By Jim Rossignol on January 29th, 2010 at 3:13 pm.
The Almighty K has news that Rockstar intend to release Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, the double pack that includes standalone adventures The Ballad Of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned, which were both release to the Xbox in 2009. The release will happen in March, and the pack will cost about $40. I’ve not played either of these, so I can’t really comment on the worth of this, but hey, at least GTA4 runs on my PC now I upgraded my CPU and memory to way more than I really need.
Dave Tosser says:Hello, readers. I can see clearly now. You wanted me dead, so this is how it ends. The story climaxes, in a scene reminiscent of something Miramax might produce in a few years time, with me typing out a footnote for a post about the release of a GTA4 expansion pack on my Blackberry, thumbing for my life as I’m chased through the car park of Membury motorway services near Swindon by armed police. You have to buy this Rockstar expansion, of course, because that’s how life works. They make it, and you buy it. Nothing can change that. And with that pure corporate truth blazing on the page, I must take my leave of this world. It’s only a matter of moments before they will take me. But I won’t have that. No! They can take my credibility, but they can never take my spirit. I’m going to hurl myself from the connecting pedestrian footbridge while Tweeting consumer advice to the masses. I die… a martyr. A Welcome Break, indeed.
29/01/2010 at 15:15 Diogo Ribeiro says:
\m/
I’m gay for Gay Tony.
29/01/2010 at 15:23 Heliocentric says:
The tosser tosses the tosser.
As it ever was, goodbye.
29/01/2010 at 15:29 tka says:
Sorry Mr. Tosser but Disney decided to shut Miramax down yesterday.
29/01/2010 at 17:13 wiper says:
Indeed. For a champion of consumerism, he seems awfully behind the times!
Poor Miramax :(
(See also: poor Psygnosis. Yesterday was not a good day for entertainment companies)
29/01/2010 at 18:46 Alastayr says:
I say good riddance. Miramax was a POS company with shady dealings and the Whinestein Brothers are despicable folk. I know they left 2005-ish, and I feel sorry for everyone losing their job, but the company’s policies were largely unsavoury.
30/01/2010 at 00:31 Ven says:
@Wiper: Is he behind the times, or is he making a metaphoric comparison between his death and that of miramax?
01/02/2010 at 12:05 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Wiper: Psygnosis has ceased to exist? Man, that’s a shame.
29/01/2010 at 15:29 Chris D says:
Dave! Nooooooooooooooo!
29/01/2010 at 15:33 TheSombreroKid says:
i payed a fiver for gta 4 which was nice but i can’t bring myself to pay more for the dlc than i did for the game, i’ll live without it.
29/01/2010 at 15:33 wyrmsine says:
Godspeed, gentle tosser.
29/01/2010 at 15:37 Gunrun says:
Gay Tony is actually a much better game than vanilla GTA 4. Well worth the $40 for both especially if its stand-alone.
29/01/2010 at 16:25 Jesse says:
I’ll back you up on that. For my money, Ballad of Gay Tony was more exciting, better written, more likeable, and more fun. As an expansion it didn’t get the critical attention it deserved. Every review said the same thing: ‘Rockstar hasn’t forgotten how to party! Parachutes, stealing trains, explosions, woo hoo!’ They didn’t tell you how excellent the story and characters are. Or that if you go to Tony’s gay nightclub and dance several times in a row, a muscular dancer in tiny shorts and a tie might step down from the stage and wordlessly challenge you to a dance battle.
Beat that, Mass Effect 2! GOTY.
01/02/2010 at 20:42 DMcCool says:
I’m inclined to agree, the shorter length really helped the focus – if GTA IV had one fault it was being over-long, it’s narrative rather bloated. The Ballad of Gay Tony was oddly uplifting for a GTA game, generally speaking everything is pretty good for your protagonist, and its portrayal of the nightclub has to be the best in gaming history.
29/01/2010 at 15:41 oceanclub says:
Excellent – I was surprised by how much I enjoyed GTA4, so am looking forward to more adventures (am still stuck on the last mission in the main game though, every time I get in that helicopter gunship I fail epicly).
P.
29/01/2010 at 17:18 Alistair says:
… and being sent back to the start of the shootout every time. Morons. I found the same, with the solution to the heli section being to discover that you don’t have to shoot the boat, making yourself a target for rockets, but just vaguely keep up with it until the next cutscene triggers.
29/01/2010 at 18:20 Chris R says:
GOD that last fight was infuriating. Oh you died? BACK TO THE BEGINNING WITH YOU!!
Checkpoints at each new “section” of the chase would have been welcome. Oh well.
Just hang back as mentioned, but keep the boat near, and eventually the next section will trigger.
29/01/2010 at 22:48 Lilliput King says:
Worse than Meat Circus, really. Even Psychonauts didn’t have a villain that spewed rockets from the back of his skull.
