Thankfully, the ending mission was more lighthearted and less back-stabby than both Nico and Jonny’s plotlines. Even if it did turn out to be utterly ridiculous. Fun though.

Whereas the main story was all over the place, but mainly involved Russians, and The Lost and Damned was all bikers and backstabbing, Gay Tony is overblown silliness involving nightclubs and helicopters and diamonds and helicopters and basejumping AND HELICOPTERS. Lots of helicopters. ENOUGH WITH THE HELICOPTERS ALREADY.

Seriously. 5 missions in a row were helicopter based.

Not that I dislike helicopters, but I don’t want half the game to take place in the sky.

Anyway. The silliness is funny. As always, the characters are great, the acting is amazing, and the story is gripping. If silly. And Yusef Amir is outstanding.

I think, according to the stats, I’m around 60% through now. Past experience says that the end is just around the corner (as 70%-ish complete is normally “story done” in GTA games). Which is a shame as it seems short. Mind you, TLaD only took about 8 hours to do, so it’s on par with that.

It was probably easier than most previous games in the series, but that wasn’t a problem. It was just GTA in your hand, and that’s excellent.

I’m sure I read somewhere that The Lost and Damned expansion was supposed to provide “around 35 hours” extra gameplay. If so, I’d love to know where it was.

Not that it really matters as I enjoyed it all anyway. At first I wasn’t sure, but I soon got sucked into the story and really liked all the crossover stuff with Nico. The final mission was the easiest mission in GTA history, though, so was a little disappointing. Every other GTA finale has been stupidly hard requiring $hlmun retries, but not this time. Again though, it didn’t really matter.

More DLC on the way, Rockstar?

There’s nothing wrong with it, as such, it’s just not as much fun as “proper” GTA IV was. Johnny is, in appearance at least, a carbon copy of Nico, and all his biker chums appear to be the same and I don’t remember who is who. Also, as much as I love bikes in GTA games, they’re mainly fun for mucking around in. This storyline is bike-heavy for missions – and they’re rubbish handling Harley-like bikes too. I much prefer a nice car for most missions, really.

But as I said, there’s nothing actually wrong. I’m liking the tie-ins with the original storyline (you even redo a mission that Nico did – with Nico) and seeing some of the characters from another angle.

I’m not, however, enjoying the full-frontal nudity of Stubbs. GTA has gone too far!

And then it was on to races for Brucie. Could I find a decent car anywhere though? No . So I turned up in this rubbish Mondeo-alike only to find a starting lineup of Infernuses. So I tried “cheating” by blowing the cars up as we pulled away from the line. Sadly, that abandons the race. As does popping the tyres before the flag goes up. And killing the drivers. Luckily, even in Infernuses, they drive as slow as you – so I beat them in the end without resorting to anything less sportsmanlike. Tch, eh?

Then I played online for a few games, mainly in Ranked Team Deathmatch. I was disappointed not to get the achievement for killing at least 5 people from other teams, even though I killed 19 (and yes, there were at least five different people that I killed – I managed to rocket-kill 9 of them in one shot!).

I finished off nicking all of the cars Brucie wanted (it turned out my email inbox was full, so wasn’t getting emails from him), which took most of today’s play. I went on some heli tours – lots of them, in fact, but didn’t get the achievement for them all. I don’t know how you’re supposed to know when you’ve done them all – I’ve been in all three helicopters from all six helipads, but nothing.

But I still can’t nick cars for Brucie, even though his like for me is now 94%.

GTA Glitch Watch
Aside from Brucie’s not-sending-me-emails bug, the game stops working every time I try to got for a heli ride with him. I call him up for one, drive to his house, and the game “takes over”, I get out the car, and him and two women walk up to me. He says something about “taking the bitches for a spin the chopper” and nothing happens. The game continues to play out – cars go past, Niko shuffles on the spot, people walk by, but nothing else. I can’t walk anywhere, no cut scenes, we don’t get in the helicopter, and no-one says or does anything. I can’t move the camera either – just like the bug earlier in the game when the same thing happened at a burger stand near Firefly Island. Hmm.

