Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City is a compilation release of two separate expansions to Grand Theft Auto IV – The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Instead of Niko Bellic, the player travels through the same Liberty City through the eyes of Johnny Klebitz, a biker from The Lost gang, and later Luis Lopez, a playboy who revolves around nightclubs and the underworld of the city's wealthy elite. Both spin-offs share the map and technology of the main game, but offer different characters, their own storylines, new weapons and vehicles, and a different perspective on the same events, thanks to which Episodes from Liberty City together form a more complete picture of Liberty City from several angles at once – from the hopeless life of a biker gang to the superficial glitter of the nightlife of the wealthy.

Rockstar North first released both expansions as downloadable content for Xbox 360 back in 2009 – The Lost and Damned in early that year, The Ballad of Gay Tony in the fall – a year before this compilation package was created. Xbox 360 was thus the very first platform on which players could access both stories at all, at a time when the year-older GTA IV was still among the most technically demanding titles of the generation. Before Rockstar offered Episodes from Liberty City as a standalone disc that didn't require the original GTA IV in 2010, Xbox 360 players had to buy both expansions gradually through Xbox Live and download them separately onto the console's hard drive. The Xbox 360 version thus remains historically the first and most direct way to experience both spin-offs in the form the studio originally designed them for what was then the most powerful console on the market, before the content expanded to PlayStation 3 and computers as well.

Why play it: Ideal for GTA IV fans who want to see Liberty City through the eyes of characters other than Niko and experience both expansions in the form in which they first appeared – without having to track down the original game separately or buy the content gradually through the online store.