Saints Row 2 is a fairly bi-polar affair, it's never sure whether it wants to be an action movie, or a comedy. The characters are sterotypes lifted wholesale from American ghetto gangster culture fantasies. Everything is over the top and sometimes played completely for laughs.
The story starts with the hero, known only as Playa, waking up in a prison hospital after being put in a coma at the end of the last game. An assisted breakout sees a return to the old neighbourhood being a big disappointment. Things have moved on, the Saints have fell apart and three new gangs rule Stillwater. The Ultor corportation led by Dean Vogel have regenerated the slums of city and the Old Saints headquarters.
Our Player vows to return the Saints to power and sets about busting his number two Johnny Gat from Prison. Recruiting new gang members and a base of operations sees war on the three rival gangs begin.
You get to choose which gang you wage war on first, and you can mix up the missions in any way you please. I preferred to keep to one gang until completing their story arc, but you don’t have to do it that way.
The Brotherhood sees you fight against a bunch of tattoed bikers and petrol heads who have a shipment of weapons coming in which they hope will launch them into the big league. Our hero is offered to share by their Leader Maero, however, refuses. I actually feel sorry for Maero the leader of the Brotherhood as our hero lets him kill his own girlfriend by accident, tattoo’s him with nuclear waste and destroys his empire. Yet at the start he offered to share with us.
The Ronin are a Japanese led triad gang who favour samurai swords and motorbikes. There is a father son disappointment story here, mixed in with Japanese honour and swordplay. The plot is essentially a tit for tat revenge story where each side takes increasingly bigger chunks out of each other until there is only one winner.
The sons of Samedi are drug barons with a voodoo tinge, Jamaican leaders and student drug labs combine. The Henchman here, Mr. Sunshine deserves special mention as an interesting bad guy, even if he is lifted straight from Live and Let die.
All three stories basically play out the same, our hero attacks the gangs money making structures and is then attacked in turn. The Saints are characterised by several supporting characters, all stereotypes, but fun all the same. Shaundie is a drug addled slut who sleeps her way to information. Pierce and Gat dedicated gun toting nutjobs.
Some of the action scenes are fairly well directed and wouldn’t look out of place in a movie. Special mentions to the scene where Ayesha is killed by the Ronin 2nd in command and the scene where our hero is kidnapped and given an audience with The general and Mr. Sunshine. There are some fairly good ideas in the mix, for example the fact that the General spends his life in his limo and the clever way that the Saints find to track him.
Once all three gangs are disposed of and the Saints rule Stillwater again, the other contender for the crown Dean Vogel comes into direct conflict with the Saints. His plan was to makes the three gangs fight and lower the housing prices in the city so that he could buy them up and bargain prices. The Saints spoil that plan and he tries to have the leadership assassinated bringing him into mortal conflict with the Saints.
There are many nods to the first game and a secret mission that brings you face to face with a major character from the first game.
I find myself torn in recommending the story to anyone. There are some diamonds in the rough here, but mostly it’s just racial stereotypes and clichés all the way. I found myself being aggravated at some of the decisions my character makes and find the hero to be the biggest idiot in the game. Something is wrong if you actually dislike the character you play in a game.
Like the first game you create your own character in a fairly detailed character creation suite. Similar to Home or Oblivion, you can customise your character fully. This customised character continues with you throughout the game, even in cut scenes. You can dress them up in clothes you buy from shops resulting In some fairly surreal cut scenes with suspect clothing choices. I chose a female avatar and one fairly dramatic cut scene had me laughing as my character spent it’s entirely with her legs wide showing her knickers.
Missions are closely tied to the story and are fairly predictable and nothing you haven’t seen in other sandbox games. Escaping from places, killing rival gang members, planting bombs, escort missions, destruction of property, stealing cars etc. nothing new but what sandbox game has done anything new? Is there anything new to do with mission objectives in the sandbox?
Controls are similar to the first game, and the weapon wheel is a good feature, holding B brings up an eight pointed circle and moving the left stick while it’s on screen chooses your weapon. Driving is fun with an arcade feel. Your character can climb onto waist height objects and also pick up small objects to melee or throw at people. Health builds up again if you stop taking damage, it can also be filled with food items during combat.
The map shows a huge array of icons representing shops, side missions, story missions etc. Thankfully these can be filtered to show only what you are looking for. Story missions pop up as you progress and there are usually only two or three story icons on the map at any one time.
The respect meter is there to prevent you ignoring the side missions. You must complete a certain number of side missions to be allowed to start story missions. This could be a bone of contention for those just wishing to plough through the story. Thankfully it does not overdo things and only a few side missions must be completed every so often to keep the respect meter up.
The side missions are built for fun, some are rooted in the game world, but others are just crazy slices of pure mayhem.