29/01/2010 at 15:43 MinisterofDOOM says:
Lost and Damned was terrible. Every single character in the game is a completely unlikeable ass. I hated every character and consequently didn’t care about anything that was happening, story-wise. Mission-wise the game is also horrible, with a bunch of stupid formation riding missions to develop the terrible story I didn’t care about. Bike handling still sucks, so you find yourself ditching your hog for the first car you come across. TLAD was easily the worst game I played in 2009 and is also easily my most regretted game purchase ever. Absolutely horrible. Just indescribably bad. It has none of GTA’s classic satirical humor or lighthearted self-mocking. It tries so hard to be dark and gritty and antisocial and badass it forgets to be fun.
Understandably, after that atrocity, I didn’t feel like plunking down yet more cash for Gay Tony. It might be better, but TLAD is definitely not a game I can recommend.
29/01/2010 at 18:34 kyrieee says:
That’s how I feel about regular GTA IV hehe
29/01/2010 at 15:50 Ian says:
Goodbye Mr Tosser.
29/01/2010 at 15:51 Babs says:
I’ve got more RAM, CPU and GPU than I could possibly need and I STILL can’t run it properly!
29/01/2010 at 16:55 Carra says:
64kb is never enough!
29/01/2010 at 21:29 bhlaab says:
The trick is to realize that you’re going to have to settle for 30fps on Medium settings.
29/01/2010 at 15:53 Heliosicle says:
Farewell Tosser!
29/01/2010 at 15:53 Jimbo says:
I really didn’t like the GTA 4 OC, but both L&D and Ballad were excellent.
Lost and Damned keeps a similar tone to the OC, but it’s more focused and introduces some interesting mechanics.
Ballad is closer in tone to the older, crazier GTAs – it is easily the best of the GTA 4 content. Rockstar at their best: **may contain light spoilers** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtxInw7u0MM
29/01/2010 at 15:55 Sweedums says:
glad to hear this, having finished GTA4 twice (to see all the different choice paths with the missions) i have been wishing these would finally come to pc, to simply give me a new reason to boot the game up, though i think i’ll miss the characters from the main game
29/01/2010 at 15:56 scottossington says:
I bought GTA4 from steam during their megasales, its christmas buy everything event. It said I needed XP service pack 3 to run it. I installed it and now my computer is in the shop being fixed. Why do i trust the internet.
29/01/2010 at 15:59 Alexander Norris says:
Tosser will be back as a zombie whenever the next inevitable zombie-themed game shows up.
29/01/2010 at 16:02 cubed2d says:
Noooooooooooooo! Dave Tosser! man you guys cant end it like this. I actually liked him! :’(
29/01/2010 at 16:03 damien says:
didn’t miramax die yesterday?
29/01/2010 at 16:15 qrter says:
Yes.
29/01/2010 at 16:06 linfosoma says:
This makes me very happy, the PC version may not be the best but I still love this game.
I just hope they dont seel that content through GFWL, they wont sell stuff in my country.
29/01/2010 at 16:17 terry says:
I sure hope they take the opportunity to patch the performance of the game :(
29/01/2010 at 16:24 the wiseass says:
You will be dearly missed Mr. Tosser, but at least you ended it with style.
29/01/2010 at 16:25 UW says:
Well, well, this was one of the games I was considering getting a 360 for.. I guess I’ll strike it off the list. =P
From what I’ve seen of these two games, they’re definitely worth picking up. I know I will be.
29/01/2010 at 16:30 Fatrat says:
If you want to play any hack free multiplayer and have any chance of actually finding a game to join, get it on the 360. It wasn’t very well received on the PC (rightly so considering how buggy and badly ported it was)… but for single player it’s fine now (for me, 3Ghz quad, 9800 GTX, 4Gb RAM) and looks splendid, much better than on the 360.
29/01/2010 at 16:28 Fatrat says:
Lost & Damned was a bit meh, nice to have some new missions but it wasnt really anything new feeling. Gay Tony on the other hand, was ace. Parachutes and other such stuff, lots of nice little additions rather than a few slow Harley Davidsons.
I have GTA 4 on the PC and the Liberty City Episodes on the 360, definately considering getting GTA 4 on the xbox now i’ve seen how many more people play online (plus no hacks) compared to PC, and that’s only judging off the small amount who own/play the expansion disc (EoLC). Great fun with a buddy or two, even after playing through the game 3 times and the expansions once each. To me, anyway.
29/01/2010 at 16:33 Fatrat says:
Also if i wasn’t clear enough with what i said above, you can’t (at least on the 360 version) play the expansion on multiplayer with anyone running the original GTA4, so you’ll only get to play against other people who are running the expansion version, because the map is bigger/changed and there are items added to the expansion and the original map and inventory isn’t updated to be compatible with this, shame really, but meh.
