Saints Row 2
by THQ
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Video Game Reviews of Saints Row 2
Customer Review: Outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're a GTA fan, you have got to get this game. It will truly give the GTA series a run for their money. Better weapons, better cars, and with the missions and customization of your person, you can't lose!Customer Review: Think San Andreas on Steroids and you will come away with Saint's Row 2!
Summary: 5 Stars
Okay, let me preface this review with the fact that I have been a died-in-the-wool GTA fanboy since GTA III first graced the gaming scene and literally changed the way the world previously thought about gaming. GTA was the pinnacle of the sandbox genre where you were thrust penniless and friendless into the open cesspool of a major urban jungle, or more accurately, a jaded, cynical, and extremely comical metropolis. The series has always led with humor and about the most outlandish, over the top, unbelievably unrealistic gameplay you can imagine. Yet, with the "living breathing city" that Rockstar imbued their sandbox with, the games actually managed to feel somehow more real even with the seemingly contradictory lack of realism.
Fast forward to 2008, and Rockstar decided to make GTA an exercise in pomposity with GTA IV, a game that actually has the audacity to preach to you. Gone are the days of rags to riches, now replaced with the boring snoozer of a "rags to better rags" metaphor. Where GTA used to be all about light hearted and zany fun coupled with riotous guffaws of laughter, thanks to GTA IV, it is now an exercise in excruciating mind-numbing tedium intermingled with a lugubrious sense of realism. The game has the impudence to almost scream "crime doesn't pay" at you every time you saddle up and drive this so called "Euphoria Engine" nightmare. The story is so agonizingly depressing that I really believe the game would have been better off euthanizing Niko, the main character, about halfway through the story. The whole affair is like a Greek tragedy without the poignant writing. Near the end you are presented with two choices which branch off the storyline. Clever idea, except that either choice punishes you with a morbidly depressing outcome that all plays out like poorly enacted production of a Euripides play.
Right about now you are likely scratching your head in wonderment as to why I am reviewing GTA IV. I can assure you, I'm not. I wanted to set up the prelude for my Saint's Row 2 review. If I had to boil down my review of this game to one sentence, I would say that "Saint's Row 2 is everything that GTA IV could have been, should have been, but sadly wasn't!"
Where the sandbox in GTA IV was made out of an amalgam of steel and and titanium in its utter constriction, the one created by Volition for SR2 is made out of the golden sandy goodness of utter fun. It is riotous, exciting, diverse, engaging, immersive, and often gut wrenchingly fast paced. The guy below me put it aptly when he said that "Saint's Row 2 is the Anti-GTA IV" because Saint's Row is what happens when you get a bunch of programmers together who like to laugh until they cry and spend their nights dreaming of absurdly stupid and insanely fun ideas to make their game soar to the stratosphere with raw unadulterated fun. While GTA IV is what happens when you decide to condescend to your fans and deign to inform them, through your game, that realism is the new fun.
It isn't, not even close. Again, the reason for the constant references to GTA IV is because SR and GTA IV are the first true sandbox games of this generation, and truly they are the antithesis of one another. Where GTA IV puts you behind the wheel of cars that are absurdly tedious and laborious to steal, ridiculously slow to accelerate, and that slip all over the road as if the entire landscape had a sheet of ice covering it, Saint's Row 2 vehicles are easy to steal, handle like they are on rails, turn beautifully, and can be completely customized. One of the marvels of the Saint's Row universe is that because the customizing is so incredibly diverse, you can see the same exact car ten times and it will look so different that until you really get to know the game they will look like en different cars!
While the main character from GTA IV is a slow moving, horrifically heavy, plodding guy who walks and runs (if you can even call it running) like his clothing is made of led, your Saint's Row 2 character's movements are fluid, smooth, organic, and again, fun. Speaking of the main character, in SR2 you can now COMPLETELY customize your character right from the beginning of the game and change him or her at will. That's right all you feminists out there who wanted to get in on the fun. You can play as a girl. Let me just state something categorically: I have never, and I mean NEVER, been a fan of customizing. I used the first default character and profile in every game I played, spending MAYBE the obligatory two minutes with a few superfluous tweaks, and off I went into the game. Well, the first time I played SR2 I spent no less than an hour customizing my character before starting the first mission. You would not believe the variety you are presented with. It is almost overwhelming. I chose a girl and quite a little hottie I might add. Hell, she's a lot easier on the eyes than Niko's big, hairy, slavic butt. You can change everything from body type, hair style, voice, hair color, a plethora of skin tones, make up if you like, and on and on. I managed to get myself a stunning little cutie and dressed her like a total slutty sex kitten. Nice! You can also purchase and unlock a plethora of clothing and jewelry items, some of which will have you rolling on the floor laughing in their absolute absurdity.
