You'll still need a supercomputer but Grand Theft Auto IV Episodes from Liberty City is an excellent expansion pack.
User Rating: 9 | Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City PC
When Grand Theft Auto IV was released on consoles, it received unanimous praise from critics and gamers. The story was a little different on PC as the game was horribly optimized. A number of patches have been released that alleviates many of the issues but you'll still need a dedicated gaming PC to run it remotely well at medium settings. The two DLC, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony were initially exclusive to the Xbox 360 but finally arrived in one pack as Episodes from Liberty City on PC and PS3. The system requirements are still high but this expansion pack is a blast to play. The Lost and Damned tells the story of Johnny Klebitz, part of a biker gang called the Lost MC. Johnny has been the acting president of the gang for the past year while Billy Grey has been in court-ordered rehab. When Grey returns, tensions come to a head between him and Johnny as they battle for leadership of the Lost. The Ballad of Gay Tony puts you in the shoes of Luis Lopez, who works for Gay Tony Prince. Gay Tony runs two of the hottest nightclubs in Liberty City, Maisonette 9 and Hercules but when he gets mired in debt, Luis has to help him out. Both DLCs have excellent stories and run concurrent to the main plot in the original GTA 4. There are a number of subtle and not-so-subtle references to the original game and you'll experience certain missions from a different point-of-view. They also revel in stereotypes and being politically incorrect but all of it is done in a tongue-in-cheek tone so it shouldn't be offensive to "most" people. Gameplay remains the same with you driving around Liberty City doing dirty-work from lowlife thugs to mob bosses. The Lost and Damned has much improved motorcycle handling and the missions now have checkpoints, alleviating much of the frustration in the original game where you would have to restart from the beginning. This system carries over to The Ballad of Gay Tony as well, and there's an added emphasis on using helicopters and skydiving from very tall buildings. Controlling a helicopter is sometimes frustrating on a keyboard so a Xbox 360 gamepad should be plugged-in for those missions; otherwise the default PC controls are fine. Both DLCs also have mini-games but since you're not really hard pressed to get people to like you as they already do, you won't spend much time with them other than to take a break in-between missions. Multiplayer supports up to 32 players (up from 16 on consoles) but each DLC features its own suite, meaning you'll have to load up the other expansion if you want to play a specific mode, which is a hassle. Unfortunately, the PC version suffers from a lack of players with me having Deathmatch games with only 4 people. The visuals, while still good, aren't aging too well. If you have a capable PC, you should be able to set most settings to high but shadows kill the framerate, since they're now rendered differently due to the patches. For one thing, there's soft shadows. For me, at all high settings, view distance 60, max detail distance, and vehicle density 20, I get between 15 to 30 frames per second but sometimes down to 10 in rainy weather. Turning off shadows keeps it around 20 to 35. Texture pop-up is also very annoying as during chases you'll hit objects which doesn't come into view. Audio is very strong, with authentic voice acting and tons of licensed music but if you don't like those, you can switch to your own radio station to play your own music. Episodes from Liberty City is one of the best expansion packs in recent years and both DLCs should take you around 24 hours to complete if you focus on just missions. However, please heed the system requirements so you're sure you can run the game. While you may be fine running with low, there's a lot of atmosphere to the game that will be lost. Here's to the future GTA V!
