With less than a week to go before the long-awaited The Lost and Damned expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV hits Xbox Live, one question remains: what, if anything, will it bring to the multiplayer table? As it turns out, the DLC add-on will bolster its new, 22-mission single-player story with no fewer than six new modes (as well as a few old ones that’ll be spiked with TLAD’s biker flavor), all of which take advantage of Lost and Damned’s improved motorbike physics (read: it’s now much harder to fall off) and gritty new weapons.

Two GamesRadar editors recently got a chance to play through five of the new modes against a full complement of Rockstar Games staffers: Witness Protection, Races, Lone Wolf Biker, Chopper vs. Chopper and Own the City. (Four other modes went unseen: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Free mode and Club Business; the first three apparently haven’t changed much since GTA IV, and the fourth, while new, seems to be a biker version of GTA IV’s Mafiya Work mode.) Fresh impressions of everything they saw are below.

Similar to GTA IV’s Cops ‘n’ Crooks mode, Witness Protection divvies the players up into two teams: the Lost, who’ve been tasked with killing three state’s witnesses, and the NOOSE (the game’s FBI analogue), who have to deliver those witnesses to the safety of police stations, one at a time, in an armored bus. Each NOOSE agent gets a squad car (except the unlucky bus driver), and each Lost member gets a motorcycle and a red line on the map that’ll lead them straight to wherever the NOOSE agents are headed. When they catch up, they’ll have to either cap the witnesses or blow up the bus (which isn’t easy) before the NOOSE agents can run them off the road.

Mikel Reparaz, Senior Editor: We started out on the NOOSE side, and I think it was probably the most fun we had during the entire multiplayer session. At least it was the most fun I had.

Chris Antista, Associate Editor: Agreed, 100 percent. When asking people some of the things they would've liked to see changed, a lot of people brought up the potential of Cops n' Crooks mode. Forum user Zaphers asked for more variety in vehicles, and complained about the lack of balance in the cops getting souped-up rides from the onset. So to a point, both issues are adressed here.

Mikel: That's true; the cops get souped-up rides, but so do the Lost. And the predator/prey dynamic gets switched up, too. It's completely different, though; in Cops 'n' Crooks, once the boss gets taken down, that's it. But the NOOSE agents have a bunch of chances to defend a bunch of witnesses, so it keeps the game going for a while longer. It's about keeping score.

Chris: Not only do the opposing team start out with the newly refined and beastly choppers, the random cop piloting the cumbersome bus is at a disadvantage as well.

Mikel: Yeah, except that he can soak up a lot of bullets. Of course, that goes out the window if he crashes or overturns the bus.

Chris: And even with the preferable aim with riding a bike, I couldn't pull off a successful shot into that fortified paddy wagon.

Mikel: Did you get a chance to drive the bus at all? Mainly I just remember that as NOOSE agents, our cars kept blowing up and we had to keep bumming rides off each other.

Chris: I did. The thing is slow, almost painfully so, but it is a randomly assigned duty not unlike VIP modes you see in other games.

Mikel: I was kind of amazed how hard it is to get knocked off the bikes now, after playing through GTA IV. I kept ramming the Lost players with my squad car and they just swerved like I'd hit another car. Of course, that's great when it's YOU playing as the Lost. Not flying over the handlebars every five seconds is a huge help.

Chris: The bikers are quicker with tighter control, so there's definitely a different balance in play.

Mikel: Yeah, it's still tough to drive and aim successfully, especially at high speed. I was able to catch up to the bus for a while while playing as a Lost biker, but I didn't feel like I was really doing any damage with my plinky submachine gun.

Chris: It is tough, but the handling on the bike compensates by not forcing you to eat asphalt with every mulligan. It’s also possible to pull off a direct hit on the bus driver, and the witnesses in his care, but damned if i could do it successfully.

Mikel: True. You can carom off of obstacles and your bike might go flying, but you won't. You did a lot of flying, if I remember right. Like every time you hit a trashcan or a bump or a dust mote. The end result is always a bike that goes spinning into the air, doing a few flips before plopping down.

Chris: I remember you accused me of "showing off" when i accidentally launched off a curb and into a triple backflip quite accidentally.

Mikel: It looked like showing off from where I was sitting.

Chris: But the important thing is it didn't slow play, and I was right back in pursuit.



Mikel: And hey, you landed it.

Chris: With a 10 from the Russian judge!

Another team mode, Own the City cordones chunks of Liberty City into turf zones, with are then fought over by the Lost and a rival biker gang, the Angels of Death. Taking over turf works a lot like it did in GTA: San Andreas; enter a color-coded area on the map, kill every computer-controlled goon and rival player lurking inside, and it’s yours. Your own computer-controlled defenders will then pop up to try and swat down any pests who wander into your territory. They’re far from invincible, but you can beef up their arsenals by finding and jacking a special gun van and driving it near them.

Chris: Another complaint I saw on our forums about the original GTA IV multiplayer was the massive amount of space that you sometimes have to cover after respawning to get where you were before. Well, Own the City should fill the need for more instant kills, since they've thrown AI bots into turf wars, not unlike what you did while taking over disputed territories in San Andreas

Mikel: Yeah, that one was fun; just roll into marked territories and kill everything there, and then a bunch of your team’s bots will spawn to try and defend it while you're off doing something more interesting. It removes the necessity for someone to stick around and be bored in order to avoid the usual ebb and flow of most control-point matches.

Chris: It should offer a little strategy, but I'd imagine it'll appeal more to people who were frustrated by lenghty deathmatches and low kill counts.

Mikel: It's kind of nice not to exclusively have to pick on other players while trying to take over territory. Blasting the on-foot guards with a sawed-off shotgun was a fun change of pace.

Chris: Especially since they're usable on the bikes now!

Mikel: There's always a clear goal that doesn't necessarily involve hunting down other players on a huge map.



Mikel: Yeah, that's true. It's still hard to target dudes when moving at high speeds, though. It's almost easier to just run them down.

Chris: But it's all the better when you can do with one well-timed pump of a sawed-off from just over the handlebars.

Mikel: On bikes, though, you're still limited to smaller arms, like pistols, SMGs and the sawed-off. You can use the new assault shotgun, too, but I think the grenade launcher is off-limits. All the new weapons ARE available in the multiplayer modes, though.

Chris: But come on, pulling up to a fool and filling his face with rocksalt beats the hell out of long distance explosions any day.