While we are on the subject of the character, this is another area where SR2 shines, people's faces. One of the problems with GTA IV is that all the faces of the people, both main characters, bosses, and side characters all have pushed in faces that look like a cross between a pit bull and a pancake. Not so in SR2. The women in this game are pixelated honey's! If you want to have some serious eye candy to look at, then you are going to love the faces and bodies of the women of Saint's Row 2. Now, this is not to say that SR2 has better graphics overall than GTA IV. It doesn't. GTA IV, because of its rather right wing fundamentalist realism, and its lackluster "crime doesn't pay" fortune cookie wisdom, naturally has as its primary boast, some pretty incredible graphics and visuals.
Volition, on the other hand, decided to lay back on the graphics (perhaps just a little too much) and concentrate on packing this title with some absolutely awe-inspiring gameplay. Instead of just the run-of-the-mill "drive here, pick up character A, shoot some people, drive him or her to point B, pick up character B, shoot some more people, fall asleep, and then drop off your AI partners," SR2 brings a palpably fresh perspective to the table. In addition to the normal sandbox GTA'esue missions like the ones I listed above, you can hijack a sewage truck and you must squirt liquid feces all over the buildings (AND THE PEOPLE!!!) and deface public property, causing enough monetary damage to pass the level and discredit the local politician who your would-be boss has targeted. Then there is Insurance Fraud, which rewards you for racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in bone breaking damage to yourself, all accompanied with ghastly bone crunching sound effects as you chain together your rather bizarre stunts. You begin a chain by throwing yourself in front of a moving car or truck and are rewarded with more and more dollars, stringing your damage combos together, based on how long you can keep the damage meter going without timing your combo out. If that sounds like fun it is because it is.
Are you feeling a little stressed and want to cause uncountable damage to people and property? Then go to the Nuclear Island (yes there is a Nuclear Island complete with those cool looking giant steam cylinder generator things!) walk into the "Mayhem" activity and you will be given a damage goal and a time in which to achieve it. You also have a combo meter which keeps going up as long as it doesn't time out or you don't take any damage. This is made even more fun by the absolute plethora of breakable items in the environment that keep on adding to your damage total. You can work for local mob bosses who give you hitman contracts, which you can choose to put on your HUD while searching for your targets. Each "client" has a particular area where they like to hang out and the game sort of hints you toward. Another area where GTA IV failed is in its almost painful lack of viable rewards for the maddeningly boring tasks the game asks you to perform. So unlike the thankless tedium of GTA IV, Saint's Row 2 rewards you with a lavish array of uncountable weaponry, infinite ammo, wild and pimped out vehicles, tons of money, and a slew of other unlockable items. This truly is San Andreas on steroids, because SA was famous for its awesome rewards and devilishly wild variety of gameplay crossing into every single genre you can imagine. Saint's Row 2 takes what San Andreas did best up yet another notch. The game also features three difficulty levels, but I found that Hardrcore, the highest, worked fine for me. Another absolutely beautiful addition to this game is co-op. The way Volition created this game you can go online or just link two consoles together in your home and play through everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, with a partner in co-op mode. Get your USB headsets ready, folks, because I can assure you that this is a blast. Having trouble getting through Level 6 on "Mayhem" because you cannot damage enough property? Just saddle up with a partner and do it together. Best of all, BOTH OF YOU get full credit for the completed activity as well as whatever unlockable reward the activity, diversion, or career mission happens to open.
So with all of these virtues, what are the flaws of Saint's Row 2? Well, for starters, the game is inexcusably glitchy, prone to random freezes now and again. It isn't as bad as some games, but to be quite honest, it is quite annoying, Thankfully the autosave feature will have your progress backing up far more often than you would remember to do manually, so at least on the occasion your game does freeze, you won't lose a whole lot of progress Hint: KEEP THE AUTOSAVE ON!! The pop-in's are annoying, to be sure, and should NOT be a part of a true next gen title like this. By pop-in's, I mean those annoying times when you are driving down the road and the system doesn't draw it completely, and sometimes you don't see certain structures until you are right on top of them or crash into them. Again, this is not something you expect to see on consoles as powerful as the PS3 and the 360, and it is NOT as bad as it could be. In all honesty, it doesn't really get in the way of the game, but it is definitely a chink in the proverbial armor. One other issue is that the PS3 version does not have Trophies. Now, while I am not exactly a Trophy whore, Trophies on the PS3 and Achievements on the 360 are definitely a nice addition to the gameplay. So if you have both consoles and are into Achievements/Trophies, I suggest you consider the 360 version since it does have the Achievements. There is speculation on a Trophies DLC pack in the future, but Volition is quite tight-lipped about this. So, a bird in the hand is worth...well you know. I have the PS3 version and I do not feel cheated, just so you know. A minor niggle I have with the game is definitely nit-picky, but here goes anyway: There is no reward for 100% completion! Seriously. Given the insane variety of rewards for everything from spitting on the sidewalk to accumulating tricks with your vehicles in this game, one is left puzzled as to why you get literally NOTHING for achieving 100% completion. The truth is that if the game were not so shamelessly generous with rewards and unlockables this might be a bigger problem. As it is now it's more of a cute little idiosyncrasy that makes me believe that Volition was so busy stuffing rewards into this game that they simply forgot about 100% completion. Oh well, trust me, you won't miss it too much. It's just a tad little anticlimactic is all. The next weakness of the game, and this is somewhat more serious, is the lack of humor and variety on the radio stations. Now this was truly puzzling to me, because the in-game dialog during missions and cut-scenes is well written, top notch, and often funny as hell. This leads me to believe that Volition absolutely has the ability to write excellent comedy, only they made it a conspicuously sparse on the radio stations. Oh sure, there are some funny commercials, DJ bits, and other radio witticisms, just not nearly enough for my taste. I should mention at this time that the actual music on the various radio stations was damned good. You really get the feel and variety of the panorama of a big city's musical and cultural diversity from the stations. Even genre's of music I normally never listen to, like Rap, Hip hop, and dance, were quite enjoyable in this game.
