Title: Grand Theft Auto 4: Lost and Damned
Developed by: Rockstar North
Completion Time: 6 hours 10 minutes
Storyline: You start off by being introduced to Johnny the Jew who is part of the motorcycle club called The Lost. The first cutscene will establish all of the members of The Lost, along with a cameo appearance of Niko. This introduces you to the president of the MC, Billy. A quick note about the cutscenes is that they cannot be paused like in GTA 5, only skipped so this means you'll have to pay attention to them. You mission will either come from Billy or Jim for the first segment of the game. Billy's missions will revolve around the war between the Lost and the Angels of Death, mainly because Billy is back in charge and is a violence instigator. Whereas Jim's missions will seem to have more of a purpose for explaining what type of jobs The Lost do, such as stealing bikes and other stealing missions. From very early on you get to see the story line involving the corrupt cops unfold, but it is ended in the next Jim mission as you kill them in an ambush.
One of your close team mates die, so this makes Billy use emotional blackmail to get you to kill more people. I am not sure if the death was suppose to make you feel sorry for them or not, mainly because I cannot connect with any of the characters in this game and do not feel anything for them. It looks like they have tried to flesh some of them out, such as fleshing Billy to be a power hungry dick, Johnny to be a good guy who makes bad choices, Brian is a kiss up and Jim to be a voice of reason who looks out for his friends for the most part. But throughout the game you can feel that Billy is using any emotional blackmail that he can to get you to do what he wants.
It is not recommended for you to play GTA 5 then to take a step back and play GTA 4, mainly because you'll find yourself missing all of the improvements that were made, such as regenerating health and other perks like that. But one of the things which is a welcome relief is that the police AI are as dull minded as intoxicated sloths, compared to the GTA 5's police AI which are like ninja cats trying to catch butterflies. You learn that the heroine you stole from the Angels of Death belonged to an Asian gang, but if you watch the cutscene from BOGT you also see that Billy made a deal with them to kill you, but this leads to him getting arrested instead. This makes Brian think you set Billy up so he takes his faction of those still loyal to Billy and makes them fight against you and those who follow you. You then have to chase the survivors down and kill them, this brings me to one thing I always have a problem with in GTA games, those parts of the scenery which don't load until it is too late to avoid them. They are the most annoying thing for high speed chases. At one point you have to hide behind a toll both to ambush a drugs vehicle, 2 cars go by before the main van. I am pretty sure most of the guys in those cars saw you hiding behind the booth with an automatic shotgun. These come alongside the Ray missions involving the stolen diamonds, this is where the other parts of BOGT start weaving in as you see the main protagonist from that shoot up the museum where you are trying to sell the diamonds. You also try and keep the diamonds, but Ray finds out and tortures Jim to get them, but you're able to save him. Only to have him die offscreen later... Kind of crap move just saying he died and not saying how or who killed him. You also find out from Stubbs that Billy is going to rat out the Lost and blame them for the drugs, this leads you to break into prison and kill him. This ends the campaign with you now at liberty to freeroam sandbox.
Overall Feel: I like how the graphics, especially for the in-game cutscenes, not a good as GTA 5 has shown, but this is 5 years ago. Not really fair to compare them together. The storyline makes sense for the most part, but you really need to play all three games and see all the cutscenes to get the bigger picture for most of the games, but mostly for TLAD. Constantly getting asked to go to play pool with Clay and Terry can get annoying after a while, but sadly i've been playing GTA 5 for too long and miss the fact that you can have multiple of each weapon type, even if I only ever use the SMG and shotgun types. The police are very predicable in this game, almost to a sad extent where you can avoid them all due to their AI being very basic. The fact of them randomly spawning infront of you when you're trying to get away makes it unhelpful, along which their x-ray vision which can let them see you hiding behind the massive dustbin. The car handling is a nightmare at the best of times, I will just leave it at that, bikes and helicopters are much better. My main problem with it is that it does not work well with the graphics when you're going really fast and an object appears infront of you just when you have no time to react.
