After the retail-sized, budget-priced Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Lost and Damned put its biker boot to the face of every other piece of downloadable content this side of Shivering Isles, our expectations for its follow-up, The Ballad of Gay Tony, were set sky-high. Little did we know that our first hands-on time with it would literally take us sky-high in Liberty City.

Base jumping, parachuting out of high-flying aircraft, blowing up yachts with rocket-equipped helicopters — all of these activities are put front and center for Luis Fernando Lopez, the antihero of the new episode and bodyguard and business partner of Anthony “Gay Tony” Prince. Contrasted with the gritty, under-the-freeway gang-war dealings of Johnny Klebitz in The Lost and Damned, Lopez’s adventures show “the high life of Liberty City,” a Rockstar rep tells us, where the copters, yachts, and penthouses of the town’s upper (illicit) crust are the norm.

In essence, The Lost and the Damned is macho, while The Ballad of Gay Tony seems to lean more metro — not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, there’s a lot right with it.

The first mission we test-drove was called “Dropping In,” where we found ourselves hunting a Russian businessman who doesn’t want to sell the Liberty City Rampage hockey team to Tony’s business associate. But trying to fight your way up to the penthouse boardroom of his skyscraper would be suicide, so instead you’ll take the opposite but equally dangerous approach: dropping in from above.

Piloting a helicopter to a waypoint at the apex of the Liberty City atmosphere, we bailed out, plummeting through the sky for a few seconds before pulling our chute. The controls take just a few moments to adjust to: pull both triggers to “brake,” squeeze either trigger to turn, and move the left stick forward/back to shorten/ lengthen your latitudinal approach.

Landing squarely on the helipad, we moved through the building’s top maintenance floor, capping a few bad guys and steam-spewing pipes along the way before getting down to the penthouse. Shooting our way to the boardroom, we found the defenseless Russian standing next to the window, arms raised.

Care to guess what happens next? Yep, we pulled the trigger and he fell backward through the glass, plummeting to his death dozens of stories below. The cutscene camera chronicles his descent and subsequent pancaking on the pavement below. With alarms raised back in the building, what’s the quickest way out for Luis? The same window, of course! You’ll still have your chute, so as we floated along the skyline, we were told to aim for a landing on the back of a moving flatbed truck. Nail it and it’s mission success; miss your getaway ride and you’ll have to evade a serious wanted level before you’re done — but at least you won’t fail and have to retry the mission.

Things got even more insane in “For the Man Who Has Everything.” The wealthy Yusuf Amir wants you to steal a subway car (don’t ask why)…while it’s moving! Driving to an overpass above the tracks, you must time your leap, then blast police choppers out of the sky as they try to stop you from getting to the front of the train, where Yusuf swoops in with a carrier helicopter after you decouple the front car.

Need the ante upped further? In “Going Deep,” you’re preventing corrupt cops from planting evidence against Tony. We set up an ambush for them in an underground parking garage using tossable C4 sticky bombs planted on other cars. (GTA stealing from Saints Row? There’s a switch!) After their explosive demise, we made our way topside to eventually lose our wanted level.

Capping off our session was “Sexy Time,” where you’ll drive to the docks, take a speedboat out to a yacht — evading patrol boats along the way — then have to board the 20-footer and steal the Buzzard, the aforementioned nimble attack helicopter loaded with rocket launchers and miniguns. We failed a couple of times as we tried to aim our missiles at the yacht while our enemies onboard it fired rockets back at us, but eventually we sunk the ship. Right after, we had to machinegun three more rat boats before carefully landing on Yusuf’s helipad-topped highrise.

If these missions are any indication, Rockstar has clearly rediscovered some of the silly, over-the-top fun from older GTAs that’s been missing in the series’ more dramatic next-gen debut. Throw in the new weapons, cars, DJ chatter, music, in-game TV, dozen-or-so base-jumping activity spots, and the long-awaited ability to replay any mission to beat it a different way, and we doubt we’ll be able to resist making a date with Gay Tony.