29/01/2010 at 16:31 Shadrach says:
YAY this is good news indeed! I loved GTA4s story, city and everything, still have it installed for the occasional multiplayer race.
29/01/2010 at 17:00 david says:
Yeah I played gta4 first on xbox, then got it on pc thinking it would be funner online. Wow was I wrong, multiplayer for this game on pc is absolutely terrible. So many hacks, and gta race was my favorite mode and no one plays it on pc.
29/01/2010 at 18:04 Po0py says:
I thought Microsoft had to remortgage Redmond just to get this as an exclusive?
29/01/2010 at 18:14 Bhazor says:
I would say it shows Microsoft do think they can make a profit in PC Games and so wish to publish the expansion for us lot. But it’s more likely just a time limited exclusive on Rockstars part and this will pop up on the PS3 too.
01/02/2010 at 02:14 ulix says:
Not only more likely, Bhazor. It will actually pop up on PS3, exactly the same day it does come out on PC.
29/01/2010 at 18:19 WJonathan says:
From what I’ve heard the expansions were more fun than the main game, so this very good news.
29/01/2010 at 18:21 bookwormat says:
I just came a bit over 50% into the game, so about a month ago I thought I install again and finish it. But the backup of my /My Documents/GTA4 folder did just contain some stupid video I made – The savegame used to be hidden in some games for windows folder, and now it was lost.
So I get myself a safegame from about where I was from someone else. But that does not work, because Games for Windows Life does not allow me to continue safegames from other accounts.
Not cool.
29/01/2010 at 18:47 Blather Blob says:
Yup, GFWL really messes up savegames (though it isn’t alone in picking a stupid save location — did you know you need to back up All Users\My Documents to keep Stalker save games? I didn’t!). You can get around all of it by getting xliveless, which moves the saves to a sane location and stops GFWL from locking you into only your own saves. It also allows you to play the save games from an online profile without having to go online (switching to an offline profile usually means losing your saves when GFWL is involved).
In fact, it entirely removes both GFWL and Social Club, which makes GTA IV into a much nicer experience. You can’t use it if you want to play online, but from what I’ve heard (and look at the comments above) that’s a lost cause on the PC version anyway.
29/01/2010 at 18:28 Rath says:
Lost And Damned was so much like playing through an episode of Sons Of Anarchy that I kept expecting Ron Perlman to turn up as a voice actor. Ballad Of Gay Tony was just a riot of fun. A freaking P90!
29/01/2010 at 18:55 Roberto says:
Aww, I thought Dave Tosser was rather funny, not exactly “sad” to see him go, but it was entertaining watching him go.
29/01/2010 at 19:18 Bhazor says:
I have to say that Tosser’s link is fascinating. Particularly the article about Blackburn services
“When the services first opened they were signed as ‘Blackburn services’, but the site was actually slightly over the border in to Darwen and as a result it became very controversial to the point where people were regularly climbing on to the motorway to attack the signs for the services. After several lengthy meetings and even a few discussions in Parliament, the services were renamed ‘Blackburn with Darwen’ in 2005.”
The whole wiki is proof that theres always somebody who cares about anything. Which is kind of beautiful. But also quite silly.
30/01/2010 at 06:48 The Dark One says:
Thanks to wikipedia, I now know that my great grandmother was born in a village with a name that translates to “‘Farmstead (by the) smelly pit” in old norse.
29/01/2010 at 19:58 Lars Westergren says:
Suprisingly positive reactions from the RPS readers… So I’ll go against the stream and have a good whine.
I bought this for cheap at the Steam Christmas sale, I had a terrible experience. Three copyright systems installs – Steam, GFWL, Rockstar Social Club. RSC pop ups ads for console titles, but can’t even tell me what version of the game is installed, and the link to the announced patch is not clickable. So I surf in manually to their site, have to create YET ANOTHER account to be allowed to see support pages, then I have to connect my different Rockstar/Live accounts… It just went on and on. And the PC patch announced was nowhere to be found.
Then when I started the game, I got the “no textures” bug RPS talked about in their review over a year ago – still not fixed in the default download. And it was terribly unoptimized – have a pretty decent PC, but the basic graphics settings were downright ugly and I could hardly increase any of the settings or it complained about lack of memory….
Sorry to come off like an Angry Internet Man, but I am highly sceptical to anything Rockstar after this. I LOVE everything film noir related, but LA Noir really has to be “best game EVAR” material if I’m going to consider gettin anything of theirs again for the PC.
30/01/2010 at 10:04 Subject 706 says:
Didn’t have any performance problems at all, and got everything maxed out on a C2D6800 with 4gigs of RAM and an 8800GTX. Not saying that it isn’t crappily optimized though.
