Thoughts of a Random Gamer

Background

I played and loved the first Saint’s Row.  It wasn’t perfect but it still represented the first real sandbox/open-world game to hit the current generation of consoles.  Think of it as first time you had sex.  It was fun, but in hindsight you realize it could have been much much better.  Saint’s Row was fairly limited in terms of vehicles and map size, at least when compared to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  You had cars and cars alone, and the map spanned one city: Stilwater.

Saint’s Row 2 adds to the core game play mechanics with several welcome improvements.  You’re no longer limited to cars.  There are airplanes, boats, jet skis, motorcycles, mopeds, helicopters, and four wheelers.  The old activities are back with several additions.  The driving has been tightened, the map is about the same size but has more depth(literally) and height, and character customization extends to voice, presence, and sex.  It’s a definite improvement/progression, but with this improvement comes minimal sacrifice.

The Story

The story is the weakest part of the game.  It’s pretty bland compared to others in the genre.  It’s the Corn Flakes in Frosted Flakes.  Your character is in a coma after the near fatal explosion concluding Saint’s Row.  You wake up to find the glory of the Saints diminished.  Several of your former gang members have either gone missing or have left the life of crime.  Stilwater has changed drastically even though the map feels very familiar.  The neighborhoods are the same, but few things are in the same location.

The story is weak but the cut scenes are entertaining.  You character is a violent sociopath killing with comical abandon.  Johnny Gat has made a much appreciated return.  I fucking love Johnny Gat.  He talks like people I know and complements your character very well through his actions in the cut scenes.  His moments are priceless.  Other characters return but none are as memorable to me as Johnny Gat.

You free Gat during sentencing for a lengthy list of murder charges only to find Stilwater has been taken over by Ultor.  Ultor is the evil empire we all know from everyday life.  They claim to have the people’s best interest at heart but are actually more concerned with money and power.  Under the loose supervision of Ultor are three gangs.  It’s fairly typical that each gang fills a criminal niche.

The Brotherhood are white trash in control of arms and cars, the Ronin are Japanese and handle illegal gambling, and the Sons of Samedi are Jamaicans (I think) who provide drugs.  Each gang’s story progression is mutually exclusive in that you don’t have to have a certain amount completed in one to continue another.  Though I generalize the ethnicity of each gang, they’re made up of all the colors of the rainbow when you’re killing legions of them.

Other than their backgrounds and leaders, each gang has the same story.  You start out by stealing something from them or blowing something of theirs up.  The gang gets pissed and retaliates.  You do some activities to earn enough respect to continue and each concludes with killing a lieutenant or two before killing the leader.  After each mission and stronghold you control a new neighborhood of Stilwater.  This means you find more of your gang members in that part of town and you get a little more money in your stash every day.  After you defeat each gang you move on to Ultor.

The Good

In general you’re gang is more intelligent.  Say you have three people following you and you get into a two passenger car, if you wait a second, the other two will steal a car and follow you.  You can also slightly customize the look of your gang and what vehicles they drive.  One of the options is to have them dressed like ninjas.  Having three ninjas following you as you raise hell is pretty bad ass.  Not to mention it’s hilarious to see ninjas roaming the streets or cruising in station wagons.

There are several additional customization options.  Each crib has an option for a stripper pole.  Once you buy a pole some delightfully nasty strippers start walking around your cribs; you can practically smell the cigarette smoke and troubled childhoods.  You can easily change your character’s appearance and once you mod a car it instantly gets added to you garage.  For a time my character looked like a leprechaun with a British accent, even driving a green Hammerhead convertible.  These aren’t new additions but are still appreciated nonetheless.

They’ve added action scoring which grades you on how well you play the game, while you’re playing it.  I found myself dying in heated gun battles because I was trying to get three gold headshot or nut shot or multi kill stars.  I’d also weave in and out of traffic trying to get more oncoming lane and near miss stars.

There are more vehicles and things to do in general.  I found I could put hours on end into Saint’s Row 2 only pausing it to eat or change my adult disposable under garment and not notice how long I’d been playing.  It’s a lot of fun and there are enough customization options to make your character feel like yours and not just the same character in everybody else’s game.  I look forward to a Saint’s Row 3, if there is one.

The Bad

Though Saint’s Row 2 is bigger and better than the first, there is still a ways to go.  The map is an adequate size but it is by no means as large as I want.  I understand simply changing the map from the first game to hasten the development cycle and capture the Playstation 3 install base before they forgot what Saint’s Row even was.  Stilwater is an island and they need to either expand the borders of the island Dubai-style, or create neighboring islands.  In its current state, Saint’s Row 2 is at most a 70 hour game but it could be more if there were several more miles worth of map to place activities and missions on.

The crib and store spacing isn’t quite right.  Frankly, there just aren’t enough cribs.  You start out with a hideout and a crib.  You can buy several more cribs and garages but even if you buy them all, it still feels very limited.  I found myself driving too far just to pick up the money from my stash, only to turn around and drive back across the map to the gun shop or mechanic I ran out of money at.

There are two parts of the Ronin missions that require you fight with a sword.  Due to characterization, I figured my guy would get all Indiana Jones and shoot the first fucker to come at him brandishing a sword.  Regardless, you can only hurt the boss in these missions by countering his attacks.  You can run away at any time and restore your health but I felt these sections of the game were needlessly dull.

