Mission 1 - "Dropping In"
The first big news will please fans of GTA: San Andreas; parachutes are back! Taken from early on in the game, 'Dropping In' begins with Luis taking a chopper significantly higher than players have ever been able to in a previous GTA game, and literally dropping in to his objective, where carnage ensues.
Mess with us, would they? That'll learn 'em!
His objective in this case is the penthouse office of the man who owns the Liberty City Rampage ice hockey team. Luis, under instruction from Timur - an employee of Russian gangster Bulgarin from GTA IV - has been tasked with conducting what can only be described as 'aggressive negotiations' - the kind where the difficult party is disposed of altogether!
Landing on the building's helipad, Luis is caught on camera and must fight through gangs of henchmen as he makes his way down to the penthouse.
The first thing we're reminded of here is how good GTA's shooting controls are. For a title which is basically a free-roamer, its gunplay is surprisingly chunky and satisfying. Equipping the new Belgian-designed P90, we pull the L trigger to take aim and gun open doors, spray bullets at our enemies and even send some stray shrapnel into pipes, which explode with smoke, pushing our targets into the open for an easy kill. Mess with us, would they? That'll learn 'em!
With our trigger finger primed and security officers falling like bowling pins, it's not long before we've made it down to the Rampage offices - an open-plan lobby area that lends itself well to some Heat-like run-and-gun action. Unfortunately, we don't manage to take out all of the hired help before one of them activates the alarm, so the Rockstar PR encourages us to set some sticky bombs on the walls, blowing up the reinforcements with a press of down on the D-pad as they charge down the corridor.
With that, we put a bullet in our target, the Rampage manager, watching as the camera pans back to see him crashing through the window and falling several stories to the ground below - landing with a sickening wet thud on the pavement. Ouch.
this is over-the-top, intense gangster warfare in a way we've never seen before in the series
The objective completed and the Rampage offices in tatters, we have but to parachute back down to the city streets and onto the moving truck Timur has commandeered; and that's mission one complete!
What have we learned from Dropping In? That Rockstar North has gone out of its way to make this GTA instalment one of the most instantly gratifying, action-focused GTAs ever. From parachuting hundreds of feet onto a rooftop to one--man-armying it through to a clinical assassination, this is over-the-top, intense gangster warfare in a way we've never seen before in the series. And there's still three more missions to go...
Check back next week for the second mission from GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony, 'The Man With Everything'