The Ballad of Gay Tony

Luis Lopez is your run-of-the-mill Latino womanizer with a troubled past. As business partner and personal bodyguard to Anthony “Gay Tony” Prince, owner of the biggest night clubs in Liberty City, he’s trying to turn over a new leaf and make an honest living for once. However, things turn ugly when Tony gets mixed up with the wrong people while trying to make ends meet. So, Luis has to get his hands dirty in attempts to clean up his mess and keep the clubs running.

In this episode, gameplay is more traditional and similar to other GTA games. You don’t have a gang following you around, just the occasional associate that may have hired you and/or agreed to give you some aid. There are several new things to do, though, including participating in hand-to-hand cage fighting tournaments, drug wars, and nightclub-related minigames. One activity is of particular interest to long-time fans of the series: base-jumping. That’s right, the parachute from San Andreas returns, even though there aren’t as many uses for it in Liberty City aside from the preset challenges.

Luis has a pair of childhood friends that resent him for spending most of his time in glitzy downtown Algonquin while they’re stuck in the Heights slinging drugs on street corners. You help them out from time to time, and in exchange they’ll hook you up with vehicles and discounted weapons, of which many are new. The P-90 and Uzi submachine guns, M249 light machinegun, and remote-detonated sticky bombs are now in the mix, to name a few.


A brand new feature to the major iterations of GTA is that each mission is scored on criteria like time to completion, weapon accuracy, and other unique factors. The game will automatically upload your score to the Social Club if you’re online, but no retries are allowed. After you finish the story you can go back and play them again to attempt a higher score. This should inject even more replayability into the game for you competitive types, as you try to beat yourself or your friends.