The Ballad of Gay Tony
The Ballad of Gay TonyThe Ballad of Gay Tony follows a similar route – you play as Luis Lopez, manager of Tony Prince’s nightclubs – a good job, were Tony’s business empire not slowly sinking into the mire. As an ever-widening array of criminal underworld figures appear, asking for their money back, the responsibility of fixing everything falls on Luis’ shoulders. And if that wasn’t enough, his old friends from Northwood want his help to make it in the drugs trade.
Again, Rockstar have introduced some welcome additions to the game. After a brief hiatus, parachutes make a welcome return, enabling base jumping from buildings and helicopters. And best of all, they are extremely well implemented in the missions as well – so you’ll be gliding onto roofs for stealthy entrances, and jumping out of skyscraper windows for dramatic escapes. There’s also a new Cage Fighting club, with a championship that will seriously test your unarmed combat abilities, and finally a long-awaited “Replay missions” feature, enabling you to go back at the end of the game and replay any of the missions, trying to improve your scores. Whilst it seems a bit unnatural for a GTA game to have scores and trophies, the replay feature is definitely welcome – no need to start from the beginning just to play through the best missions again!
Not only that, the follow system from TLAD is back again. Whilst helping your Northwood friends in their new business venture, you’ll notice that despite there being three of you, the 4-door car restriction of old has gone. Instead, whoever is left behind will grab the nearest suitable mode of transport, and follow you to the destination – it comes with the same caveats as in TLAD, but it’s a great feature that works tremendously well – tearing into a drugs deal, guns blazing, before fleeing in a pair of their Banshees with angry gang members in hot pursuit is brilliant.
Continued overleaf...