In less than a month the final of the two episodic contents for Grand Theft Auto IV is being released: The Ballad of Gay Tony and I had a chance to get my hands on it at X’09 Canada. The Ballad of Gay Tony, much like the first DLC The Lost and Damned, is giving a perspective on a side story going on at the same time as the main Grand Theft Auto IV story. This time it’s centering around the Liberty City night club mogul Anthony Prince also known as Gay Tony where in the expansion you’ll play as his bodyguard Luis Lopez.

At the event I was able to play through a level and if what I saw was any indication of what the full expansion is going to bring to the table then those looking for their next fix of Grand Theft Auto will have a lot to look forward to. The level was definitely action-packed: you’re going to parachute into a office building, fight your way to a conference room where your target is located and shoot him dead through a glass window over five stories high while using that same window to parachute into a straw truck making your quick escape before enemy reinforcements arrive. From my experience, the level is just as cool as it sounds on paper, rivaling some of the best missions in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The gameplay from Grand Theft Auto IV stays relatively the same but Rockstar has included a variety of new weapons including new types of machine guns and shotguns all of which felt quite devastating. Rockstar has promised that there will be more minigames packed into the expansion for you to discover and play as well as a variety of new multiplayer modes that fit in the Grand Theft Auto universe.

Right now, The Ballad of Gay Tony is looking very promising. While it’s not going to deliver anything too different from you’ve come to expect from Grand Theft Auto that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Look for this game as a DLC on Xbox Live and as one half of the Episodes from Liberty City game disc releasing on October 29th for the Xbox 360.