Kind of burned out on this game though. It was fun for the first ten hours or so, then I started to get really bored with it. A good game, but not the second coming that the straight tens in the reviews made it out to be. Though most reviewers seem to have slipped fairly downhill, quality-wise. That is why I rely on RPS.
29/01/2010 at 21:30 Fun play online says:
Looking forward to playing that one!
29/01/2010 at 23:04 malkav11 says:
Fucksake, Rockstar. QUIT WITH THE SECRECY.
I know, I know, you make more money if I buy your game twice because I’ve despaired of it ever coming to PC and then after I’ve already purchased the 360 version you say, “Oh, yeah, PC after all, sucker!”, but I hate it. Stop.
29/01/2010 at 23:08 jsutcliffe says:
Or:
“I want this but I don’t want to play it with a gamepad.”
“Oh, it’s coming out on PC.”
“Here, have my $50.”
“Oh jesus, even in crappy-o-vision it won’t get past 20fps.”
“Here, have my $30 for the 360 version. Also, Fuck you Rockstar.”
30/01/2010 at 07:20 malkav11 says:
Either you’re doing it wrong or I have a magic computer, because the PC version runs better, looks better, and is infinitely more playable than the 360 version. And yes, I have both. I would never have bought the Episodes disc for 360 if I’d known a PC version was coming out. I can barely fucking drive on the 360 version (previously a strength of console GTA), much less shoot things. And those are kind of fundamental to gameplay.
30/01/2010 at 00:55 rei says:
The lady at the top is clearly an undercover cop. You won’t catch me that easily!
30/01/2010 at 12:23 Kadayi says:
@rei
I’m sure that like all GTA characters she’ll be telegraphing her occupation in the first 2 minutes of conversation. ;)
The first game reminded me a lot of a gay flatmate of mine, who whenever he met someone new had to announce that he was gay at the first opportunity (oh the drama was unending). I’m quite clearly working for the FBI!!!, I’m quite clearly screwing your Brothers Girlfriend!!!, I’m quite clearly going to betray you!!!.
30/01/2010 at 02:02 Kadayi says:
Interesting. Much as I hated the storytelling in GTA IV I’ve heard good things about these as they are far more focussed. Will probably get it upon release. Also this news makes me hopeful that Red Dead Redemption might reach PC eventually as well, because I have to say from what I’ve seen that’s looking to be pretty spectacular.
30/01/2010 at 06:39 EBass says:
Good, I liked GTA4 and can’t wait for more of this. I hope not too many of TLAD missions REQUIRE motorcycles, for while the bike handling is great with analogue gamepads its a crock of shite using keyboard/mouse.
30/01/2010 at 11:07 Jim says:
Yeah, more annoyingly the party mode doesn’t work on PC either so it’s pretty difficult to get a game with a group of friends.
30/01/2010 at 13:11 KindredPhantom says:
I hope that R* releases a patch to fix the horrible port that is GTA 4 before they release the episodes, otherwise i think i’ll pass.
30/01/2010 at 15:43 destroy.all.monsters says:
Well they will at least have some incentive to optimize since they have the DLC to sell. I have my fingers crossed that will be enough.
I just wish they’ d release Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on PC. From what I’ve read even pcsx2 has trouble running them on pc.
31/01/2010 at 09:59 KindredPhantom says:
Perhaps you would be better running them on a PSP emulator?
I am hoping that the episodes are the incentive to get R* to patch the PC version, or they won’t because they know it will sell just as well regardless.
01/02/2010 at 13:26 malkav11 says:
They’ve patched it, what, four or five times now, fixing practically everything that was wrong with the port other than using GFWL + Social Club. Dunno what else you want.
30/01/2010 at 15:32 Lars Westergren says:
@Subject 706 says:
“Didn’t have any performance problems at all, and got everything maxed out on a C2D6800 with 4gigs of RAM and an 8800GTX.”
Yeah, that might be it, I have a 8800GTS which has less memory.
“A good game, but not the second coming that the straight tens in the reviews made it out to be. Though most reviewers seem to have slipped fairly downhill, quality-wise. That is why I rely on RPS.”
Amen. How do you know a game will get 10/10 these days? It has a big budget, a famous publisher, and is released for consoles! Yaayy!
01/02/2010 at 14:22 MindFukr says:
You shouldn’t be complaining about performance problems with modern games when you’re using ancient hardware like 8800 GTS. Cough up the 150 euros for a new gfx adapter and start enjoying PC games…
06/02/2010 at 16:45 SquareWheel says:
I had a hell of a time catching up to the helicopter with the boat, finally got it after 4 goes or so, which takes ages. Much easier with the dirtbike (alternate end mission).
And Psychonauts. I never found Meat Circus to be that difficult. A few figments were placed in stupid to get to spots, but that’s about it.