Liberty City: Party Town USA

Being a self-confessed GTA IV super-fan, I’m literally counting down the days until the next episode of downloadable content hits the Xbox 360 version. I have my Microsoft points pre-bought and now it’s just a matter of waiting for the release (it’s out on October 29th, in case you were wondering).

With that in mind, you can imagine my joy upon receiving a missive from Rockstar themselves, which spills a few more beans on the kind of excitement we can expect from The Ballad Of Gay Tony, and boy, what beans they are.

The Ballad of Gay Tony takes us away from the gritty existence of a criminal immigrant in the city, or the rough and tumble of biker gangs, and instead opts to show off the glamour and glitz of Liberty City which has only really been hinted at before. Previous videos for this episode have shown off things like new executive helicopters, armoured vehicles and sky-diving, which have had me and my fellow GTA fanboys almost wetting ourselves. This one takes us to Clubland, and what Luis, the new protagonist, gets up to there.

Luis can get involved at Gay Tony’s nightclubs to earn money and keep the clubs running smoothly. Booting out drunkards, ejecting perverts and doing errands for Liberty City’s A-List all feature in the game. Looking after bulimic supermodels and keeping frazzled actors drugged up enough to perform are also here, and no doubt all heavily laced with Rockstar’s fantastic sense of humour.

Of course, Luis can liberally mix business with pleasure, and do what everyone else at the club is doing – getting slammed, dancing their nuts off and trying to cop off with anything with a pulse. Whether he’s hammering shots until he falls over or leading the entire club in a dancing mini-game, it’s not all work, work, work. And if you’re dancin’ – really dancin’ – then a girl might take a shine to you, and the next thing you know you’ll be doing some dirty dancing one-on-one in the club toilets.

Just like real life, though, drinking too much has negative effects. We’ve all watched Niko fall down the stairs after a skinful in the original game, but The Ballad of Gay Tony takes that further. Drink too much champagne and you’ll be seeing it again rather sooner than anticipated. Get totally blotto, and you’ll wake up… somewhere else. Ahh, takes me back to my student days.

Combine all that with the awesome craziness of automatic shotguns, mini-gun loaded choppers, base-jumping, armoured personnel carriers, stealing subway trains and all this crazy nightlife, and it looks like Liberty City will really be jumping come October 29th. Paaaaaaaaaarty!

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