I've always been a little anti-Grand
Theft Auto. It looked like a silly driving game
with completely unrealistic handling, no actual
combat and just joys such as running over prostitutes.
How juvenile. Little did I know, Saints Row
2 is a GTA clone. One I actually enjoyed! Maybe
I won't mind GTA either? Not that I'll ever
find out.
I do suspect SR2 has a lot
more combat though, sprinkled with stupid activities
to build your reputation and mindless driving.
Let's begin with the length.
SR2 took me 30 hours to play through. While
the first 1/3 of the game I tried a lot of side
activities, after ten hours the main mission
was moving along too slowly so I set upon just
doing the bare minimum. Never have a I spent
that many hours on a game, unless you include
addons and mods (in that case I'd have spent
hundreds of hours playing Quake). But the core
game; most games I'm getting bored after ten
hours. So that says something about SR2 that
it kept me entertained for so long. There is
plenty of variety though - it's not all just
run and gun.
The main missions all involve
combat. Sometimes while driving but usually
on foot. I did have the game set to easy. Not
because I'm a pussy, but simply because I don't
wish to replay painful activities over and over,
nor do I want to replay a bad checkpoint system.
And the SR2 checkpoint system IS bad. Very bad.
But I'll get into that later. Back to the combat,
unfortunately sticking the game on easy made
the combat itself a little too easy. Which makes
sense. But I was rarely challenged. In most
cases I could run into a room, stand on one
spot and spray everything with bullets. No need
for cover or strafing. There were bits that
were tricky and I did die several times, but
overall the combat is a breeze, and I can't
imagine it being much more challenging upping
the skill level. So in conclusion, combat isn't
for advanced players in SR2.
What is more challenging are
the activities. There were a few that I struggled
to even get past level one! And this is why
I stuck with easy difficulty, because I'm not
keen on spending any more time than I need to
doing the activities. You need to do complete
them because you need points (called Respect
in SR2) in order to do each main mission. There's
about 40 main missions (including taking over
strongholds which also need to be done), and
each mission, for instance, requires you winning
2-3 races to get enough points to start the
mission. You can see how I might get bored quickly
at these activities. What I ended up doing was
finding a solo time race that I could win gold
at easily every time and just replayed that
over and over again. I probably did the same
damn race over fifty times. But it sure beat
most of the other activities. In a race against
others it just takes one tiny hit to send you
careening into an immovable object, while they
rarely seem to lose control. If there's a collision
in race, you'll often be the one coming off
second best.
The motorcycles are nothing
but a frustration with their wobbly handling
and the rider flying off at the tiniest obstacle.
While the car handling was okay, planes and
helicopters were utterly atrocious. I could
barely get the plane off the ground, let alone
steer it around a obstacle course. The helicopter
was a joke to attempt to land. I thought White
Gold had pretty badly handling for it's air
machinery, but SR2 defies the odds and has the
worst handling aviation machinery I've ever
experienced. I'd probably have an easier time
flying a real plane!
Now there is a lot of driving
in SR2, unfortunately. Sometimes I found it
easier just to save and reload as it takes you
straight back to your crib. But then you've
got to find a quick car to get wherever you're
supposed to be going. Driving from one mission
to the next can take a number of minutes, full
of other idiots on the road that are oblivious
to you flying up behind them and turn straight
into you. Furthermore, cars appear and disappear
before you're very eyes. You can be driving
an old crapper, see a Lamborghini drive past,
throw the handbrake on and attempt to chase
it down to hijack it, only to discover it's
completely disappeared. But there's always plenty
of cars around as well as pedestrians and people
on foot. Even at midnight in thick rain at a
lonely cemetery there's people absolutely everywhere.
Does nobody sleep in this game?
I must admit, this game cracked
me up at times, mostly during the driving action
as I did something crazy, avoided a huge collision
or just witnessed something random happening.
Such as someone trying to hijack another car,
only for the police to turn up and drag the
car thief out and beat him. Meanwhile I'm hopping
in the police car and hooning off.
The story is a highlight of
SR2. When you've got 30 hours to tell it, you're
sure to go into plenty of depth over the 5-10
hour shooters. You play a nameless person who
breaks out of prison to lead the Saints, a gang
in the city of Stillwater. There's three other
main gangs, featured through three main episodes
through the game, which you need to take down.
Then there's the Ultor Corporation, slightly
allied to the gangs but ultimately out to eradicate
them all as well. I won't go into too much detail
into the story, but the characters were all
nicely fleshed out and there were plenty of
cutscenes. Hell, probably an hour of cutscenes!
The character you play you can design the look
of completely, with massive detail. Not just
what he/she wears and their hair colour, but
you can completely change their face in ANY
way you want. In fact, it might take some time,
but you could create a character to look like
yourself! Naturally, my character was nasty
looking female, scantily clad and by the end
of the game wearing nothing but underwear and
covered in tats. The character throughout the
story is quite a tough son of a bitch. Unstoppable,
no mercy at all, so I had to create a character
to go with this. Unfortunately, there were times
that I actually sided with the antagonists -
they seemed the fairer side. From the outside
looking in, your character and the Saints is
undoubtedly the most ruthless gang in the city.
But playing such a son of a bitch is part of
the charm and difference in SR2's story. I never
like playing the cheesy hero.
The one big area I haven't
mentioned is the design. This is where SR2 is
let down. Based on a custom engine which I have
no idea what or where it came from, it can certainly
render massive areas seamlessly. There's no
loading screens, you can drive from one side
of this huge city to the other. SR2 is sandbox
at it's most... sandboxy. Nothing is out of
bounds, you can go anywhere. But the trade off
is a lack of detail and finesse. Textures are
plain. Post-processing is at at minimum. Lighting
is drab and flat. There's a lack of detail on
everything. Nothing in this game will give you
that warm fuzzy feeling inside. It sure as hell
isn't Crysis.
I should probably mention I
did use the odd cheat - infinite sprint because
the players walking speed is painfully slow
considering the distances you have to go sometimes.
And infinite ammo. You can buy ammo, and by
the end of this game I had half a millions to
spend. But I really can't be bothered having
to visit ammo shops over and over again. Furthermore
certain activities unless both infinite ammo
and infinite sprint anyway. But the money issue
- why does this game give you so much money
when you really don't need it? Apart from the
odd surgery and new clothes, the only money
I spent was on buying properties and doing them
up, and I struggled to actually find that many
properties to buy. I've got all this money and
nothing much to spend it on! And no requirement
to spend it anyway because the combat just isn't
that hard and I've got a dozen fast cars already
in my garage.
Final word and complaint -
the save system. You get a save sometimes during
a main mission (but not often enough), and also
always once you've completed the mission. There's
no quicksave, you can only manually go through
the menu, which uses ridiculous keys to navigate
through instead of the obvious arrow keys, to
manually save. So what happens if you do an
hour of activities then quit? It's all lost.
And that happened to me early in the game not
realising that after doing all these activities
I'd had no checkpoints in about an hour. Serenity
now! On top of this, when you reload a save
you don't go back to the previous position,
you're plonked back to your crib, which could
be miles from where you ACTUALLY SAVED!
Overall, SR2 is a decent game.
The story is interesting, I loved being able
to customise my character. There's tonnes to
do, but most of the activities are sadly not
that fun and too inconsistent. Forcing me to
do them to proceed with the many main missions
was a bit of a chore. But school kids with all
afternoon and evening to play games might not
mind so much. The city was massive, but nothing
much to marvel over it's beauty. It looks a
few years older than 2008. So, it's JUST a decent
game.
