Saints row 2 wins hands down. Even if you would slice it's arms of, lock it in a submarine and sink the thing to the bottom of the ocean it would still be better than GTA IV.
If you don't care to read this massive wall of text than don't because I care even less about your opinion on things than a do about Niko's constant nagging whining.
Niko Bellick is in short a ****, he would go on and on and on and on about how much life sucked how he hated killing people, how he didn't like to have to kill for no reason or how he was looking to get revenge on some1 and bla bla bla bla.
Every single mother fuckering time that **** opened his mount he killed my mission buzz. After successfully headshotting 20 people than planting a bomb under a car and watch the last dude drive away whilst tailing him, slowly waiting to build up the glee I would feel once I rang Packie to detonate that shit it would immediately followed with how Niko was angry about having to kill him, that he would have liked not to have done it and so on nagging to me about how he didn't want to kill for money, start a nice life as an immigrant garbage man and start a family with a ***** and live in a slum.
This of course immediately ending my satisfactory feeling of having executed a successful hit and putting me back behind the wheel of cars that handled like some one just glued the steering wheel to the dashboard for show. When I am speeding at 100 miles an hour and take a sharp turn I do not want to spin out and hit the wall, in real life an able driver would have been able to make a turn like that at 60 miles but Niko can't even manage 30 miles. Anything slower than start up speed will have you spin out at every turn and dot get me started on those death trap bikes. Making a system in which you hurl of your bike when you hit anything going faster than 2 miles an hour is great, it looks awesome, but don't punish us for it by letting us die for it. Racing at top speed on bikes which we are often forced to do because the entire game is nothing but a bunch of cutscenes that require the player to do exactly as the game says.
Let me give an example, you can't plan missions out, you can't plant a bomb prior to starting a mission, or block of a road to prevent them from escaping because after a cut scene everything re-spawns so you have no effect on the world what so ever and the mission can only be done by following the orders you get to the letter, primarily thanks to the system that makes certain targets invulnerable until you reach a certain point. I would waste entire ammo clips on cars and enemies, having a clear shot at them as for example in the subway motorbike chase that I was forced to do and after emptying 1100 smg rounds in the mother fuckers back he was still riding because GTA forced me to ride the entire subway until the guy gets hit by a car at which point he becomes killable and they repeat this for about half the missions, making you drive or chase some1 all the way across a pre-set terrain.
I'm amazed they didn't just make the entire thing a cut scene of about 5 hours long and let you play freestyle once you watched the whole thing.
The biggest part about SR2 that I loved was that the main character was a psychopathic maniac hell-bent on having as much fun whilst hurting as much people as humanly possible along the way. This made SR2 despite it's graphical inferiority and shortness a much more enjoyable game that I actually took pleasure in. Driving around GTA IV running down pedestrians is fun for 5 minutes after that it's just the same old thing unless you hit a cop but running from cops that can't even chase you is so boring and easy that they might well not be there at all. SR2 shoot to many people or run to many people over and the SWAT march out to gun you down ruthlessly beating on you till you die. The cops in GTA are just to lay and they don't even seem to remember you when you drive past the police station after you have half the murders committed in LC on your record.
There was nothing more fun that the nuclear tattoo in SR2 or the love ruck rally of death because my character, a British accented Afro American with a ridiculous top hat and gigolo suit with bright orange bow tie, would laugh his ass off afterwards and plan his next act of dastardly defiance of Niko's soggy **** lifestyle. Besides this I could dress my char any way I wanted, make him a transvestite, want a pair of boobs to make the dress look less horrible on you no problem here you go on the contrary Niko has 4 outfits (I don't count colours only different styles). You have your suit, leisure suit, jackets an pants and Russian import garbage and every single ***** he could nail would nag about how I insisted on dressing him in suits only because it made him look less like a **** and more of a hitman with an overly active conscience that had the ability to use Niko as a ventriloquist dummy.
Niko was so horrible it made me distance myself from him ( don't get me started about the social circle thing because I modded that whole bullshit out, couldn't get from one part of the map to another without having to take one of the many social rejects out and feed them who are apparently sitting by the phone waiting for me to call them.) I imagined near the end some one sitting next to him, like his mom telling him off rather than him going on about how the last tragedy that had befallen him had fuelled his anger and again made him sad ablooo blooo bloo bloo. Fucking Prick.
