You would think that after years of playing and loving GTA 4 and countless replays of the original story that I would have played the DLC too, but I never did up until now. I've recently taken interest in playing more GTA content in anticipation of GTA 6 and Episodes From Liberty City was something I wanted to give a try.

I was very excited to see new content in Liberty City. It's like the return of a favorite character that left the show years ago. To be honest, I've tried playing this DLC before but always quit after a few missions. It's because I was so used to seeing Liberty City through the eyes of Niko that I had a hard time enjoying the world from another perspective. But after many years, at last I was open minded enough to give it a try.

The first obvious things I noticed is how they gave the whole game a new coat of paint to match the atmosphere of Johnny's story. Somehow the world seemed even more bland than it already was for Niko. They really try to match the Biker and Metal vibe by adding tons of film grain and more brown yellowish colors to the world. I get what they are trying to do here but the graininess made the game just ugly in my opinion. I also didn't like the color filters they used. Besides that they also made certain UI elements look scuffed and run down. I appreciate what they were trying to do but I personally don't like it when UI and screen visibility is overly themed and reduces visibility is some way.

Now talking about the extra content that it adds... Not much. In fact there are certain features that seem to be missing from the base game. It's possible that I just didn't explore enough but it seems like you can't buy new clothes anymore. At least the clothing stores are no longer marked on the map. I also tried to date women on the LoveMeet website but they don't seem to respond. I guess they are reserved for Niko because they are the exact same options. Bowling also seemed to be absent from activities to do (at least with friends). Too bad because I really liked bowling in the base game. Now talking about what they did add. I was surprised to see that they added air hockey. It's nothing special but something they easily couldn't have bothered with. Besides activities to improve friendships, you also have gang wars. These gang wars were boring and frustrating at times because of the AI of your fellow gang members.
They also added a few new guns but they basically all sucked and were worse than their base game counterparts.

So when it comes to new content, not only is there not much new added but there are also certain base game elements that they stripped away. Because of that, it really felt like there was less to do in Liberty City and the City felt more like a set piece instead of it feeling more alive like in the base game.

Besides the structured activities, the free mode gameplay was not that great either. Because of the story, the game basically forces you to constantly use bikes. Every time you start an activity or mission, the game expects you to ride a bike. Even when you call up a friend to go do something, they expect you to drive besides each other on a bike. So picking them up with a car is not an option. The result is that I barely used any cars and when I did I quickly stumbled into situations where I needed to switch to a bike anyway. Because of this I somewhat missed using a car more often as it's the gameplay that I'm most familiar with. There is basically never a reason to use a car. For a game about cars that is somewhat odd.

The final aspect I wanted to touch upon was the story itself if you can even call it that. It fell completely flat. Everything just kind of seems to happen to you (Johnny) for no particular reason. Nothing feels like it really has much impact and everything significant that does happen is not directly related to Johnny and more something they have to show because it happened in the base game. The story of the Lost and damned is there to serve the main game and nothing else. The only interesting thing that happens has to do with something that happened in the base game that was kind of vague and you get some more information about it. The Lost has it's own plot too but it's very basic and short. The story is predictable and it doesn't feel important at all. Like I said before, everything just sort of "happens" and it's only at the end that Johnny actually takes matters into his own hands and does something interesting. But the actual outcome of the only interesting action that he does is very dull and disappointing. At the end of the story everything you just did feels completely pointless. The point is that the story of The Lost is extremely basic and boring and the only interesting thing that happens is more related to the main game than to the lost itself.

To summarize my thoughts, The Lost and Damned does nothing more than serve the plot of the main game and cannot stand on it's own legs. The story is boring and pointless, the gameplay is inferior to the main game and the visuals are inferior as well in my opinion. The DLC barely adds any extra content and the content that it does add is not that great. If you're a big GTA fan like me I'd still recommend giving it a go if you have played the main story of GTA 4. Other than that, for anyone that isn't that into GTA 4 this game would be very boring and not worth it. I still give it a two and a half starts for it being a game set in Liberty City and using the same fundamental gameplay loops as GTA 4.