoints, NoS, fill up on the straight a ways and repeat
until you get to the finish line. It's alot of fun cause you often get
taken through high traffic areas (Nitro-ing your way through Star
Junction in the middle of the night is FUN)
Triatholons really are
the icing on the cake that is the Ballad of *** Tony for me. I'm a HUGE
fan. These are placed in various spots throughout the city and show up
on your map.
Then there's another Gem. The Liberty City Cage
Fighters. This is great, you take Luise through a whole slew of
underground cage fights, using various tactics to hone your skills and
conquer. If you back your opponent up to the wall he gets grabbed by
the crowd giving you a huge opening, don't step off that mat yourself
though! Theres a whole championship tournament set up that I have still
yet to beat. But I was a little skeptic at first, I thought "Hey! I'm
super good at hand to hand combat, this will be way to easy! It's like
punch punch kick counter kill repeat!" But man was I wrong, these
really hone your boxing skills. Outside when you get in a hand to hand
fight you can afford getting hit a couple times while you set up a
counter because one or two well timed counters will end the fight with
the other guy on the ground, but you try that in LCCF and when you face
your second opponent with that lowered health you realize it probably
wasn't such a good idea afterall. Luise has a couple new combos to
bring to the table as well that are great tools to use when you're not
countering. These fights are great fun and I'm excited to return to
them. The LCCF is placed in one area in the city and shows up on your
map. The first rule about fight club is you do not talk about fight
club the second rule about fight club....
Then the friend
missions, those little outings you go on with people you find on the
street that you may or may not know. Like TLAD but unlike GTA:IV these
appear on your map no matter where you are in the city. Some of them
are pretty cool, others are pretty stupid, either way you're in for
some interesting dialogue.
Then there's Club Management, during
Club Hours (2100 - 0600) you can mange either of the two Clubs Tony
owns: Maisonette 9 (Straight) or Hercules (***), which basically
entails patrolling the different areas until you see a problem and then
kicking out drunk people, stopping fights, getting your flirt on with
the girl who runs the security cameras etc. But every once in a while
you have to leave to go help some VIP Celebrity out of a jam.
...
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