7 New GTA Multiplayer Features

n another of its seemingly bi-weekly press events, Rockstar Games invited us round to have a session on GTA IV: The Lost and Damned's multiplayer, which has been expanded with various modes and goodies.

At least six new modes are promised for the expansion, including some that are clear departures from what we've been used to before. Plus there's the obligatory deathmatch, team deathmatch and Free Mode to think about, and the tons of new vehicles, weapons and options not included in the original GTA IV.

Rather than give you the same old two thousand-word run-down, we've split our impressions into an easy seven-point bullet list so you can see exactly what impressed us about our Lost and Damned.

On the blower: The Lost and Damned's expanded multiplayer introduces a

much-demanded feature absent from the first game; an expanded multiplayer mobile phone. Using Niko's trusty cell from the main game players can now find expanded quick match and filtering options, which should at the very least please the fans and make GTA online a bit more accessible.

Road Rash: L&D's bike-only Race mode is about as close as we've been to get to a next-

generation Road Rash. Armed with baseball bats and tightened-up bike handling, up to 16 Lost racers can burn through the usual stream of Liberty City checkpoints to claim the chequered flag.

Swinging your bat left and right (with the X and B buttons for either side) feels useless at first, but once we figured out you can charge up your swings by holding down the respective button, Rockstar staffers were scattered across the road like roadkill pigeons. Nicely optimised, but perhaps a little bland following GTA IV's own umpteen race modes.

San Andreas flashbacks: One of our favourite game mode additions, Own the City,

has two teams of four (The Lost and Angles of Death) battling across Liberty City to take over various territories. It's all very similar to San Andreas own turf feature; once either team has eliminated an area's AI gang members it'll change to their colour, spawning your own tooled-up AI mates in the process. A frantic, city-sprawling turf war ensues with team members gearing up to assault enemy turf, while scrambling back to their own to defend opposing attacks.

Another twist to the scenario is the addition of gang vans, which can be driven around the city to equip computer-controlled gang members with beefier guns. In our experience the AI seemed to be fairly useless whether carrying a giant shotgun or not, but we had a jolly old time doing the delivery rounds in our gun wagon none the less.

Biker bullies: Lone Wolf Biker, another roster addition, has sixteen players competing

to become the Lone Wolf. How do you become the Lone Wolf? By cappin' the player who was previously the Lone Wolf, of course! Like Highlander, there can be only one.

Even with eight combatants the streets quickly turn to absolute carnage as players skid and scramble to plant one in the back of the player with the big arrow above their head. As the convoy screams after the unlucky Wolf, who's tasked with reaching various waypoints across the city for points, it's easy to overpower a corner and go crashing into a bus stop.

We even managed to accidentally ascend into the biggest bike jump we've ever done in GTA IV. Bullets spray from every direction and it's difficult to hold the Wolf title for longer than a minute, but once you manage to break out onto a long straight you can gain a big lead - as the cheeky bugger who got four minutes clear of everyone else discovered.

With eight journalists in a room at Rockstar it was a frantic, swear-word-shouting holler. But on Xbox Live with a bunch of strangers - strangers that are going to deck you and then wheelie off into the horizon at 100mph - we've got out doubts.

Witness Protection: Our favourite new mode of the seven? Witness Protection. This

pits a team of Lost gang members against a second team of N.O.O.S.E. cops, who're tasked with driving an armoured bus full of state's witnesses across town.

On the N.O.O.S.E. team only one player can drive the van and thus, see the destinations to drop of the witnesses. Teamwork is required to make sure cop cars don't smash into each other on sharp corners and drop back to hold off the attacking Lost players as they pursue the massive van.

Once a drop-off destination is reached N.O.O.S.E. players must defend the AI witness as he makes he makes his way inside. In our game this usually resulted in Lost bikers ploughing into the side of cop cars in a desperate suicide mission. Great fun, but spawn points need to be adjusted to make sure the Lost team isn't always miles away.

Chopper Vs. Chopper: Lost and Damned's most unique online mode pits a lowly man on a

bike against a tooled-up attack chopper - and it's an explosive meeting. The biker player must reach various checkpoints across the city to top the scoreboard, all the while watching their back for the noisy death machine raining rockets from the sky.

Controlling the chopper is a tricky job unless you've put the hours into GTA IV, which in our case meant running laps around town unthreatened as the biker, then wrapping the chopper around a telephone pole. Good fun at first, but we can see this getting repetitive - especially as its limited to two players.

Club Business: Not a mode we got to try in our Rockstar session, but the official

blurb describes it as "a competitive mode where all players take the role of a member of The Lost. Angus will call with tasks that must be completed to gain favour within the gang, once you've completed enough tasks, you become the club leader. In the team-based version, you can gain money for your club by riding in formation."

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