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.
