With Liars and Cheats Rockstar entices you back into the prairie with promises of new game modes and the inclusion of more single player activities available in multiplayer. But is it enough entice back wayward players still chafing about riding a donkey?

Red Dead Redemption was perhaps my favourite game of the year. I rode dusty trails, shot down fearsome beasts, battled bandits and, on occasion, dragged nuns behind my horse on a lasso until a train ran over them. I and many others enjoyed every moment of the single player campaign.

Note several single player models sitting down to play cards together, all amicable like

Multiplayer, however, was an acquired taste and too many didn’t take the time to squeeze the most out of it. Fair enough having your donkey shot out from underneath you on a consistent basis in free roam mode was enough to put most people of the game. To really get the most out of multiplayer you needed a good group of friends to posse up with and enough time dedicated to level up and get the most out of the game online. Free roaming was really where the fun was at but the whole experience was hamstrung by several of the more enjoyable minigames from the main campaign being absent.

And I say I have the oilest beard, and your shoulder thingees are pretty fruity

One of the best things the Liars and Cheats expansion offers to players is the inclusion of horse racing and table gaming. Much like the car racing from GTA, the racing in RDR is spiced up with the inclusion of pistols, the catch being that firing of a round slows down your horse as you need to release the reins so a bit more strategy is involved over mindlessly blowing away the competition. While it can be an exciting, nail biter of a game mode, horse racing is hamstrung by simply not having enough people playing it, its hard to get a game going.

Strip gazebo poker wasn't as much fun with one girl and five ugly guys, that's what they mean when they say 'back when times were tough;

On the other hand its usually pretty easy to find a game of cards or liars dice searching for a pick up group in matchmaking. It's certainly not a professional poker game experience and doesn't have as many options as a Poker game of say, Live Arcade, but there's something enjoyable about the fact you can switch to a deathmatch mode right after poker or liars dice and shoot the faces of the people who robbed you blind. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, it adds to the atmosphere of the game online and makes it feel even more like the single player game, just with other people riding around, than free roam all ready did.

Stronghold is the new gametype. A three part capture the flag that requires one team to attack and one to defend at three sequential and increasingly more difficult to assault locations in one of the towns or locales on the Red Dead map. It's a fun game type but you can't help but wonder why it was left out in the first place. Likewise the inclusion of single player characters as multiplayer skins feels like the sort of the thing that should have been on the disc out of the box. The dynamite rifle is good fun when you first find it, but it doesn't come across as much more than another weapon, it does open some new explosive challenges for the completionist minded.

If you're lucky enough to have a dedicated posse you can call on each Friday to ride with then Liars and Cheats is a worthwhile investment for you and your friends. But if you're unfamiliar with Red Dead's multiplayer you might feel a bit stiffed laying out $10 for what amounts to a couple of extra game modes, especially when you can get so much more in the Undead Nightmare Pack for the same price. Liars and Cheats is strictly for enthusiasts but the content doesn't quite meet the cost for casual for players.