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The GTAIV DLC: Does Anyone Still Care?

Posted by Bob Mackey

The ending of Grand Theft Auto IV left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, if only because it was just so cruel and heartless to its affable main character; Nico Bellic's reward for 60 hours of revenge was nothing but a post-game purgatory in which he had free reign of a sterile city without the underlying social network so much of his pre-ending life was built upon. And while my backlash against GTAIV isn't quite as harsh as the current opinion held by quite a few games journalists, I never really felt the desire to play the game again after Nico's story was abandoned without anything even resembling an epilogue. Admittedly, the game's obsession with narrative over gameplay really made it suffer, but even so, the second Nico became an aimless NPC was when I stopped caring about anything GTAIV.

So now that we're a less than a month away from The Lost and the Damned, GTAIV's first DLC expansion, I can't help but utter the overused apathy signifier known as "Meh." To be honest, this opinion of mine isn't exactly new; back when I heard that GTAIV's DLC would have nothing to do with Nico Bellic, I was a little disappointed. And ever since I wanted to see what happens to the guy after the original game's final mission (aside from what I make him do), I couldn't even muster up the interest necessary to keep GTAIV in my collection. For as overly-long as GTAIV's story was--that Italian Mafia crap was an awful diversion--it always belonged to Nico. And the fact that Rockstar has ditched him entirely feels like a betrayal of sorts--I mean, did they ever tell us why he needed all of that "mahney?" This motivation alone made the game 30 hours longer than it needed to be.

All of this leads me to wonder one thing: is anyone out there still seriously psyched about The Lost and the Damned? If so, let me know. I'd be willing to entertain some differing opinions.

Related Links:

Grand Theft Auto IV's Post-Game Purgatory
Counterpoint: Games Shouldn't Try to Be Movies
The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1

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Posted Jan 22 2009, 10:00 PM

Filed under: xbox 360, gta iv, bob mackey, dlc, the lost and the damned

Comments

Roto13 said:

Grand Theft Auto IV is going to go down in history as the highest ranked game on Metacritic that nobody likes.

January 23, 2009 1:11 AM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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