In closing, I know this game is six months old, but I HIGHLY recommend it. The replay value alone is fabulous.
Customer Review: For adults only...
Summary: 5 Stars
I think the game is one of the best games for the 360. It's fun, crass and full of violence... It's definately not for a 3rd grader or ultra sensitive soccer mom. The co-op mode is a blast(2 player co-op only). It allows you and a friend to play the missions and side activities.
If you don't want to do that you can just run around exploring the city. Along the way you can shop, steal cars(and customize them), and fight with rival gangs or cops. Through out the game you are allowed to customize yourself, your cars, your houses, even your gang(I chose gangsta style and gave them sweet sports cars to drive)
As you gain control of the city your gang grows in power and you have even more options. You befriend several people and they will help you out. You can call your 'Homies'. They include the gangs high ranking members as well a few others...
After you take over the city in Singleplayer/Co-op.You can take the fight online in multiplayer competition. You can either play deathmatch(FFA or Team) or strongarm(Completing objectives)Party up with your friends and meet new people online. I'm impressed by the online community. Alot of them are nice people. There's alot less annoying kids and trashtalking than alot of online games.
I've had two problems out of Saints Row 2.The first that it has locked up a few time in co-op.(I save often for that reason). The second is that people frequently get 'lagged out' of online game resulting in uneven teams.
Other than that it's a great game. It's crass. It's satirical. It has a great cast of characters. If you were dissappointed with GTA IV don't let that influence your decision on Saints row 2.They are worlds apart.
Customer Review: STRIPPERS!!!!!!!!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
the shooting is God Aweful, the missions are Boring, and some of the smaller cars handle like Complete Garbage :) the graphics were alot better on the First Saints Row =/ and the game was just put together Terribly, period. should have never been released..
..but the Customization is Awesome :) the Trucks and Bikes handle really well...and are a pleasure to modify to your liking at the mechanic shops...and you can save over 10 automobiles in your garage. the side missions alone will keep you busy for a long time..but this game also has...STRIPPERS :D any game with Strippers is Alright With Me :) i liked a few of the songs in the game as well...and was glad you could Customize which songs you wanted to hear. i spend all my time customizing jacked vehicles and riding around listening to my selected tracks, it really feels like real life. and i LOVE going to the strip club :) i hated this game at first but its really growing on me because its so Fun to just pick up and immerse yourself in it...and you dont even have to Shoot anyone for it to be Fun...
overall, this game is Great Fun, a Lot more fun than GTA4's Single Player. dont take it so Serious...as it was ment to be a wacky, corny game filled with Fun :) and no casual gamer should miss out on atleast renting it.
iLL .
Customer Review: Coop done right!
Summary: 5 Stars
While Rockstar has been exploring `relationships' through Video Games, Volition has quietly caught up and perhaps surpassed the GTA series with the latest installment of Saint's Row 2. I'm sure the purist won't appreciate the humor within the Row, but quit simply this game is fun and it replaces tediousness with all the elements that originally made the GTA series so great. It has Jumps, Side Activities, Story Missions, Cribs (aka safe houses), building purchases and a whole lot more.
For years I have been hoping the game companies would grow up with the rest of us in regards to multiplayer. Frag fests are fun with the right group, however when you want to tool around with a buddy or spend time gaming with the wife it just doesn't cut it.
Thank you Volition! You've joined the ranks of Rockband and Left4Dead in providing us with a game that can be played as designed together. 80% of my time playing Saint's Row 2 has been riding shotgun with a buddy of mine and it's so much more fun than going at it alone.
With the complexity building an entire game supporting multiplayer there are some glitches and bugs. Honestly in the 20 hours of playing with my buddy, I've been extremely happy at how few bugs we have encountered. Yet they do exist and a few of them can be quite frustrating when it prevents completing a mission.
Bugs aside this game is a perfect addition to your collection. Especially if your looking for a sandbox game that you can explore and spend hours laughing with or at your best bud.