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Preys-World - Saints Row 2 Review

Sunday 16th of November, 2008 - 14:11:47 GMT

With Grand Theft Auto 4 fresh off production this year and an already hefty back catalogue of titles defining the free roaming genre some comparisons to the GTA franchise are to be expected, forgiven and possibly may even be a redeeming feature of this review if you’re still on the fence as to whether or not Saints Row 2 is worth a purchase. Dealing with the most obvious of facts first let me point out that Saints Row 2 is not trying to be GTA4, instead of hotdog vendors you’ll be presented with the chance to dress as a giant hotdog, instead of gangsters you’ll have ninjas and perhaps the biggest and most radical difference of note, instead of burly Russian rivals you’ll be pitted against teenagers wearing yellow biker jackets and tracksuit bottoms who regularly engage in hit and run attack on a motorcycle, with a samurai sword. The world of Saints Row is over the top, unrealistic and absolutely hilarious; with the map of Stillwater being packed with small mountain ranges, a large university, construction grounds, trailer parks, sprawling freeways, an airport, an island prison and even a nuclear power station. And to transverse this sprawling metropolis? Expect to encounter an array of cars, trucks, bikes, helicopters, boats, bi-planes, jets, quad bikes and even alien UFOs. Needless to say the scope for entertainment is wide.

Before you hop into the shoes of Stillwater’s most notorious ex-criminal you’re presented with the character creation system which certainly amounts to one of the most impressive aspects of the game. Whilst there is a simple tick box option to select your character’s gender, later body customisation options allow you to dictate just much of your body’s shape and size; whether it be a highly feminine looking man or a very manly looking woman. Using the face editor which grants access to every feature of your toon’s face the possibilities of the end result are nigh on endless, ranging from a perfectly carved handsome specimen, an ugly pointy nosed, double chinned monster or just your regular average Joe. On top of that there’s a decent selection of haircuts and other options such as face paint and an expression selector to further differentiate your character from the masses, it’s safe to say that you’ll never end up with the same model twice. Perhaps the only area where the editor is let down is in the voice option department. With only six voices to choose from (3 male, 3 female) and the quality of each ranging from average to great, the selection is a little too limited and more often than not you’ll pick the same voice each time round since there are definitely one or two which stand above the rest. It might also be worth pointing out, if you played the original Saints Row, that whilst you’re playing the same character as you did in the first game there are no restrictions on how completely different your incarnation of them for the sequel is; in a humorous nod to this returning characters will often remark “Have you done something with your hair?”

Although the story may be continued from the previous game do not feel that before you can pick up Saints Row 2 that you’ll have to chunter your way through the first game, there is simply no need. A brief summary would read that you previously established yourself as the head of a gang and took over the majority of the city before being involved in an explosive accident which puts you in a coma for a number of years and coincidentally slap bang at the start of Saints Row 2. Your gang has lost much of its influence and your task is to re-establish yourselves as the dominant crew with a host of returning and new characters. The plot might not be Shakespeare but it’s certainly enough to ensure fun times are to be had, with some very creative and fun missions to fuel you along. Of course what free roaming action game would be complete without a few side-missions and activities to keep you entertained when you aren’t in the mood for advancing your progress? Well Saints Row 2 contains a vast array of alternative activities and aptly named ‘diversion’ challenges, many of which the game ushers you into trying since in order to unlock more story missions you must earn enough ‘respect’ which is by far earned quickest by partaking in activities. With twelve stages of each activity on offer they range from protecting your homies whilst piloting an assault helicopter, spraying septic waste over the neighbourhood to devalue property or playing a local celebrities muscle as you try and stop crazy fans from harassing the star by removing them from the scene in the most gruesome manner possible; each mode is widely different from the rest and throws in new game play mechanics or puts more of a focus onto existing ones and all of them are very fun to engage in; on top of these are the typical ambulance, taxi and fire truck missions thrown in and a range of new mini-diversions such as streaking and hostage taking. It might not be necessary to complete every activity in the game to amount the required respect level to finish the story missions but it’s a safe bet that once you’ve started you’ll find that tearing yourself away from Escort, Helicopter Assault, Crowd Control or Trail Blazing and going back to the standard missions is quite difficult.