Developed by: Rockstar North
Completion Time: 6 hours 10 minutes
Storyline: You start off by being introduced to Johnny the Jew who is part of the motorcycle club called The Lost. The first cutscene will establish all of the members of The Lost, along with a cameo appearance of Niko. This introduces you to the president of the MC, Billy. A quick note about the cutscenes is that they cannot be paused like in GTA 5, only skipped so this means you'll have to pay attention to them. You mission will either come from Billy or Jim for the first segment of the game. Billy's missions will revolve around the war between the Lost and the Angels of Death, mainly because Billy is back in charge and is a violence instigator. Whereas Jim's missions will seem to have more of a purpose for explaining what type of jobs The Lost do, such as stealing bikes and other stealing missions. From very early on you get to see the story line involving the corrupt cops unfold, but it is ended in the next Jim mission as you kill them in an ambush.
One of your close team mates die, so this makes Billy use emotional blackmail to get you to kill more people. I am not sure if the death was suppose to make you feel sorry for them or not, mainly because I cannot connect with any of the characters in this game and do not feel anything for them. It looks like they have tried to flesh some of them out, such as fleshing Billy to be a power hungry dick, Johnny to be a good guy who makes bad choices, Brian is a kiss up and Jim to be a voice of reason who looks out for his friends for the most part. But throughout the game you can feel that Billy is using any emotional blackmail that he can to get you to do what he wants.
It is not recommended for you to play GTA 5 then to take a step back and play GTA 4, mainly because you'll find yourself missing all of the improvements that were made, such as regenerating health and other perks like that. But one of the things which is a welcome relief is that the police AI are as dull minded as intoxicated sloths, compared to the GTA 5's police AI which are like ninja cats trying to catch butterflies. You learn that the heroine you stole from the Angels of Death belonged to an Asian gang, but if you watch the cutscene from BOGT you also see that Billy made a deal with them to kill you, but this leads to him getting arrested instead. This makes Brian think you set Billy up so he takes his faction of those still loyal to Billy and makes them fight against you and those who follow you. You then have to chase the survivors down and kill them, this brings me to one thing I always have a problem with in GTA games, those parts of the scenery which don't load until it is too late to avoid them. They are the most annoying thing for high speed chases. At one point you have to hide behind a toll both to ambush a drugs vehicle, 2 cars go by before the main van. I am pretty sure most of the guys in those cars saw you hiding behind the booth with an automatic shotgun. These come alongside the Ray missions involving the stolen diamonds, this is where the other parts of BOGT start weaving in as you see the main protagonist from that shoot up the museum where you are trying to sell the diamonds. You also try and keep the diamonds, but Ray finds out and tortures Jim to get them, but you're able to save him. Only to have him die offscreen later... Kind of crap move just saying he died and not saying how or who killed him. You also find out from Stubbs that Billy is going to rat out the Lost and blame them for the drugs, this leads you to break into prison and kill him. This ends the campaign with you now at liberty to freeroam sandbox.
Overall Feel: I like how the graphics, especially for the in-game cutscenes, not a good as GTA 5 has shown, but this is 5 years ago. Not really fair to compare them together. The storyline makes sense for the most part, but you really need to play all three games and see all the cutscenes to get the bigger picture for most of the games, but mostly for TLAD. Constantly getting asked to go to play pool with Clay and Terry can get annoying after a while, but sadly i've been playing GTA 5 for too long and miss the fact that you can have multiple of each weapon type, even if I only ever use the SMG and shotgun types. The police are very predicable in this game, almost to a sad extent where you can avoid them all due to their AI being very basic. The fact of them randomly spawning infront of you when you're trying to get away makes it unhelpful, along which their x-ray vision which can let them see you hiding behind the massive dustbin. The car handling is a nightmare at the best of times, I will just leave it at that, bikes and helicopters are much better. My main problem with it is that it does not work well with the graphics when you're going really fast and an object appears infront of you just when you have no time to react.