- Title: Saints Row 2
- Publisher: THQ
- Developer: Volition Inc.
- ESRB Rating: “M” For Mature
- Genre: Action
- Pros: Tons of side missions; crazy physics and action; Zombie Uprising; co-op
- Cons: Graphics are kind of ugly; gameplay feels sloppy; why do we always have to be gangastas?
Saints Row 2 starts out in a prison hospital where your character has been lying in a coma since they were blown up in an explosion at the end of the first game. They wake up after several years with fresh memories of betrayal in their mind, but discover that the city of Stillwater is very different now. They set out to reunite the 3rd Street Saints and take back the city.
When you first wake up in the prison, you get the design your character. You choose their sex, race, and can completely customize their look. It is pretty extensive and it is easy to make any kind of character you want.
Story missions are mostly of the generic “gangsta sandbox” variety where you drive somewhere, kill everyone, then flee back to your base. But it isn’t the story missions that make SR2 enjoyable, it is everything else. One of my main complaints with GTAIV is that they took out all of the fun stuff in favor of a more realistic tone. SR2, on the other hand, features a ton of minigames and side missions to keep you entertained. Be a bodyguard in Crowd Control, enter demolition derbies, join a Fight Club, or do Insurance Fraud among many, many others. Then there is Zombie Uprising, a game within the game, where you take control of a survivor and blast through wave after wave of zombies.
Gameplay
Saints Row 2 does a lot of things right, though. The entire map is open to you right from the start, which means all of the fun minigames and vehicles are available right away. Missions also have checkpoints which means if you fail you usually start over at the middle rather than the beginning. Also, the over the top physics and action make pretty much anything you do fun and potentially funny. My take on sandbox games is that you should be able to play how you want and make your own fun, and Saints Row 2 fits that description perfectly. It isn’t serious, it is goofy and crude and an absolute blast to play.
Saints Row 2 isn’t just a single-player experience, there are also co-op and deathmatch modes available as well on Xbox Live or system link. In co-op, the entire map is open to both players and you can both do whatever you want, and when you tackle missions together the game adds in extra enemies to balance out the addition of the extra player. Competitive multiplayer shrinks the map down to individual neighborhoods, but the smaller play area keeps the matches fast and furious.
Graphics
The only truly disappointing aspect of Saints Row 2 is the graphics. Technical problems such as pop-in, texture tearing, and vehicles and objects appearing and disappearing seemingly at random are pretty big issues. Also, the game just has a sort of ugly look to it. The textures simply don’t look very good, but at least it is consistent across everything (clothes, buildings, roads, cars) so the game has a coherent look. The game does run at a smooth framerate at least and there are some nifty looking explosions.
Sound
The sound is fairly good. The dialogue is silly and filled with swear words, but it works. The music selection isn’t particularly good, however, and the lack of a talk radio station really hurts.
Bottom Line
