Released: October 14th, 2008
Developer: Volition Inc
Publisher: THQ
Genre: Sandbox Action-Adventure
Saints Row 2 picks up where the first one left off. The Protagonist has been put into a coma from an explosion. It doesn't really go into how or why or what happened during the 1st game. It never clearly explains, and I won't tell you either. Why? Because it doesn't matter. Saints Row 2 can be fully played and understood without the need of playing the previous game. In fact, I think only 2 characters return.
Before you get to play, you're immediately hit with one of the major perks of the game. Customization. The nurse is unwraps your head bandages and the game let's you fully customize your character. You can customize just about everything. The game let's you have pre-selected options along with a precise builder. You could just pick "Athletic" or you could go in and mess with the muscle and fat yourself. The same thing applies to the face; you could turn yourself into an alien if you wanted. Hair style, hair color(s), beard, mustache, voice, walk style, taunt, compliment, make-up, and everything in-between. You could make a replica of The Joker, or make a man with boobs, a girly voice, and a beard who can do the Smooth Criminal dance as a taunt with a look of anguish on his face.
You escape the prison with Carlos, whose brother was a member of The 3rd Street Saints in the previous game. Once you're on the mainland, you're free to do anything. Feel like grabbing a beer instead of starting getting some clothes? You can do that. Feel like immediately starting a rampage with your pistol instead of robbing a bank? You can do that. Everything is open to you to do. You might not realize how much you can do until you actually begin a mission.
The first missions are pretty simple. You go around recruiting gang members and busting Johnny Gat out of prison. Together, The Protagonist and Gat reform the 3rd Street Saints and start planning to take out the other major rival gangs. There are 3 major rival gangs. You can freely select whatever gang you want to destroy first, or attempt to do multiple ones at one time. Either way, you will be meeting lots of interesting characters along the way. I know it's hard to believe that you will get attached to them in such a crazy game, but it's true. You even get connected to your character. Although you don't name them or control what they do during cinematic, they are yours. You designed them. and you will love them. Each character (even your own) is memorable and fun to interact with.
On your way to gang superiority, you do all kinds of shit to take down the other gangs. One mission requires you to dress up like a repair man and cover your buddy while they hack into the police's cameras. Another mission makes you travel to the nuclear power plant to get some radio-active crap and then sneak it over to an enemy gang. Speaking of gangs, each one is completely different from the other. The Saints are purple wearing bastards who are free to customize. You can pick out their clothes, gang signs, tags, and cars they drive. You're stuck with the color purple though. The Ronin drive high-tech cars, love the color yellow, and like samurai swords. The Brotherhood love red, are tattooed, and have a thing for hulking cars. The Sons of Samedi have shitty cars, love the color green, and just sit around smoking pot all day. On the street, you can easily identify who is who. It's also fun to run around with one of your gang members, then he compliments you in a ninja outfit by doing the jig.
Saints Row 2 isn't a very story-driven game. Sure it has it's moments, but it shines in the pure fun factor. Aside from the missions, you can engage in activities. Doing activities unlock special surprises (like a car delivery service) and earns you respect. The more respect you have, the more of the main story you can do. Respect can be earned by tagging other rival gang's tags, killing enemy gang members, or doing crazy stunts (like driving in the wrong side of the street). Actives don't tie in at all. Anyway, actives can also range from trying to injure yourself the most to driving a client around while he screws random people in the back seat. If that wasn't enough, you also have distractions. These things occur in-game without need of respect. All you do is hit a button when it shows up when you're doing something. Say you stole a car and the passengers are still in. You can hold them hostage. You dive off a plane and are plummeting to the ground. Hit the button to parachute, then try to land in a certain spot for extra cash.
