Review

It was a case of “Right place, right time” for the original Saints Row, coming at a time when the Xbox 360 was still in its infancy and still had a gap in the market labelled “Sandbox Adventure”. Being the first of its kind, it sold by the bucket-load, no doubt helped by the fact that it the ‘gangsta’ attitude and the ‘18’certificate that kids seem to love. It’s easy to forget that in terms of quality, it was barely a step up from the previous generation and didn’t come close to greatness.

Leap forward two years and we get the inevitable sequel, which finds itself entering a marketplace littered with competition, some of it of incredibly high-quality. Consequently, my expectations for Saints Row 2 weren’t high at all, which is a good place for it to come from. As it turns out, this is going to surprise a lot of people and doesn’t come burdened with the overwhelming weight of expectation like GTA IV – a game that it’s going to be compared to a lot!

Early reports coming out of THQ were not good - using the same city as the original, even using the same graphics engine - But fortunately these reports have turned out to be at least 50% false. If it is the same engine, then it’s a much-improved version of it as this doesn’t look like a PS2 game running in HD anymore! Unfortunately though, Volition have pulled the same trick as the PSP versions of GTA and merely started you in a different part of the city. Pretty soon you’ll be visiting areas you went to in the first game with little or no change to how it was before. It makes it feel like you’re playing a two-year-old game.

Being able to completely design the look of your character is great fun and brings back memories of tinkering around with The Sims creation studio. Despite this, it’s the character aspect that is the most disappointing aspect of the game. There are simply no interesting characters in the game, just a collection of stereotypes that occasionally borders on the offensive. There’s nothing that comes close to rivalling the Belic brothers bickering as you drive to a mission location.

There is no shortage of things to do in the city either, the missions themselves never deviate from what you’d expect but the side missions offer up all manner of variety and encourage exploration. I had much more fun driving around trying to find and steal specific cars or pull off insurance scams than I did with any of the story. I soon got bored of the city-wide gang warfare and found myself hunting out new jobs to do instead.

It would be fair to say that I wasn’t expecting much from Saints Row 2 and it has ended up being one of the most surprisingly good games of the year. It’s still not brilliant though and in the wake of GTA IV I can’t help feeling that it’s utterly redundant. Volition have nailed the all-important fun element which was missing from Mercenaries 2 so it’s a recommended rental title but little else.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

Volition, inc.

Publisher

THQ

Released

17th October 2008