In the first chapter of Episodes From Liberty City, The Lost and the Damned, the player takes the role of protagonist Johnny Klebitz, the vice president of the Lost biker gang. The main meat of the story begins with the president, Billy Grey, being released from the Alderney State Correctional Facility and continuing his role as the head honcho of his gang. As the narrative continues, Johnny and Billy’s relationship becomes more and more rocky, which ultimately leads to a predictable outcome.
The premise of The Lost and the Damned is motorcycling. As such, Rockstar Games boasts improved bike physics, a much appreciated addition. In comparison to Niko Belic’s motorsport skills, Johnny Klebitz has the advantage of less realistic biking physics, and players will without a doubt appreciate the improvements when tackling the episode’s many motorcycle mandated missions. In many cases where Niko would have fallen off of a bike (and likely died), Johnny miraculously remains glued to the seat. Players have to almost try to crash in order to fall off.
Since the theme of the Lost is, of course, the motorcycle, naturally, a vast majority of the missions require Johnny’s Hexer. However, that’s not to say that the grand theft aspect of Grand Theft Auto is stripped away. In missions that do not consist of following or leading the Lost gang, Johnny is free to steal a semi, hail a cab, or walk as needed to complete the task at hand. Despite this, after most every cutscenes preceding the gameplay of a mission, Johnny’s Hexer will be waiting for the player along with the stolen vehicle. Of course when following or leading a gang, the game will instruct gamers to remount the Hexer whenever the player hops off or crashes.
Speaking of following and leading gangs, this is the main aspect that separates The Lost and the Damned from the main game and the other episodes. Each gang member in the group has a meter measuring his respective level of “hardness.” With each mission involving some sort of fire-fight, the gang members’ hardness will rise. This comes into play as the player is able to call for backup from allies. Additionally, before becoming leader of the Lost, following the gang will gradually increase health and body armor if Johnny cruises in the designated perimeter.
As stated earlier, each episode has a unique graphical quality that helps create the overall atmosphere for the adventure. In The Lost and the Damned, an optional film grain effect is layered onto the original graphics to simulate the rough, gritty feel to the title. There were not any graphical glitches that weren’t already present in GTA IV. However, the game did freeze at a certain point in the game and required a full restart of the console, but other than that, there weren’t any game-breaking issues. In the downloadable versions of both episodes, load times were slightly better than on the retail disk of Episodes from Liberty City, but this most likely because of the relatively large install of the game.
In addition to the improvements, new weapons, activities, and multiplayer modes are included with the episode. The Lost and the Damned comes with a pool cue (replacing the standard bat), pipe bomb, sawed-off shotgun (for drive-bys on the bike), grenade launcher, and an automatic shotgun. On top of the weapons, new activities include races and 50 seagulls (instead of pigeons from the original tile) to hunt down, as well as new bikes and cars. For $19.99 on the PlayStation Store, we can’t complain.
