Next Tuesday, February 17, Rockstar Games is going to be dropping the first episode of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, called The Lost and Damned.

For $19.99 (1600 MS Points), gamers get an unprecedented amount of gameplay for their cash. There's the entirely new story that puts players into the leather biker jacket of Johnny Klebitz, the Vice President of the Lost motorcycle gang, and an incidental character from GTA IV. In The Lost and Damned, Johnny is the new spotlight, and that means new dialogue, new music, new weapons, new vehicles, new mini-games ... yeah, it's a lot of "new" game. 

Rockstar tells us that you're looking at a little over ten hours of new content. And that's not even taking into consideration the game's all new multiplayer modes. Yeah, The Lost and Damned ships with a handful of new multiplayer modes, specifically designed for the new game content. 

We recently got our hands on a few of the new multiplayer modes; hit the jump for details.  

The first mode Rockstar showed us was called "Chopper vs. Chopper." Two helicopters going head-to-head? Not quite. Think outside the box -- this mode pits an attack helicopter against another type of chopper, a motorcycle. 

"Chopper vs. Chopper" is a one-on-one affair, with the lone biker trying to hit check points while outmanuevering the chopper and its rain of bullets. The idea here is for the biker to hit as many check points as possible during an allotted time. Once the biker is killed (either by the bullets or a low-flying choppers blades), the round ends, and roles are reversed. The winner is whoever has the points cash (or points) at the game's end. 

Now would be a good time to note that motorcycle controls have been tweaked and tuned for The Lost and Damned. They feel tighter, a bit more responsive; in short, they're a bit easier to control. The logic is this: Niko Bellic isn't the Vice President of a biker's gang; Johnny Klebitz is. It's sound logic, and it translates to gameplay making riding the motorcycle more pleasurable, less-frustrating experience than it might have been for some in GTA IV. It's easier to weave in and out of traffic, every turn doesn't result in a wreck. While it's not the case that evading the gunfire of the attack copter was "easy," it certainly felt more natural navigating the streets of Liberty City.

Fans of Electronic Arts' missing-in-action series Road Rash will be thrilled to know it makes a spirtual return in The Lost and Damned. The 16-player "Race" mode has been tweaked to fit nicely into the game's narrative -- racers can perform billy club attacks on bikers aside them, using a combination of light and heavy melee attacks. There are buttons assigned to both right and left attacks; to perform a heavy attack, you hold and charge the button, releasing the unleashed your club of doom.

Each biker has his or her own health meter, so multiple bashes are necessary to take them out. In our races, we didn't see any particularly violent take-downs -- the animations are essentially identical when you compare them to the usual act of falling of the bike. Still, it was satisfying to ride up alongside a racer who you just knew was about to take a spill, slamming the club into their side and watching them tumble over.

"Lone Wolf Biker" is a new mode that's essentially a variation on the classic "king of the hill" formula. One of up to 16 bikers is "it," with 15 others doing whatever they can to take out this lone rider. By taking out this biker, the tag of Lone Wolf Biker is transferred to the person who made the kill, and the cycle begins again. The match is timed, and whoever racks up the longest solo ride is deemed the winner at the end of the round.

There are a few new team-based modes added to The Lost and Damned as well. One, "Witness Protection" is a variation of the "Cops N' Crooks" mode found in GTA IV. In this mode, one team (as The N.O.O.S.E.) must deliver three states witnesses inside of an armored bus to checkpoints around Liberty City. The other team, as the Lost, must do everything they can do stop them.

To win the mode, the Lost must take out the bus or the three witnesses; alternately, if the N.O.O.S.E. makes all their deliveries, it's game over. It's possible, but tough, to take out witnesses from the windows of the armored bus. But the easiest, and more effective way, is to track the bus to the drop off location, and snipe them when they hop out of the van to get to safety. While it's possible to track the progress of the bus, there's no way to know where the drop off points are. Because of this, the game of cat-and-mouse is completely unpredictable and, like "Cops N' Crooks" in GTA IV, is sure to lead to some wild chases.

The final mode we played at Rockstar's New York office was "Own the City," by far the most complicated of all of the modes. "Own the City" is based on owning territories, marked by numbers on the map. One gang, The Lost, vies for control of the areas against their rivals, The Angels of Death. Each territory is guarded by A.I.-controller characters, and taking them and any rival team members in that area out gives you control.

We played three rounds of "Own the City," and it took almost all three to get a hang on what was happening. To confuse things even further, there's a "Gun Van" that can be hijacked and then driven near your teammates to give them fresh weapons and upgrades. The idea doesn't sound complicated, but in practice it's hard to immediately get a hold on what's going on. The Rockstar team already knew the areas and knew the rules, giving them an advantage, and leaving us scratching our heads for the first few games. Repeated plays will surely sort that out, but the learning curve -- compared to some of the other modes -- may be a hurdle for some.

In addition to the basic modes which return (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Free Mode), there's one last mode which we didn't get a chance to play: Club Business. This mode is best described by Rockstar, straight from their official fact sheet:

A competitive mode where all players take the role of a member of The Lost. Angus will call with tasks that must be completed to gain favor within the gang, once you've completed enough tasks, you become the club leader. In the team-based version, you can gain money for your club by riding in formation.

Rockstar is taking the downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV seriously, clear by the length of this preview, which only focuses on the multiplayer aspects of the game. For those worried about how far your $19.99 will go, worry no more. If you've thoroughly exhausted your relationship with GTA IV's Niko Bellic, prepare to make room in your life for Jonnhy Klebitz when The Lost and Damned ships next week, exclusively for the Xbox 360.