Though your gang is smarter they’re still pretty fucking retarded.  I’d bail out of a helicopter and they would all go down with it.  If I jumped over a wall, it’s anybody’s guess if they would too.  I got so pissed at them for not following me properly that I killed every motherfucker wearing purple in the neighborhood… they still didn’t learn.  If you’re in a gun battle you bet your ass you’re going to have to stop and save each of them at least once.

The graphics are slightly stylized and lean more to the cartoony side instead of gritty realism, which is fine.  I’d figure with the graphics being simple, they’d clean up what’s there.  They did mostly, but my character’s knuckles bleed through the bill on the side of his fedora when he’s talking on the phone.  It’s a little thing but still nagged me no less.

The Ugly

A major problem I had with the first Saint’s Row was background popping.  I’d be driving on the freeway and all of a sudden the background would disappear and reappear.  Sometimes the car would disappear and not reappear showing me floating along like Wonder Woman.  Safe to say they fixed that bug, but have introduced a few others.  The game isn’t unplayable by any means but it does offer momentary frustrations.  It’s hard to say how much better or worse it would have been if I didn’t install it on my hard drive.

Regardless, I noticed when on a jet ski or in a boat with a lot of activity happening around me the frame rate would drop significantly.  It didn’t happen all the time but shooting at other boats, things being on fire, etc. the game engine definitely strained like it was taking a particularly large shit.  Something that was far more sporadic was freezing.  I’ve played the game for about 30 hours and in that 30 hours it froze on me about four times.  Four times that I lost unsaved data and had to get off my ass and walk across the room to turn off my Xbox.

There were numerous occasions when the game would lock up for a few seconds leaving me holding my breath and cock.  More times than not it would recover and be the only problem of that type I would experience for the play session.  Call me old fashioned but it’s unacceptable to release a game with known issues.  Back in the day, if you released a buggy game, your company went bankrupt.  I’m not saying Volition should go bankrupt or that I don’t want this franchise to succeed.  I really liked the game as a whole.  This game is not the worst offender but they should’ve spent an extra couple of months putting a little more time in QA.

I ran into one, and only one, instance of collision detection problems between a helicopter and the side of a building.  I was shooting cars and not paying attention to where I was flying.  Every time I hit a building, it would throw me off course or hurt my helicopter.  On this one occasion, half my helicopter got stuck in a building and I had wait for the dealer I was protecting to die so I could restart the activity.  It was just the one time but I had to wait a little while before I could replay it.

Conclusion

It goes without saying that this game is going to be compared to GTA IV.  In some ways it falls short and in others it excels.  It’s pretty clear I like and recommend Saint’s Row 2.  There are several games out there that aren’t worth your money but this one is.  I’m going to take this opportunity to give my take on how this stacks up against GTA IV.

As story goes, I’ve already said Saint’s Row is pretty bland.  There are few games in this genre that rival GTA’s story telling.  However, I’ll argue the characters in SR are more likeable than in GTA.  Niko was great but he’s too human to be fully enjoyed as a criminal mastermind, plus your character in SR looks exactly like you want them to.  Even though most of the ancillary characters in GTA IV are better than in SR 2, with the exception of Gat, they didn’t outstay their welcome like they did in GTA IV.  Namely a cell phone that rings every five minutes nagging you to go play darts, or pool, or go to a strip club, or whatever.  Unlike the transition from San Andreas to GTA IV, the transition from SR to SR2 added features.  It didn’t go from an instantly recognizable art style to dark shades of brown and grey with limited features and cars that handle like shit.

SR 2 doesn’t have the graphical detail of GTA IV.  SR 2 also doesn’t have a cop around every corner waiting to chase you for jaywalking.  If you do something wrong and keep doing something wrong, the police are harder to shake than they are in GTA IV. Money has more value in SR 2.  You can buy stores, cribs, mod cars, buy grips of clothing in assorted colors and styles, and you have a universal unlimited garage for each vehicle type.  That means, unlike in GTA IV, one vehicle is available at all garages and there is no limit to how many you can have parked in it.

GTA IV borrowed the GPS dotted line from SR and SR borrowed everything else from GTA.  If you had to choose between the two I’d say get both anyway.  With the best features from both put into one game, you’d have the best sandbox game ever.  If you want a lot of things to do, several good laughs, and customization get Saint’s Row 2.  If you want story and graphics get GTA IV.  I will note that Liberty City is better than Stilwater.  Liberty City still doesn’t have enough to do even though it is larger, more detailed, and more realistic than Stilwater.

There’s a honeymoon period with GTA IV that you don’t get with Saint’s Row 2.  For a time when you play GTA IV you think it’s the best game ever but when it wears off you realize all its limitations.  It’s like sleeping with that “hot” woman from the bar last night.  When you wake up in the morning, sober, and see her without her makeup you still congratulate yourself for pulling in some ass but you regret the painful itch you now have behind your zipper.  Saint’s Row 2 is just as fun in the 30th hour as it was in the first.  It’s the handful of bugs and relatively small size of the map the keep Saint’s Row 2 below 9.

Score:  8.7