Races
Race missions are standard in almost all sandbox games, Saint Row is no exception. The usual fare is reheated and served up here, if you are the sort of person that likes these missions in other sandbox games then you will not find anything to complain about here.
Septic avenger
These missions see you driving around an area in a tanker spraying faeces at the buildings. The reason given for this is to lower the property value so that the real estate agent’s can clean up. You are driven around in the tanker and can spray to your heart’s content or the gun overheats. The only control over the truck you have is the ability to pause to allow you to get a building fully. You are pursued by police and must complete your target before getting the tanker blown up. These missions sound more fun than they actually are however.
Ho-ing
Ho-ing sees you trying to earn money on your back, a little mini game following analogue stick movements until shall we say a conclusion. A fine example of Saints row at it’s most juvenile
Escort
Escort missions see you driving a car with a prostitute and her client in the back. The problem is that news vans are following looking to get footage. If they get enough the mission is over. You have to drive to certain areas or run into pedestrians or cars, apparently belonging to the customers ex wife etc.
Mayhem
This side mission sees you going to a specific area and blowing up cars etc. until a certain dollar value is reached or time allocated runs out.
Trailblazing
You drive a quad bike while wearing a flame suit, the bike is on fire. You drive around a course with an unfair time limit. To gain enough time to get around the course you have to run into people and objects and blow them up, which also give you a few seconds of extra time.
Fuzz
This activity sees you dressing up as a policeman and dishing out police brutality while being filmed by a film crew trying to uncover police brutality. You have to catch purse snatchers etc. and basically beat them to a pulp in front of the camera.
This escalates up into stupid antics like stopping fighting pirates and ninjas, or breaking up a prostitute revolution.
Heli Assualt
In the attack helicopter you have perform mission objectives, for example, blowing up a plane, killing gang members and escorting saints gang members cars that are doing drug drops. Special mention must be made here of the time when the saints gang car breaks down and you end up ferrying them back to their base hanging from the skids of the helicopter.
Snatch
You have to get prostitutes back to their pimp after they have been stolen by other pimps. Basically driving to the prostitutes, kill the offending pimps and take them back to their own pimp. Some prostitutes are wandering around, others in cars that must be disabled before getting them out.
There are various locations on the map where these activities are available and several levels at each location.
There is the usual wide variety of vehicles including, helicopters, planes, cars and boats. Once a vehicle has been found taking it back to your crib and storing it in the garage sees it being available from all of your garages for the rest of the game.
As you progress you are given various un-locks, which include weapons, vehicles, helpers, unlimited ammo for certain weapons and discounts at shops. Certain abilities are quite useful, like the ability to drag around a.i. helpers, also the ability to get vehicles delivered to you anywhere on the map. Your gang can also be customized this time around. Changing the options here sees every gang member looking like a seventies pimp or a fully armoured swat team member.
There are various stronghold missions which see you attacking gang property, these are not necessarily story missions, but compliment the story. Push-back’s occur at random and see rival gangs trying to take back territory. You have to go back to the area and kill the marked gang members to prevent the pushback.
You have the ability to buy a share in a large amount of business's around the city, which for an initial outlay sees you getting a daily income from the business in return for Saints protection.
Your cribs start small and end up as penthouse suites. Each can be customized with various options. In your crib you have an arcade game called zombie uprising which takes place in a sprawling underground cellar where you have to survive against waves and waves of zombies.
The city is well designed, like most modern sandbox games there are hills and rivers, not just endless straight roads and cardboard buildings. Every building is unique and the road system seems organic and functional, poor and rich areas along with industrial and shopping zones. It all looks slightly cleaner than Liberty city although that may just be art direction.
Graphically Saints row isn’t going to win any awards. There were zero times in the game that I looked at something and thought wow, that looks beautiful, or that looks like it took a long time to create. The engine seems competent and only slows down marginally when there are an awful lot of explosions going on. There is little loading once you get playing.
The soundtrack takes its lead from most sandbox games and has radio stations in the cars with a genre of music in each. Special mention goes to the 80’s soundtrack including Queen’s one vision which is especially fun to cause mayhem too.
On the save game file it tells me that I played for 26 hours and received 250 achievement points. This does seems a poor time to reward ratio really. It surprises me how much I enjoyed Saint's Row 2, it hasn't the best graphics or the most original gameplay. It brings nothing really new to it's genre. Which is why it gets an average score. but don't let that fool you into thinking this game isn't a good one. It's pure fun and as long as you go into playing it with that in mind and don't expect anything state of the art then you will have fun. A liking for sandbox games is a must. Players of GTA IV who long for something a little less gritty and serious should give this game a go.
Scoring
Graphics 7
Gameplay 8
Story 7
Level Design 7
A.i. 7
Total 7.2
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