Grand Theft Auto 4: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Nice intro - starts by showing Niko's story, with plenty of guest appearances from Johnny's story. It's sad to think that this is the last chapter, but it has to end or all these guest appearances in each other's stories could get exponential.

I like the style of this game so far. Everything's kind of bright and neon, yet fake and empty. Its a melancholy mix that reminds me of Vice City in some pleasantly updated way. I wonder if the addition of the 80s radio station was from this add-on, not the previous, and it was just made retroactively available. One of the downsides of retro gaming - your timelines tend to get compacted, if not outright squished.

This game has the P90! I haven't carried one of these (in-game, that is - I'm not likely to ever even see one in real life) since Fallout 2. I'm liking this add-on more and more.

I steer Luis to his Mom's house, and receive a sharp reminder that the Grand Theft Auto universe is a cruel one. Nobody loves anybody for long before it is inevitably ruined by jealousy, fear, and/or betrayal. I just met Luis' mom and I already want to take her on a helicopter trip over the city and bail out in mid-air.

Watching some TV and it occurs to me that GTA games used to be a sometimes subtle satire of our culture; now GTA 4 is almost as blatant as the movie Idiocracy. Yet another reason why GTA 4 feels like a sequel made by different people than the GTA 3 games. Usually sequels tend to lose original key players, subtlety, depth, and quality as they go forwards. Like Fallout 2, and Deus Ex 2. And yet strangely, there was a Fallout 3 and Deus Ex 3 that were better than their immediate predecessors, but still not as good as their originators. Maybe there is something to this, or maybe just coincidence.