Perhaps the one thing Saints Row 2 earns the most brownie points for is its drop-in co-op system. Configure your options to allow random players, friends only or friends by invite and players can drop right in to your current game session to play through every activity, every diversion and every single player mission. The game world and missions available are dictated by the hosts progress but anything the second player achieves in terms of diversions and activities carries over to their single player save too; if you should wish it and can find a suitable partner then it is possible to play through the entire game from start to finish in co-op mode. Not only will this net you a nice set of achievements for the Xbox 360 version of the game but you may find that a lot of activities become considerably more entertaining when there’s a friend by your side. Of course should your lust for blood reach dangerous levels or you realise that you just plain don’t like the person you’re playing with friendly fire is always active and should you kill your partner and not revive them within the 30 second time limit they have the option of reviving normally at a hospital or, their honour offended and with the desire for revenge, enabling one of two nifty little mini-versus modes. Of these two modes one, Death Tag, spawns each of you a few hundred metres apart in a random section of the city with a random selection of weapons and sets you against each other in a death match battle whilst the other and more interesting of the two, Cat and Mouse, places one player in a very fast sports car and challenges them to race across the map through randomly placed checkpoints with the other player in an attack helicopter armed with rocks and mini-guns with the aim of blowing his ‘friend’ sky high in the quickest time possible. Length of time alive and number of checkpoints driven through before the players very expensive sports car is reduced to fiery wreckage determines the score before the roles are reversed; it’s a highly entertaining (and if you’re in the car, tense) mode which you might find accidentally distracts you completely from doing anything constructive for an hour at a time. You might think that the game would struggle with connectivity when it comes to such an expansive co-op system, but you’d be quite wrong. Whilst the framerate sees the occasional dip to a stutter when both players are causing vast amounts of havoc at the same time for the majority of the time it holds up very well and actual latency lag is next to non-existent. The same can be said with the adversarial multiplayer with up to 12 players though the selection of modes on offer is far more limited than the likes of GTA4; with only 2 modes (Strong Arm, a territories objective-based game type and Gangsta Brawl, typical team death match) this branch of the game is definitely the biggest disappointment. With such a creatively developed map and so many great single player/co-op activities the scope for some more interesting competitive modes was certainly there but ultimately the opportunity was not seized. Neither is there a 12 player free roaming mode, since competitive games take place on special areas of the map and general multiplayer rampages are restricted to the 2 player co-op.

It’s all well and good having a treasure box of features and diversions to spend your time on but if the core gameplay of a title doesn’t hold up then there’s very little point in bragging about side missions, since most users just wont be bothered enough to trawl through a poor handling game to find them. In this instance Volition have once again been successful in their design of the overall feel of the game. The action primarily boils down to a simple run and gun affair, whilst it lacks any form of cover system you’ll find that hiding from gunfire to preserve your health isn’t really necessary since it will regenerate quite quickly when you aren’t being fired upon, reducing time spent standing behind a pillar or dumpster and allowing you to quickly get back into the action. Another little nod to the games slightly surreal take on life is the improvisational cover system. With the click of a button your character will grab your foe (or a random civilian) and use them as a human shield, soaking up bullets until they lifelessly drop to the ground or until you get bored and execute them with the press of another button. The system obviously sees its other uses, such as during a number of the activities or even just for throwing old people into the path of high speed trains; but importantly it demonstrates a nice level of AI in your enemies not often seen in a free roaming action game. Take a police officer hostage and other cops will hesitate to shoot per chance they hit their fellow enforcer, opting to try and circle strafe around you to get a clear shot on your back instead, whilst rival gangsters will blast away without a care in the world and vice versa; just don’t expect many people to care too much if you cower behind an aging civilian. That and an array of other little tweaks and features are some of the things that really add polish to an already finely crafted game. General improvements such as the tweaked garage that saves your cars permanently so you can always come back and find another after you’ve taken one out or your weapons stash at your crib which lets you store every weapon you find or unlock to come back to and pick up at your leisure, or even the cruise control system which makes drive-by shootings that much easier. It really does seem that Volition sat down and reviewed the history of free form action games asking the question “What was irritating or didn’t work very well here?” before they started on SR2, because pretty much all of those potential issues have been addressed here.

On the sliding scale of free roaming action games Grand Theft Auto 4 is at one end and Saints Row 2 is at the other. Saints Row doesn’t try to immerse you in the gritty criminal underworld of Stillwater with a dark tone and expansive story, and as such it isn’t limited by the boundaries of reality. It might not be the best looking game on the market, especially compared with games which saw a similar release date such as Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2, but it’s far from a bad looking game and for the most part I doubt you will care one bit. When you’re imitating a police officer and you’re called in by dispatch to break up a street brawl between pirates and ninjas you know you’ve crossed the line into a whole new and much stranger world. So if you’re looking for nothing but pure unbridled fun, look no further than Saints Row 2.

- Dave K