Grand Theft Auto IV/Gambettis

This page contains spoilers for finishing missions.

Entourage
Full armor/health would be nice, but a health pack is easily available if you need it. Bring plenty of ammo and some grenades.

When the action finally starts, you are in an alley. The guy you are protecting stays hidden and is not a factor.

Your most immediate threat is in the alley across the street, so take them out first. Look for red dots with arrows on them across the street from you and take them out next. Then take your time and clean out the rest. Reinforcements for them usually come, but should be no problem.

You may get a red dot hiding from you. One place is in a nook around the corner to the right. Another place is in an alley to the right of the first alley BGs were shooting from.

Stay against the building on your right when you go after these guys, then run across the street at the corner if you need to so that the BGs on the roof above your original position don't get you. When all the street-level BGs are taken care of, get those last couple of guys on the roof.

You may have to go back down the alley to get the guy you are protecting. There is a health pack there if you need it. Get into the front car by the alley and wait for four cars of BGs to arrive. If they don't come right soon, try pulling straight out of the street and when you see their red dots on your HUD, back straight to where you started.

If they stop at the end of the street and fire at you, you can stay in the car and shoot back, but after they all arrive, you'll want to crash through them, turn right, and gun it. There is a randomness to the game, but this has been tried several times and always worked.

If you try to run for it immediately instead of using the above approach, they will be on your tail and it will be more difficult to shake them.

Dining Out
You will need full armor/health a good supply of ammo. If you can get a Hummer clone, it is a good vehicle for this mission. This mission is not time sensitive until near the end when you open the kitchen doors, which is when the boss tries to flee. Up until that point, take your time and take cover when you can.

When you first get to the restaurant, drive a large car down the driveway to the right of the restaurant's awning, go around back and park it tight against the front of the car that is already back there. More about that later. You may notice a ladder going up the back of the building, but don't waste time with it; the door at the top won't open to the inside.

Now walk back around front and enter the restaurant. After the cut scene, go around to the left of the guy and shoot him with a shotgun, but not until the cut scene is done and the manager's blue dot shows up your HUD.

The reason for going around to the left is that another Bad Guy will appear in the room to your right and start shooting you as so as you shoot the first BG if you do NOT move. Now you can move around the wall on your left, press RB to get in the Cover mode, lock on the BG in the next room and shoot him. If you can't see him, aim and advance in that direction slowly and shoot him through the decorative molding.

Run into the room where the now-dead guy is and move against the far wall. Deal with anyone who is firing at you in that position, then take cover at the corner of the door to the main room. Some screens are hiding most of the lower floor. Use blind fire to knock them down, starting with the right edge. If a BG is hiding behind one, you'll kill him too. You can take out several BGs upstairs using blind fire.

It is possible to walk around the bottom floor throwing grenades to all parts of the top floor, but it seems you still have to deal with the same number of BGs.

So just run up to the first platform on the stairs and quickly turn and deal with the BGs who have open shots at you. Stopping at the first platform cuts the room in half so that you are not getting hit from all sides.

After you get all those you can, run up the rest of the stairs and turn and shoot the others. After you think you have finished them, circle the room picking up weapons if you want, but one more guy is usually waiting for you somewhere. When ready, go through the red office door.

The manager is in the office, alone and unarmed. Pull LT to target him and he will tell you where the boss is, then shoot him. A nice, new body armor is on his desk, but unless you are low on health, don't pick it up yet because four more BGs are waiting for you to open the door -- three to the far right and one against the left wall.

Instead of running into the room, stand back from the door and to the left of it aiming towards the right and shoot the door open. Push in the right joystick for your automatic weapon to zoom and you can see two of the BGs just standing there. Take them out quickly then move to get the guy on the left wall (straight out the door). The last guy will probably take cover, but if you zoom and shoot, he is easy to finish off.

Now you may as well go back and pick up the armor from the office desk, exit the office and go to the right towards the kitchen doors in the opposite corner of the room. Keep aiming at the doors. If two BGs come out, you can take them down quickly. If they don't come out, shoot open the doors to get things going. If they prove hard to get, grenade 'em.

