Hands on with GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

It's not the size of the hard drive that matters; it's what you can do with it that counts.

Speaking purely objectively, since you can only download GTA IV Episodes onto an Xbox 360 this gives Microsoft considerable bragging rights. On the flip side there's no Uncharted 2 for the Xbox guys. Life can really suck on both sides of console war.

Anyhow back to GTA IV for today, and the second, and final, Add-On episode available exclusively to Xbox 360 gamers. Earlier this year we had The Lost and Damned, a gritty tale of biker gangs taking an eye for an eye or just for the hell of it. Now we're looking forward to The Ballad of Gay Tony, described by Rockstar as the glitter ball counterpart to the grunge of The Lost and Damned.

Cutting to the chase, "...Gay Tony" is laugh-out-loud hilarious on a couple of counts. First of all the action is so overblown you'll bust a gasket as cop cars and helicopters succumb to your awesome new firepower. Second, a guy called Yusuf - an up and coming crime lord voiced by Omid Djalili. Almost every line is an absolute killer.

The new episode is also stylish as hell, with a kick-ass new protagonist Louis Lopez hailing from the Dominion Republic. Nothing will be known about Louis' background until we get to play through the whole story next month. We're quite certain the guy is military trained however, because he handles guns and explosives as though second nature. Louis is also big into sky diving and base jumping, capable of pin-pointing a moving target from miles out in order to arrive on the scene unnoticed. Okay, this doesn't always work out, but there are always the fireworks to fall back on.

Louis is currently right-hand man to nightclub owner Tony ‘Gay Tony' Price. Since Tony is in plenty of trouble with suspicious shareholders in Liberty City's "Maisonette 9" and "Hercules" hot spots, Louis is following orders to bring it all back under control - though passers-by could easily confuse this with all hell breaking loose.

For example during the mission dubbed "Dropping In", Louis parachutes onto the roof of a skyscraper belonging to Liberty City's hockey team The Rampage. The whole place gets shot to shreds, and then blown to pieces using the all-new sticky grenades and proximity mines. When Louis is done with all that, he jumps out of a top floor window to parachute safely (or not) onto the back of a moving flat-bed truck.

Or, in "For the Man Who Has Everything" - starring Yusuf on terrific form - the general idea is to steal the front carriage of a moving train. Yusuf says he wants to build a Submarine Train Car (don't even ask). Louis gamely balances along the top of the fast moving train, firing explosive at police helicopters that duly spin out of control, smash into buildings, or else disintegrate in a ball of flame. They keep coming. Louis keeps shooting. It's ridiculously good fun.

Our demo ended with "Sexy Time" which indeed it was. Speed boats. Military grade helicopter (The Buzzard). Onboard rocket launcher. A big millionaire playboy Yacht begging to go boom... imagine the possibilities. The reality is even better.

As with The Lost and Damned, we're looking at several more solid hours of GTAIV gameplay in Ballad of Gay Tony. And this can be further extended because each mission is now broken down into percentage ratings for completion time, accuracy and suchlike. The idea behind Post Mission Stats being to repeat missions for perfect scores - the first time this has appeared in GTA on a home console (it first showed up in Chinatown Wars on DS).

The fun factor is amplified thanks to a bunch of silly new weapons, among them the AA-12 shot-gun that fires the explosive rounds we mentioned earlier. Also a Magnum type hand cannon that'll lift targets off their feet. An enhanced sniper rifle could prove useful from rooftops or high-flying helicopters - showing off the increased vertical distances enhanced especially for this final chapter.

Further gameplay variation includes will include nightclub management - that is, making sure matters don't get out of hand, or showing the dance floor some tricks. The focus is very much on Liberty City's nightlife

So there you go Xbox 360 guys, the final instalment in the landmark GTAIV saga. It's available via download from 29 October on Xbox LIVE for those of you with GTAIV still sitting at home. Alternatively there's a stand-alone disc being released containing both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, and you won't need the GTAIV disc to play these.