Proverbial Jon said:
So Saint's Row is SOOO good that a punch to the balls is all it takes to sell it?
People may say it's more fun than GTA and perhaps even far superior, but I think I'll stick with Rockstar's style of humour thank you very much.
It's more fun than
GTA 4.
And heads up, that's coming from someone who was REALLY excited to play GTA 4 on all the levels. I love the franchise and the notion of playing a Serb really appealed to me. On top of that I had to wait for ages to get my hands on it, so I was extra excited when I did. Oh and I've bought a new graphics card when I got it, so there was the "oooh, look, pretty gfx" when I played it as well. I didn't even expect too much because I've played it in a cybercafe a bit and knew roughly how it played. But good God, the constant phone nagging, the shitty storyline, the American hired to voice act a Serb, the complete lack of interesting side content and the gray grittiness of New York (again) - I played through the game, don't get me wrong, I somewhat enjoyed it, but once I was done with the storyline, there was pretty much nothing left to do (that's being said about one of the greatest sandbox franchises in gaming, keep in mind) and after screwing around for a few mere days, I dropped the game.
Later on, I saw Yahtzee's review of Saint's Row 2, so I figured - what the hell, I'll give it a try, didn't have anything better to play at the time. I wasn't really psyched when I got into the game, the detailed character screen kept me occupied for some 3 hours or something since I had to drop making my character a few times midway to do something else (wasn't finished so couldn't save it) and that really dragged out my patience at the start. The controls felt weird, the car driving was downright awful at the first feel and just everything that could've gone wrong to screw up me enjoying the game did.
Except... the story was awesome. No, I'm not talking Mass Effect awesome, I'm talking GTA San Andreas awesome. Unlike GTA, it wasn't something I felt I needed to get through, I wanted to get through it (restricting it slightly via 'rep' was actually a good idea imo, as it makes you want to get back to your main story more). I also fell in love quickly with the amount of customization, particularly on the clothes (best move ever THQ, sending me to buy clothes straight after the first mission) and really loved the fact I chose a British accent for my character as it came out brilliant in cutscenes. Discovering all the little things, being able to pick up a bar stool to fight with, being able to take hostages for cover, cruise control (honestly, best thing ever), the massive amounts of clothes shops (love RPing on my own when playing sometimes, creating small mini missions in my head or modifying existing ones - f. ex. the assassination contract where you're told to kill the guy dressed as a pirate, I went dressed as a ninja and killed him with a katana for extra lolz :> ), the ridiculous amount of awesome side-things you can do, both missions and just random stuff like doing an arm stand on a driving car etc.
Few hours in, I started loving everything about the game. Enjoyed the missions through and through. The game was long but still left me wanting for more, which is a really great sign. Even after I was finished, I played the game loads just screwing around with everything, completing the dozens of little missions and just enjoying a good old GTA-style sandbox setting. Even after I got bored with it and moved on to other games, I reinstalled it later on two occasions, played through the story again and messed around with it and the mini missions afterwards. I gotta tell you, that's a really rare thing for me to do, I did it with Oblivion and GTA: SA that I can remember, no other games warranted as much replay value.
So... I'd suggest it, give it a try, it's up for grabs on Steam anyway, cheap as chips iirc. Personally can't wait for the third part, should be loads of fun
Derelict Frog said:
Saints Row really, really annoys me as a franchise. In a time where videogames are trying to compete with the artistic merits of other media and also become more mature you get Volition spewing out more garbage like this. The stories in each game are farcically awful; you can't relate to any of the characters unless you're a sociopath; the humour is very low-brow, not clever and immature; and the driving mechanic is unceremoniously bad (seriously - on Xbox 360 you press A to accelerate? That means you're either always going at full throttle or not going at all. To maintain any sort of constant speed you have to tap A, kangarooing the car about).
Games competing with artistic merits of other media doesn't mean we should shun every game that's about pure fun. But then again, a statement like that seems to come from someone who's quite aware of what they've had for lunch tomorrow, so I'll just leave it at that. I won't argue with you enjoying the story - not everything is for everyone, but it's similar to the usual GTA story of "let's take the city over" and it's executed and polished really well. Being unable to relate to a sociopathic character on a humorous level means you shouldn't really be playing a game like this to begin with tbh. As for the driving... yeah, that's kinda what every GTA game has had you do for the last x years. I can't remember if GTA 4 had a twist to it, I remember driving being more realistic, but I can't remember there being anything to combat the usual "tap forward to drive slower than max speed". However, see, SR2 has a cruise control. So you don't actually have to tap that button. You just press cruise control and the car speed is kept at one speed that you can increase/decrease as you go. I suppose the Xbox version of the game might be missing that feature, but I kinda doubt it.
