Hmm.

I say again, hmm.

Now, my love for GTA IV knows no bounds. It’s one of my favourite games of all time and I love it to pieces. It’s unfortunate then, that my first impressions of The Lost and Damned aren’t as good as I’d hoped they would be. I think it’s all teething troubles, getting used to all the new stuff, and that I’ll grow to love it. But last night I had a load of problems.

Missions would start without me wanting them too. I think I managed to walk into the mission start arrow outside the club house without seeing it a couple of times, because it was a very sunny, washed-out day which rendered the yellow arrow almost invisible.

One mission involved shooting moving bikers from a moving bike. Not too bad with an SMG, but I only had a sawn-off shotgun, which meant I had to get close and be accurate, which wasn’t especially easy. And once I seemed to fail the mission because my bike got destroyed. I guess I need to watch out for that. Broken bike equals failed mission? Did it warn me about that?

Then I decided to go play air hockey with one of my new chums. I took a car. When I got to where he was waiting he was on a bike and I couldn’t seem to get him to get into the car or follow me or anything. Okay, so I need to take a bike to these friend meetings from now on. Noted. But it wouldn’t let me cancel. I kept calling to cancel and just got his answer phone. Eventually he sent me a text message asking why I didn’t show up and gave me a thumbs down. Gah.

And I’m not sure I quite get the riding in formation thing. A badge appears on the road that I’m meant to ride inside, but as soon as I try and do that it disappears. Does that mean I did it right? Or does it mean that I’m doing it wrong? I don’t know.

And the huge firefights I got into were a pain due to the short range of my shotgun. Give me something better, please.

And why does it use the same save slots as vanilla GTA IV? Okay, so with a bit of care I won’t overwrite my Nico Bellic save, but I shouldn’t have to be careful, should I?

And I’ve not quite worked out which voice is mine in cut scenes. I can just about recognise myself, even though everyone looks about the same, but everyone sounds too similar.

And I tried some online multiplayer. It was rubbish.

And I keep getting my bike stuck in rubbish at the side of the road.

Still, I think things will get better. I’ll learn the rules of this particular game somehow, learn to recognise my own voice, get into the story, get better weapons, get used to the bike handling, all that.