The Ballad of Gay Tony features a great storyline, as well as plenty of content that make this add-on a great value.
The Ballad of Gay Tony of course plays very much the same to the other expansion and original game, but with a different plot and characters. The main protagonist, Luis Lopez is the new character that is played, and just like the other ones, he has an interesting personal background and life story. For the most part he seems like your stereotypical Dominican thug, but there's more to him than that. It's not too surprising to be playing the role of a unique, and in a way, likable character in a Grand Theft Auto game. Luis however isn't exactly the entire center of attention. He works at a nightclub owned by the other main character, known as "Gay Tony", and a lot of the story involves conflicts regarding financial issues with Tony's clubs, as well as protecting Tony. And unsurprisingly, these conflicts involve gangsters and plenty of other shady characters.
Missions in this episode play pretty much the same as any other Grand Theft Auto game. However there are some different types of missions that vary more than the missions did in the original game. And this time you are actually able to play through completed missions again. The purpose of this is due to the fact that there is a new scoring system that gives you a percent (up to 100%) based on the performance of the mission. This new feature is essentially pointless, but does open up some opportunity of replay value. You are graded on different aspects, such as the time it took to complete the mission, and remaining health after the mission. There are also some random, and ridiculous ones such as get very high X number of headshots, have super high accuracy, and some other things that would really have to be bothered with to get a perfect score. But other than that it's the same old stuff to be expected from Grand Theft Auto.
Unfortunately a lot of the missions are heavily gun fight oriented. This is normal for it being GTA, but the problem is that the combat can feel quite clunky after a while. The cover system feels increasingly more annoying from both sides of the shootouts as well. It's not necessarily hard, it's just that it isn't very fun or exciting at times. Sure it's fun when explosions are involved, or if it's just taking down a few goons at a time. It's when they throw in random enemies at random points in the mission when it feels kind of repetitive, and at times frustrating. One small mistake can really screw you over. On a more positive note, there are even more new weapons added to this episode. They are mostly obtained from missions, and thankfully it's really a nice change just from simply using a few different weapons. The most useful, as well as fun to use, would easily be the AA-12 with the explosive round modification that causes devastating damage, and not to mention has a really long range for a shotgun.
After some over the top gameplay, satisfying story telling, and meeting some new (and old) characters, the Ballad of Gay Tony comes to a satisfying close. While the gameplay throughout is mostly the same, it's nice to see that some old things were brought back, such as the parachute, and even a unique tank that can be accessed after a certain point in the story. Just playing through the story should easily last around 10 hours. On top of that there are 25 drug wars, 15 really awesome freefall jumps to do, a few other side missions, and some fun mini games to play by yourself or some of your buddies. The online is nothing new for Grand Theft Auto, but it's still there, all though it's not much compared to the fantastic single-player experience. There are a few other additional goodies like some new cars, and again the additional weapons are really nice. Liberty City still looks great, but not noticeably different than GTA4.
Overall The Ballad of Gay Tony is very well worth its price. The action overall is better, the story ties in well with the other expansion and original game, and is some good all around GTA fun. There is plenty of extra content to do outside of the story missions, and with some games out there today, this one could easily fool you to believe it's a full game on its own, and not a $20 expansion.