Sure, you can hang out with your childhood friends and go to clubs or play air hockey together, but once you finish the couple missions with them and unlock the totally optional (thank god) 'drug war' combat sections, you never engage with them again in the story, and the same goes for a decent number of the guys Tony owes money to. The pacing of the story is all over the place, as characters are picked up for certain missions and then never spoken of or referenced again. The rest of the main cast are certainly more on the line of obnoxious/offensive in how they're portrayed, but the game makes up for this in how well acted Luis is, as his straight-man (no pun intended) way of dealing with things is a consistently entertaining foil to the madcap cast of characters he has to deal with.

Tony is a bit of a stereotype, but not in a grating or obnoxious way as GTA so often loves to do. The story is by far the best part of the game, as Luis and Tony not only have good chemistry, but they're also just fairly well written characters. Tony is an aging gay man who is going through a bit of a midlife crisis and has borrowed a ton of money from some really bad dudes to keep his clubs open and to fuel his drug habit, and the game consists of Luis going around and fulfilling obligations to these mafia-types to pay back Tony's debts as well as clean up his other related messes. The Ballad of Gay Tony follows the escapades of the titular character 'Gay' Tony as you play as his business partner/body guard Luis Lopez. It took me a little under 10 hours to do just all the story stuff. The Ballad of Gay Tony immediately hit me with a much better style and color palette and a more engaging story, but that wasn't exactly a high bar to clear. The copy I got was the standalone pack of the two DLC's, so I checked out the first DLC, The Lost & The Damned, first and HATED it for the whole couple hours I spent with it. I picked up this game on the recommendation of several friends that it was the best part of GTA4.

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