Cash is everything. By doing missions, you earn neighborhoods. With teach neighborhood, you earn more cash a day. Then it gets crazy. You can go and "buy" stores in your neighborhood to generate more cash. Rival gangs can attack neighborhoods. When one is under attack, cash flow stops. The gang can never take it back, but it can spread to nearby neighborhoods and stop more cash flow. Unless you go in and shoot all the lieutenants. With cash, you can go crazy at stores. There are several branches of clothing stores, liquor stores, plastic surgeons (to change appearance), food joints, car dealerships, and cribs. Buying and customizing a crib gives you style points. Style points are earned by dressing up or customizing cribs. There are many types of cribs. Some on top floors of hotels, some are connected to a store, and some are just a dock with nothing. Each crib (or most) has a weapon stash, a place to withdraw money from, a place to view cinematics, a garage to store vehicles, and much more. There is also a mini-game to play that's oodles of fun. It's called Zombie Uprising; you kill zombies. People will populate your crib and get the radio jamming.
The vehicles are a major part of the game. You can hijack cars, then add them to your garage, and have a nice collection. The same applies to airplanes, boats, and helicopters. While you do story missions, you will unlock homies to call on your phone to assist you. They will drive up and gladly help you out on anything you're doing. Escort NPC's will get in your car, will shoot anything you do, hop out if you do, and generally be smart. There is a radio system (same as GTA) implanted in. Each station plays a different genre of music. You can also find tracks by collecting CD's or just buying them. Then you can add the music to "My Radio" and listen to that instead while driving. There isn't too many different genres, but enough to satisfy people. Sometimes your character will sing-a-long as well.
Then of course if you're bored, you can just go around shooting cops and people. There are many weapons for you to carry. You can go with fists (and different melee fighting styles), a melee weapon, pistol, machine gun, shotgun, special, RPG, then grenade. You also have a slot to hold food and booze to consume. Ammo and food can be bought or found off bodies. Shooting cops or running into them increases your crime by stars. I'm pretty sure everybody knows that system from GTA. There is also another "star" system for gangs. It works the same way.
The combat is simple. Select a weapon, and shoot. There is also a fine aiming mode, but it isn't very useful. Each weapons lets you either shoot or swing it melee style. You can also pick up objects from the ground to use. TV's, fire-hydrants, stop signs, and just about anything can be used. Certain vehicles have weapons attached to them as well. Health can be replenished by eating or drinking. It has both a life bar and a regen system. Duck behind cover when you're low on health, and you'll be fine.
Speaking of weapons and violence, fans of Red Faction will get an extra kick out of the game. In Saints Row, there was a clothing company by the name of Ultor. Now, they are a mega-corporation and a huge part of the game. Red Faction hints and dropped everywhere. At one point, your character even tells Ultor that he doesn't care if they go to Mars. The Red Faction logo (along with other crazy logos) can be put on clothes.
There is tons to do in Saints Row 2. You should never ever be bored unless you're a type who hates Sandbox games. The fun factor in this game is gigantic. A lot of people score the game badly because of "technical issues and bad a.i." Why does it have to be so realistic? Ok yes, it is neat to see NPC's get into car accidents and other gangs robbing stores and such. However, part of the humor is just the general silliness. Cop cars will slam into each other, other cars will slam into you and get your car stuck 90 degrees on a rail causing you to abandon it because it's stuck. They will run into walls, miss shooting people, or get their cars stuck into the floor wall. And if you're lonely, just hop online to play co-op with another player. It's a very organized system and there is usually people on to play with. You can either co-op missions together or engage in competitive maps.
This goes along with the other oddities and random comments from NPC's. They will say silly things. For example, one went, "I'm so angry, I'm going to go home and take it out on my kids!" while walking down the street. Mixed along with that, the game has so much replay value. You can spent 20 hours just fucking around with barely any missions done. I once just decided to screw around town. Walking into people causes your character to "push" it out of the way. One started talking to my character and saying how awesome I was for conquering the Brotherhood. I began to walk into him. I pushed him up some stairs and almost to my crib. He eventually got madder and madder, then attacked me. I grabbed him, used him as a human shield, ran into my crib, then threw him into a jacuzzi, and stepped on his head. I then began to throw the strippers in my crib into the pool as well. After the bodies began to disappear, I shot some strippers in the foot so I could watch my homie (who was a zombie) just go and punch them to death.
