Grand Theft Auto Episodes from Liberty City: why didn't I play these earlier???

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City is an open world shooter/adventure, I mean we all know what GTA games are like right? Episodes from Liberty City is basically two different Standalone DLC's for GTA IV and was originally released in 2009. 

And it took me over a decade to get to them. In my defense I wanted to play GTA IV first before getting to the expansions and I had to start over so many times because of losing my saves, thanks to changing PC's and windows live getting removed and whatnot. But in the end, I finally managed to play both of them. (You can find my review of the main game on this blog as well that I posted a few years back.) And thank god I did. The main game was good, a bit dated but good and this was just more of that good, if not even a bit better as it ties in beautifully to the main game.

Episodes from Liberty City is basically two different stories that run simultaneously to the main game in the same city with a few interactions and that is the beauty of it.  If you are afraid of spoilers to over a decade old game, they are coming now. A large portion of GTA IV is about dealing with stolen diamonds and the different factions that want to either own, buy or sell them. In these new episodes we learn even more about them, where they originated from and about the different factions wanting to get a piece of the pie and the best part, play as members of them. Of course the episodes aren't completely about the diamonds as these people that you get play as do have lives too but the diamonds are a big focus. The crescendo of the diamonds saga and the tie-ins between the games is the mission Museum Piece where Niko Bellic want's to sell the diamonds. He does so with a Biker friends of his and is ambushed by a person from a window who wants to steal them. The biker and the person in the window are both the playable characters in these new episodes, all three 'games' meeting in one mission where you get to play as almost all the parties involved just in different playthroughs. End of spoilers.

This is something that is not really made these days anymore and I wish more studios did. Now I'm not really a proponent of DLC's but when they are done like this I just can't stop screaming for more. Of course making DLC that is actually good is not always easy, but actually putting some effort into them goes a long way. These days it feels like there isn't even any proper DLC being made and it's just all just micro transactions, skins and expensive fluff instead. Of course stand-alone DLC has never been a big name in the video game industry and it is absolutely understandable but it is also a shame that DLC disguised as a full game is no longer a thing. DLC's were also not very popular when they were first being introduced to games but after enough good ones, they are something that have been normalized. So in a way you could say that Episodes from Liberty City was a product of its time and one we will probably never see again, unfortunately. 

The game itself plays very well. It had slightly more noticeable bugs than the main game. It is of course possible that these bugs were in the main game as well and has been patched, they just forgot to apply those patches to this one, hard to say. If you did enjoy the main game, you will enjoy these episodes as well, the core gameplay is basically the same as the main game, the only thing that really changes is the thing that Rockstar does best, the stories. 

TL;DR It's basically the same game as GTA IV. The originaly story is expanded with the help of 2 new playable characters. These new stories or Episodes tie in so nicely to the original game and just because I want to see more DLC like this I'm going to give this one a whopping 9/10

Quantum Brake: Good, but short

Quantum break is a single player action adventure game made by Remedy and was released in 2016. As far as I know it wasn't a smash hit like Alan Wake but it still had a pretty good reception and pretty good is what I would call it as well. 

Quantum Break is not a long game, in fact I would go as far as saying that it is not a full game. It took me all of 8 hours to complete the game and based on howlongtobeat you could 100% it by running through it a second time. This gives the game that launched with $60 price tag a whopping 16-20 hours of play time based on how fast you can clear the game and that is not a lot. Similar triple A games usually have a lot more content to keep you busy or much better replayability. And of course if we are talking about pure price per game time ratio there are so many indie games that offer much more for a much less. So purely based on $/h ratio Quantum Break is one of the worst ones out there but this is not to say that it is bad game. 

The story of the game, for example, is very interesting. For a nerd like myself, a story that tries to explain time travel and the issues that come with it is definitely interesting. At this point I am going to have to issue a mild spoiler alert. The approach that quantum break takes with time travel is not necessarily a new one, only the technology that enables it is. The technology that is used is a massive device circular device with a tunnel that let's you walk around it in circles. One direction to go back in time and the other direction to go forwards in time, but only into places in time where the device has been used before or will be used, so travelling to late 1800's to kill baby Hitler is not possible. There are several different approaches to time travel and Quantum Brake explores the quite known version of: whatever was, will be, and going back in time will not change anything as it has already happened. This approach definitely makes sense as the story is all about the big baddie trying to change course of history the player trying to stop them. End of spoilers. So the story of the game is not long, but definitely intereting.

They also did try to increase the replayability of the game by adding different choices to the story to create a different ending. There are several major points in the game where a decision needs to be made that takes the story into a different direction that is followed by a cut-scene of how that decision changes the story. Those choices also affect the game and how it plays throughout the next chapter and by doing a little experiment, it looks like that is the only thing that it changes. I tried choosing different choices in one of the cut-scenes and it looks like they start differently, but the end result is the same. Meaning that the game has an illusion of choice to make you play it again but the result will be the same. Now I will say that this might have been a planned feature that they never managed to implement but then they should have removed it completely. Just giving the illusion in the hopes of stretching the playtime is not a good thing. It will only make the players grow bored of running the same stuff again instead of ending in a high after finishing the game. 

And as the game is so short, it feels more like a tech demo than it does a fully fledged game. It does have some very interesting mechanics that I've not really seen in other games. I'm not saying they are revolutionary or even something completely new but nevertheless they are things that are not commonplace in video games, even 5 years later. One of the more annoying features was how the enemies avoided getting headshot. In single-player shooters like these I usually just run through levels by only using the pistols and headshotting everything as I don't have the hurry of will they headshot me first and I can just take my time aiming. This was not possible in Quantum Break. Every time I tried to aim at an NPC's head, they would lean to one side and then the other whenever I tried to aim at their head. This was a very interesting way of stopping me from doing what I always do, which was annoying but at the same time made the game a bit more challenging which I didn't mind too much. The other interesting feature was how Time worked through levels and how it changed them. It's really nothing new but still interesting to see. How time being stopped and then jerking back into flowing changed levels and how it affected the enemy troops.

TL;DR So overall the game was not very long, but still an interesting play. The story and the game mechanics are very interesting but nothing revolutionary and once you are done with the game I really don't see a reason to return to it. If you can pick the game up from a sale for like $15 or less, definitely do so, otherwise maybe just skip it. Just as a game though I would give it a rating of good, 7/10