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When Saints Row was first announced I thought to myself "not another GTA
clone", now I know many games do spawn from other popular games, tetris for
example had many variations but this is not always a bad thing and in the case
of Saints Row this also applies.
The game begins with your character starting in a place called Stillwater,
your mission should you accept it is to win back the streets with the help of
the Saints. Stillwater is
quite a big place and will leave you with plenty to explore and there is no need
for you to hold back either as from the beginning
of the game you have access to the whole map and over 100 missions.
There are some missions that
stick out more than others, such as insurance fraud where you try and fake
injury to make money. To be honest though, the first thing I did was jump in a
car and have a drive around to get myself acquainted with the city, there are
some great graphics here although when driving a bit faster the frame rate can
be quite poor, as well as this you do also get stuck in the scenery which is
also quite frustrating. The first mission that I tried was the one from the demo
where you basically go and buy a gun and then gun down some of the enemies, this
was quite easy and I was helped by the fact that my homie was leaning out of the
car I stole firing at them, once we committed the deed we went to forgive and
forget which serves the same function as the car spray shop in GTA by wiping
clean any wrong doing from your record. The second mission I chose was rather
more sordid and involved me recruiting hoe's for the friendly Saints Row pimp,
basically I had to get close to the ladies and recruit them, as their rather
unfriendly boss didn't take too kind to this I had to gun him down, however the
police officer standing there at the time did not like me doing this for some
reason and proceeded to gun me down also.
The mission's all seem to
follow a similar pattern and are great fun, I enjoy when the police sometimes
just seem to ignore you when you gun someone down while they sit in their car,
they must be too busy eating doughnuts ala Chief Wiggam from the Simpsons.
When you complete missions you
earn money with which you can buy new weapons and clothes, in fact customisation
is quite a big part of the game as at the start you create your own character
and when you do earn some money you can also customise your vehicle, the music is also changeable by either finding or buying music in game or using your
own via the main in-game menu.
The
online and co-op missions are great and offer some of the best
online play yet for the Xbox 360. There are four
different modes to choose from, Gangsta Brawl (deathmatch),
Big-Ass Chains (collect chains from fallen opponents and
return them to a base for points), Protect tha Pimp (team
based missions), and Blinged Out Ride (vehicle based
mission). The lobbies are also interactive and you can shoot
people for fun while you wait for the real action to begin.
Co-op mode can be found in
Custom or Create-A-Player modes, and there two types of
mission-based games, Mob Rule and Turbulence, co-op mode is
not bad but the other online modes are much more fun and are
definitely the most enjoyable aspects of the game.
Saints Row is a very good game
and If you love Grand Theft Auto then you will love this, Violation have done a
very good job in capturing the feel of the streets and there is a huge area to
explore, although it doesn't have the same pull for me as Grand Theft Auto, it
does have some originality to it in some of the missions offered and the
graphics and sound also show what the Xbox 360 is capable of, the game is great
value for money and it will take you a long time to complete and even then the
online modes provide more reason to go back to it, so my advise would be to get
your cash out and start capping some gangsters.
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