The rag-dolling is hilarious. Abandoning your character and diving out just sends the characters into a twist of limbs. It's always a joy to crash and get sent flying out of the windshield. The seriousness is easily taken out of the game. It's very hard to not laugh when your gang's crib is under attack, and in the cinematic your character is killing people and acting gangsta' while wearing assless pants and a bra. Oh, and just an extra tidbit, Saints Row 2 has in-game cheats. Fun cheats as well.
Despite it's amazing funess, Saints Row 2 has a bunch of very small problems which quickly stack. First off, the map is confusing. Stilwater City is divided by 2 land masses and 2 islands. To start a mission, you go to the icon and hit a button to start it. Where, were the fuck do I go? There are so many little icons over the map, it's difficult to tell where to go next. Even if you have the map to "show missions only" it still strains your eyes hunting for it.
Sometimes the missions feel like they have to be fucking impossible. The game is normally nice with checkpoints, but others times, they just seem to have vanished. It quickly gets frustrating when it suddenly turns unfair. There is a mission where you must protect a limo from a bunch of attackers. In every single other protect mission, it isn't that unfair. You can only use a machine gun and have to shoot off like 3 cars at once while they ram the limo. It's fragile and takes a lot of damage quickly. It's not fun. Other times, you get rammed at the last second and end up losing. It's a part of the gameplay, but it can suck the fun out of it for a minute. It's frustrating spending 20 minutes shooting guys, trying carefully to not get killed, then go on a chase, then some stupid civilian makes a turn, knocks you off, and you lose the mission and have to start all over. These missions are few though, but very frustrating.
If you download the DLC's (I know, I'm anti-DLC but it wasn't my choice) expect a problem. There are so many damn Ultor icons all over the map. It's impossible to tell which one will lead you to the basic Saints Row 2 missions, and which ones will lead you to the DLC content. It's just a wild guessing game. It really would've made it easier to had a different icon. On top of that, the GPS system in Saints Row 2 likes to screw you up. Selecting an icon on the map will allow your mini-map to tell you where to go. Sometimes it winds and curls all around a plce that is right by you. Or it will just point to...nothing. Other times it won't show up, and little things like that. It doesn't happen all the time, but the times it does happen it's annoying.
There is a small bug too, but it's rare to come by. I was playing and had to slay a bunch of Ronin in a graveyard. Well, I kept dying and dying and dying, and finally a flaming car ran over me and my buddy. We both got trapped in a grave, on fire, and died. I spawned again...in the grave, caught on fire, both me and my homie died. I have no idea why I kept spawning in a fiery grave instead of the usual spot. It's funny now that I think of it, but then it wasn't. I had to quit the mission and re-start it.
Sometimes the character himself gets stupid. You run up to a car, and he won't get in. Or an invisible wall will make you crash your vehicle out of nowhere. Some of the more important buildings (like the mall, and certain night clubs) are not iconed. There is no way to discover them unless you do it by accident or look it up. Tiny, tiny things like that bring the score down. It's fine game, but the small bugs can be agonizing instead of funny. The cheats will sometimes not work, another invisible wall will get in the way of your rocket, your arms will be above the wall and yet when you fire it hits the wall, ect, ect.
This is definitely a must have game for the PS3, 360, and even PC. The amount of things to do and simple fun you can have is amazing. The only bad part is that it tends to come with a small price.
+ Memorable characters
+ You care for your own character
+ Tons to do
+ Pure, simple, fun
+ Online Co-Op
+ Customizable everything
+ Most of the system work (crib, homie, ect)
+ Doesn't take itself seriously
- GPS can be a mess
- Icon confusion/missing
- Invisible walls
- Difficultly randomly scales on certain missions
- Other tiny problems that add up
Saints Row 2 gets a 4.1 for all 3 platforms.
"This or Grand Theft Auto 4?"
I don't know; I'm not you. It depends on the person. Personally, I prefer Saints Row. I've never actually played GTA 4. When I talked about it last, I judged it based on gameplay footage and the previous games I've played. That might seem unfair, but I did assume Saints Row 2 would be better when I hadn't played it or the first one at all. (and I still think GTA 4, or even this game, deserves a perfect score) Just rent them, watch footage, judge for yourself. If you like GTA 4 more than this, then so be it.