Only Brucie isn’t sending me emails with requests for cars any more. I think it’s because his like for me is only 35%, but I can’t increase it as he never answers the phone! Pff.

What percentage do you have to get your friends at to trigger their special ability anyway?

But I wasn’t happy with the outcome. Someone dies, and I didn’t like it. So I went back to a previous save and chose to kill Dimitri then rather than work with him. The result? Another death. A different death, sure, but one that was a bit easier to take in, even though I still didn’t like it. Then the “new” final mission, which was much like the other one to begin with, but with a different chase sequence and a different “boss” – who was much easier to kill once he was on foot.

And then the end again.

I decided to “keep” this ending, and carry on playing from it rather than return to the other one. I then spent ages taking friends out eating, drinking, going to see shows, going to strip clubs and playing darts. It’s going to be a long process getting them all up to 100% though – most are still less than 40% even after the wining and dining.

It didn’t help that I simply can’t do Jacob’s package deliveries, and his Like for me drops every time I fail.

After that, I was kicked off Live for some reason, so played offline for a bit. I attempted the final mission – going after Dimitri – and failed when he blew up my boat with a rocket. And it takes aaaaages to get back to that point. Grr!

Anyway, the wedding happened and then a nasty spoiler. A nasty spoiler which didn’t sit well with me and I didn’t like at all. So much so, I’m going to go back to an earlier save and kill Dimitri.

And then I attempted what I assume is the final mission. I was given the choice of working with Dimitri, or killing him. I chose to work with him, but as expected, he double-crossed me. And I died trying to finish the mission. Pff.

I then played online for a while, on Ranked Deathmatch. Picked up another two achievements there as well, even though I didn’t do especially well.

I’m also over 51 hours in now. And I’ve still not completed it. It’s also just about the only game I’ve played for almost two weeks now too. Yes, it is very good.

After that I did Gravelli’s (or whatever his name is – old bloke in the hospital) next mission – blowing up some vans filled with cocaine. I took an indirect route around some rooftops, which made it much easier than it originally looked. Then I retried Phil’s mission getting some drugs from a boatyard. Found that much easier than last time, completing it easily.

Finally, I took Kate out on a date. It didn’t go well, as to start with I turned up just one minute late, then se complained about my clothes, my bike riding skillz (she didn’t like being on an NRG 900 for some reason) and then when we arrived at the bowling place it wouldn’t let us start a game, so we left and I accidentally threw her from the bike when I clipped a kerb. So she went home on her own. Smooth, Niko, really smooth.

GTA Glitch Watch
Glitches in abundance today! Lots and lots of objects popping in after I’ve hit them, and the tunnel from Alderney to Algonquin was completely black for a good 1/3 of its length before any of it was drawn in.

One of my cars parked outside my East Holland safehouse vanished too – even though it was in the designated parking, and, in fact, had been there for around 20-odd hours play at least.

Then there was the problem with Kate’s date. I got to the bowling place but it wouldn’t let me play. No idea why – and no, she hadn’t requested a particular sort of date (in fact I rang her) and when I’d picked her up it was shown on my map as a “valid” place to do. Very odd.

Anyway. I broke the $500,000 “barrier” today, mainly by nicking cars for Brucie and Stevie. And not a lot else, actually. Silly me hadn’t realised that the box the game comes in includes a map of Liberty City, complete with street names, so I could have saved myself a lot of aimless driving around for Stevie…

Then I stole some cars (and bikes) for Brucie, took Little Jacob and Dwayne out for meals, and then did another mission for Jimmy. And attempted one for Phil but it was too hard.

Finally, I went to see Mr. Gravelli in the hospital, and did a couple of missions for him – including killing a Korean money counterfeiter – the same guy I helped into the country earlier in the game, it seems. Oh well.

I’m trying to get my cash up to the half-million mark. I’m on $440,000-ish at the moment.