After they are gone, run through the kitchen, out the back door to a fire escape and look down. The boss' getaway car is in the parking lot below, just to the right, and still blocked in by the car you put there, assuming that you got outside fast enough after the kitchen doors opened (which is when he starts to run).

Run down and shoot him. If you have trouble getting to him before he takes off, just jump off the fire escape. You may take a little health hit, but the mission is over as soon as you shoot him.

If you are not in time and he drives off, go down and get in the car you parked there, not the motorcycle that you would have had to take otherwise, and pursue him. This is an odd chase in that the BG's car goes really slow, and you could go out for lunch and he would still be waiting for you. Keep shooting at his car (which has a guy shooting back at you) and eventually it will either burst into flames or you will kill the boss.

The most interesting aspect of this mission is the ability to position a car before the action actually starts and still have it there later. This may be the only mission in which you can do so.

A Hummer clone is a good vehicle to use. It is big enough to block the boss' car, but if he does get away, it is a good car for a chase when the main problem is other cars getting in your way.

If you have been storing an armored car, this is a good mission for it because it will more effectively block the getaway car, and on the off chance you have to chase them, it will plow through everything, plus there is no danger of the boss outrunning it.

Liquidize The Assets
You will need full armor/health, ammo, RPGs, and grenades. Something that will make the mission a lot easier is an armored car. If you looked ahead in the past, hijacked one and kept it in one of your safehouse parking spaces for just such a mission, then now is the time to go get it. If you don't already have one, you can usually find some on the road in front of Brucie's.

After talking to Jon G., drive your tank over to the destination. When you get there, you will see a tall wire fence with a concrete driveway sloping up from it to where you can see BGs milling around. Drive through the gates and try to smash as many BGs as you can with it. Of course, the BGs will be firing at you like crazy, which is why an armored car is nice to have. Even so, you cannot spend too much time doing this because the real risk is that one of the guys will open the door and pull you out.

So eventually you will have to park it and get out. The place to park it is blocking the top of the concrete ramp with the driver's door away from the action. Then you can get out and have pretty good protection with it from the snipers on the roof as well as the guys left on the the ground. Your immediate concern should be with any guys on your left.

After taking them out, concentrate on the guys on the roofs. From behind the armored car they should not be too big a problem, and then anyone on the ground level will be even easier.

The red dots left after all the carnage appear to be for the five vans you need to destroy, but there are not necessarily any BGs left. You could use grenades and/or RPGs to destroy the vans, but if you don't want to waste the money, just keep firing into the radiators until the vans catch fire and blow.

The reason for the armored car, aside from squashing BGs and providing cover, is to block the driveway, which is the only exit, in case someone tries to get a van out. If one gets away, you fail the mission.

If you can't get an armored car, here is a more subtle approach:

When you get to the point where the cut scene kicks in to start the action, take a car around the left corner (you are actually turning right at that corner) to get to the left side of the building which is protected by a wall with a fence on top. Drive down by the phone booths where the wall is short and smash the fence with the car. Get out of the car and walk into the compound.

After you walk around the corner next to the fence, you may see a BG pushing a cartload of boxes baack and forth. Start the action by shooting him. Then work your way forward from there, taking cover, shooting blind, and watching for the guys on the roofs and the bad guys charging you. A couple of well-cooked grenades into the courtyard seem to help.

You can take as long as you want, but this is a very difficult battle in this subtle approach. After you get most or all of the ground troops, you can go to the back of the structure you are standing next to and pull yourself up on top of it, advance to the corner of the building and go into the Cover mode.

This makes it easier to aim at and shoot the roof guys.

The real problem with this approach is that if one of the vans which you cannot see down the driveway to the back right decides to make a break for it, you may not be able to stop them as they blast down the ramp. This is where the armored car blocking the ramp would come in handy.

If you suspect they are going to come, you can target where they will come out of the back right driveway and hit them immediately with an RPG, but if you miss or are too slow, you can't RPG them once they get too close to you and they will most likely get away.

Bottom line is that it is probably worth the effort to get the armored car.