For all the good that Grand Theft Auto IV brought to the table, somehow it got one-upped by Volition’s own tribute to the sandbox genre, Saints Row 2. While it might look a little uglier (and usually graphics and art style are purely subjective), Saints Row 2 is much more fun due to hearkening back to the zaniness of the past GTA series. Which is why Rockstar chose to follow up their Episodes From Liberty City saga with parachute-diving and chopper assaulting with The Ballad of Gay Tony.

You control Luis Lopez, a Dominican immigrant-turned-bodyguard to the prestigious Tony Prince, who is a successful businessman with lot of clubs under his influence. The problem? His investors are after him in a big, violent way, and it’s up to Luis to sort this all out. GTA story buffs will recognize Luis’ voice from the GTAIV chapters “Three Leaf Clover” and “Museum Piece”.

The good folks from Rockstar (all the way from London, by the by) showed off the action-heavy and over-the-top tone of the game through the first mission of the presentation, in the cozy halls of the Take Two office here. Luis has to help out the Russian mafia to “negotiate” with a business partner over a failed acquisition attempt of the Liberty City Rampage hockey team. Luis had to fly the helicopter all the way to the top of the business partner’s building and parachute all the way to the building. Yep, parachuting; a feature that was introduced in GTA: San Andreas has make headway as The Ballad of Gay Tony’s new game feature. The mission then proceeded to be the usual run-and-gun-everything-until-enemies-stop-moving, which ended with a base jump from one of the meeting rooms on the top floor, all the way to land on a moving truck on the streets below. Compared to GTA IV’s story missions, that’s out of the realism comfort zone it already established for itself.

I manage to get a bit of hands-on on the touted parachuting minigame; in which you jump off a high-rise tower and land on the target spot as accurately as you can. Just remember that your parachute isn’t unlimited; you have to double-check and restock it. I also get to check out a mission where rich investor person Yusuf wants to steal a Liberty City subway car with a modified helicopter, and requires Luis to go to the front of the train. Problem was that assault choppers were after me while I’m making my way to the front of the moving train. Luckily, I’ve got one of the new weapons to help me out: an auto shotgun (AA-12) that shoots out explosive rounds. As quick as my trigger finger could, the new weapon made the choppers a thing of the past.

Another mission I got a hands-on was one where I had to rig a van with the newly-introduced sticky bombs, so that I could set it off as a SWAT team arrives to inspect it. Naturally, a firefight followed suite after the explosion. Here, I manage to check out a few new weapons, ranging from a new P-90 Uzi gun, a new sniper rifle (not really an ideal situation to test it out, but whatever), a new handgun that packs a punch, and a portable version of an M249 SAW with a pretty good reloading speed considering its heft and caliber. There are also other missions that let you used armed-to-the teeth vehicles; one mission that I only got an eyes-on had Luis sneak onto a yacht and take control of a helicopter with a minigun and unlimited rockets. Destruction and explosions ensued, as Luis obliberated the enemy arms dealers sitting on their boats trying to pelt him with poorly aimed and shot rocket salvos.

The best part from all this is that you can replay all these funky missions if you want to relive certain events or just get a higher score. This second episode chooses to eschew “dramatic and dark” and replace its tone with “over-the-top”, and I have to say that it looks promising.

The Ballad of Gay Tony is not only sold separately as DLC on XBLA (for 1600 MS points), but also as a one part of the upcoming Episodes from Liberty City, with the second part being last year’s The Lost and Damned. Episodes from Liberty City will be available next month on October 29th, and no, you won’t need to own a copy of last year’s GTA IV to play the game. That whole thing where you need the full game to play expansions is so 90s, dude; keep up with the times.