Well I'm already on my fifth paragraph and I could go on for about 18 more listing the idiotic choices Rockstar made for this game. For example the gun shops, there are 3 of em in the whole of the city, which means that you will have to drive allot for vests and so on. You cannot take health with you which would not be a problem if you wouldn't lose half your life bar when you go hurtling through the windscreen which is awesome as always but fucking annoying when you are chased by an armed convoy of mobsters. Besides that there are 2 measly stipclubs that seemed more like deserted swimming pools with every stripper wearing a bikini than a stripclub and the only other things to do where bowling, darts or pool. I don't even do these things when I have free time and no friends around to hang out with doing things that could have featured in SR2. My social life is more exciting than that of a hitman which must have been pretty fucking embarrassing for Niko.
And we go on to the missions, I started my first run of GTA when Roman called me (who I cannot kill how bad I want to) saying some Albanians drove him in a corner. So abandoning the ass that was waiting for me. I drove like a madman hurtling down streets using all my best driving skills to avoid hits, made it almost unscratched to the playground, hit the Albanians car, sent it flying through the air and made it land about 5 feet further upside down on a fence and me laughing out loud. That should take care of the escape plan I thought. Stepped out, cut scene started Albanians beaten another cutscene, car re spawn, forced chase ensues. I had taken car of that car and now you are telling me he lifted the damned thing up of the fence, flipped it round, undented it and did all this in 5 seconds?
Forced chase started me driving like a two fingered monkey was ramming into allot of things, shitty controls and dodgy steering don't mix well with high speeds. I was determined to at least have some say in the matter. So when I saw him pull over I immediately floored the gas, rammed his car and crushed him between the car and a pillar. This is of course not how it should go, he is supposed to run upstairs you follow and either knock him out whilst avoiding dying by having him stick you with a knife or throw him out the window. But as I already said this game can go fuck itself and I would rather die than play by it's rules. So every mission from there on was done in my own style. Kill Ray by following him and taking him out with a gun, fuck that. Plant a bomb under his car and blow him to bits, the Italian fuck, hell yeah!!! This however asked allot of skill from me the player, I had to anticipate everything the game would throw at me and plan to say fuck that to all of it and come up with ways to do it my own way. Assassinate some1 by shooting him with the snipe from across the street, hell no. Lob a grenade through the open window, fireworks ensue, and I laugh at having fucked the game once again.
My point is the game was my biggest enemy, I was constantly fighting for that little bit of fun that I could squeeze out of it. The game would have me run and jump through hoops effectively kill all the fun. Sure there are some awesome mission like the once Packie gives you which are pure gold or Pegorino's which rival those of Packie, or the truck bomb from Faustin. But than you find out you can only do one bankheist the entire game and only one mission with a bombed vehicle. It is all so restrictive and unimaginative it feels more like your just there to make sure Niko has some1 to whine to rather than becoming Hitman Number #1
In short I was fighting the game more than my enemies, finding ways around killing people the way I was told, getting shot at to plant a bomb under a car, conveniently parked next to a set of explosives behind which an entire army of hooligans was hiding to blow the car up whilst running out of the blast range and bits of hooligan jerky that would come flying around.
In short GTA IV failed, SR2 isn't much better when it comes to the mission, do this, that and do it like this, but at least they give you a character who is having fun mowing down a legion of drug addicts and at least they give you a flame-thrower or the option to use whatever fucking weapon you damn well please, in GTA the rocket launcher... no flame-thrower can you believe it!!!!!!!..... is unlocked half way in the story... or earlier if you get very lucky and manage to find the ones scattered in the city in tricky locations.
Besides that half the city is closed and only opens up halfway through the game!!!!! I don't want to be told I can't cross the bridge. it's like telling a crazed blood thirsty alien he can't eat the humans or telling a (bad Microsoft, scientology doesn't deserve a capital S you twats) scientologist his religion is a cult. I'm a murderous crazy psychopath, or at least I want Niko to be exactly that, favourably one fuelled by drugs, which the **** refuses every time he gets offered a joint. You can't tell me I can't cross the bridge, that is if you want to see your wife and children in the morning not tied to the back end of my truck steadily backing up on a grid iron fence with the intent to make minced meat.
In short GTA is a overly extravagant cut scene starring a **** who acts like a sorry ***** with restrictive game play and fucking idiotic vehicle controls. SR2 on the other hand is a retarded experience, filled to the brim with psychotic fun, extravagance and controversial. Only slightly less restrictive but a billion times more fun thanks to my character being a maniacal gang banger intent on making the world his so he can legalize human shooting targets and make wearing your pants around your hips a state law.
I will close off with saying Niko can hurl himself of a bridge and stop fucking whining, leave me the fuck alone and give me my SR2 character, who I nicknamed Bobb to go around LC to blast the whole god damn city to hell, with a crew of hookers riding shotgun in my Apache attack chopper of course.
saints row 2 was so much fun coop...
