Saints Row Review (X360)

Just when you might be getting tired of open world “sandbox” games and gangsta themes, a game comes out that gets you hooked all over again. Saints Row won’t win any awards for originality, but it takes the GTA formula and polishes it to create an amazingly addictive and well put together experience. I highly recommend it as a worthwhile time waster while we wait for GTA IV.

The Story

In Saints Row, you play a nameless character that joins the 3rd Street Saints gang and helps them to take over the city of Stillwater. The story is pretty derivative and plays out just like every other gangsta wannabe game out there, but it manages to introduce the bare minimum of new ideas to keep you interested. A nice touch is that your character can be completely customized and once you decide what you want to look like the game hits the ground running. I honestly think I prefer this storytelling style where you play as the voiceless everyman (similar to GTAIII) better than when you play a set character (like in GTA VC or SA). It just feels more fun and immerses you into the story and world better when it is you living the life rather than watching Tommy or CJ do their thing.

Gameplay

Just like any other GTA clone, Saints Row features a huge city to explore filled with lots of things to do. The city of Stillwater is realistically designed and is a joy to explore, which is very important because most of the enjoyment you get out of this type of game is outside of missions, so if the city is boring your time spent with the game will be less than exciting. The missions are typical “Go attack gang B and then return to point A” type stuff, but it is well executed and you aren’t ever left wondering what you are supposed to do next. Outside of the story missions, you do side missions that allow you to earn respect, which, in turn, opens up more story missions. These side missions include diving in front of cars to collect insurance fraud, stealing prostitutes away from rival gangs, causing mayhem, and racing among other things. There is a fair bit of variety to these side missions and there are a ton of them so you’ll be busy for a long time to come. One issue I have is that, unlike GTA where you basically have to turn and look the other direction for cars to spawn behind you, there are a lot of times in Saints Row where cars just never spawn and you have to run a block or two to find something.

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