Usually the early months of the year are the video game dead zone. Most people are working on a pent up amount of games from the holiday season and new releases are usually few and far bewteen. There have been notable exceptions, most notable 2005 when Resident Evil 4, Spliter Cell: Chaos Theory and God of War were released within months of each other. 2009 is looking to be like that and then some if the lines for Street Fighter IV at a local EB are a good indication. With last months Fallout 3 DLC and March promising Resident Evil 5 and Madworld it seems this early going for this year is shaping up to be a doozie. Along with all of this however is the highly touted much anticipated DLC “Episode” for last year’s smash hit Grand Theft Auto IV. Titled “The Lost and Damned”, it brings up a parallel story line to that of GTAIV’s featuring minor character Johnny as the protagonist for new series of missions, new story lines and new chances for all out mayhem.

When the rumors were swirling for the two exclusive episodes for the Xbox 360 that Microsoft paid millions for to get a leg up on the PS3 things were as lofty as entirely new sections of the city to all new cities, like our old friend Nico visiting Vice City and San Andreas. While TLAD takes place in the Liberty City we know and loved Rockstar does a lot to mine out new places and new faces in the existing back drop of Liberty City.

The first and very deliberate decision we see is the fact that the game starts in Aldernay. the sort of “Jersey shore” equivalent to Liberty City’s obvious New York parallel. This is improtant because if you had completed GTAIV you’d remember that Aldernay was pretty much unexplored by Nico during the game’s final chapter. Here in TLAD it’s given a nice clean slate for the player to work with and lots of new little nooks and crannies have been put into the game to expand on the already well known city.

TLAD realizes that the majority of its players had already poured hours into the previous game and removes a lot of the pussyfooting and tedious exercises that worked well the first go around but would seem like more busy work this time. So right off the bat you already have friends who can sell you cheap guns and give you new bikes. Replaced however is a nifty experience system. Often times when you got into missions you’ll be working with fellow “brothers” of The Lost. As they work more missions the better they get at actually helping you out in a visible sort of experience graph. Let them die and they’ll be replaced by some new green horns. It’s a nifty system and makes you stop from ramboing in while your teammates get slaughtered however I wish there was a gears of war sort of way to revive your fallen brothers in mid mission.

The Lost are a biker gang and so far I’ve spent a lot of time on bikes. I’m happy to say that my initial inhibitions of this pack are now gone, Bikes now control a lot better than they did in any previous GTA effort without losing their “loose” feel. Turns are tighter, your control is steadier and you won’t be flying off the bike and head first into walls as often as you did in previous entries but you still get a strong sense of speed and quickness from the bikes as you did before. This was a strong triumph and made me appreciate the game even more.

Of course GTAIV’s strongest aspect was its story telling. I’ve read a lot of complaints on the game so far that the characters aren’t as interesting as Nico and the adventure doesn’t seem to match his but you have to understand that Nico’s bloody rags to riches story is a much grander pallette than the fight for survival Johnny and Bill, leader of the Lost, go through. However the smaller scale to me is a nice change of pace, while Nico’s story was all about big settings and big set pieces the Lost’s story is more personal and more emotional. The humor is just as whip smart in this game as it was in GTAIV (with some homo and dick jokes thrown in for the thirteen year old boys) and the voice acting is once again top notch.

TLAD is a steeply priced piece of DLC at 1600 xbox points (about 20 bucks US) but at a hefty 1.8 gigs it seems to be loaded with content. Yes it’s Liberty City again but through Johnny and the Lost’s eyes it seems different and new, fresh and bold. Rockstar has done a lot to add to this DLC episode and to think this could only be scratching the surface. If you’re a HUGE GTA Fan like myself and crave more from the game, downloading this is a no brainer.