Now that we’ve moved onto more powerful hardware, it’s only a matter of time until every developer tries to incorporate further sandbox elements into their games, hoping to beat Grand Theft Auto IV to market and steal some of its thunder. That was our first impression of Saints Row – just another cheap cash-in developed by a group that doesn’t really understand what made GTA successful. We were mostly wrong. Saints Row may not be better than GTA, but it successfully mimics many of the game’s best elements, and adds a whole bunch of ideas, features and nice little touches that make you wonder why nobody had already thought of them. The game does have a number of problems that can aggravate the player, but anyone looking for a solid action game or a stop gap solution until the next big thing hits, then Saints Row is well worth a look.
Saints Row begins to distance itself from the other sandbox games from the get-go by not featuring a central pre-designed player character, instead inviting gamers to create their own hoodlum. The creation tools provided are fairly diverse, allowing for choice of ethnicity, a wide arrange of hair styles, facial moulding and all of the usual stuff you’d expect to see in a sports game, rather than an action game. Once you’ve created your gangsta wannabe, the game thrusts you into the main narrative.
While walking the streets one night, your character is caught in the middle of a battle between two of the local gangs. Julius of the 3rd Street Saints saves you from being perforated, and invites you to join his gang, much to the dismay of his followers. Essentially, the 3rd Street Saints are in a bit of a pickle, with their influence fading and rival gangs (such as Los Carnales, Westside Rollerz and Vice Kings) taking more control over Stilwater with each passing day. It’s basically up to you to give the Saints a bit of a hand in taking down the rival gangs and building up their reputation, in order to drive fear into those who would challenge them. The story isn’t brilliant or original by any means, but it is serviceable and generally inoffensive, with the odd joke thrown in for good measure [It’s Los Carnales, not the Los Carnales! – Ed] and the usual slew of Hollywood talent providing voices (in this case, Keith David, Michael Clarke Duncan and David Carradine headline the act).
The 3rd Street Saints are based in a church. How fitting.
Upon completion of a few routine tasks for the 3rd Street Saints, Julius will decide to assign a gang to each of his lieutenants, and you will have to work with them in order to take that particular gang out. These plotlines stand alone, but eventually intertwine once you get towards the finale. There are over 30 story missions to play, and the range of tasks available is quite broad, from simple driving jobs to psyching out drivers so they trigger their defunct nitrous oxide systems, to taking out aeroplanes with rocket launchers. On top of the story missions, there is a number of stronghold missions, which are a bit of an expansion on the gang war concept from San Andreas. Players can’t just attack the story missions freely; they have to have enough respect points in their meter to trigger a mission (not unlike True Crime’s badge system).
This means having to complete a bunch of side missions to fill the meter in order to continue the story or take over more territories, which feels like a way of dragging the game out a little at times. The range of difficulty in the story missions is really wide; you’ll think at times that the game is a cakewalk (especially with the regenerative health and easy revival of your homies), and then you’ll get tossed into a really hard mission which may result in hair loss or thrown controllers. Action within Saints Row is of a high quality, thanks largely to some excellent weapons and a quality aiming system. Rocket launchers are standard fare in action games these days, but there’s a certain sense of extra oomph delivered in Saints Row when a rocket makes its way into a helicopter for massive damage. Players can be accompanied by up to three “homies” at any one time based on their respect – you can recruit gang members off the street, but special members will be available if you complete jobs and call them on your cell phone. Fire fights can get pretty hectic when you and your homies are fighting other gangs and police all at the same time with rockets and machine gun fire going everywhere.
Stilwater is the name of the city featured in Saints Row, and although it is not based on a real city, it is pieced together like your average city, with several different suburbs with their own distinct look, feel and population. It just so happens that each of the gangs in the city has an influence over each area; the Saints rule over a fairly slummy area, the Rollerz rule the suburbs and parts of the outer city, Los Carnales rule the industrial areas and ports, while the Vice Kings rule the projects and inner city. Unlike many of the other cities featured in sandbox games, Stilwater is not absurdly oversized, nor is it sparsely populated. That’s not to say that it isn’t a big place, and there are some parts of the city where few people roam, but it feels so much more alive than the cities in True Crime or Spider-Man 2.
The city itself is quite attractive, largely due to the fact that Volition has gone to a lot of trouble creating high resolution textures for all of the buildings and pathways, not to mention the excellent lighting effects which really help bring the game to life. There are some issues with texture pop-up and traffic/pedestrians mysteriously disappearing split seconds after you pass them – not exactly pleasant inclusions, but players will adjust to them. Interaction between the objects in the game and the environment is really impressive – the use of Havok physics gives the game a much more solid feeling. Pedestrians will fly into the air when you hit them at high speed, debris will fly everywhere when a car explodes, and you hardly ever see any clipping errors – these factors may seem rather insignificant, but it does give the feeling that we’re finally seeing some classic problems fixed by the new generation of hardware.
Next generation hardware can get pretty hot.
Like many other sandbox action games, Saints Row’s main method of transport is the humble automobile. Unfortunately, it’s the only method of getting around quickly – there are no motorbikes, bicycles, skateboards, boats, helicopters or any of that fancy stuff. One of the things that really cheesed us off about Saints Row is the way these vehicles handle – the weight and reliability is far too unpredictable. In one crash your car might stick to the ground, while in a perfect replication of that crash, the car might flip up, even if it doesn’t seem like that would happen. It’s pretty disappointing that developers continue to fail to understand the importance of vehicle physics in these games. The cars themselves look amazing, with nice shiny paint jobs and chroming effects. The detail from crashes is reasonably good in terms of denting and parts falling off the car (and even getting stuck in the wheels and effecting handling), but for some reason, a car’s paintwork can never get scratched or dirty. There is a fairly diverse range of vehicles in the city, with some unique cars rewarded to players for completing missions and side tasks.
There's also a fairly extensive car modification system available which will let players pimp their ride how they see fit. Multiple cars can be stored in the garage at your crib, but instead of popping in and out when you open the garage, you can chose your desired car from a menu, which prevents the problem of the disappearing car act we all loathed in San Andreas. Twelve radio stations are featured in the game – it’s good to see that a developer has finally realised that just having a good selection of licensed music is meaningless without some idle chatter and amusing commercials thrown in. Some of the jokes might be a little crass or cliché, but it’s better to have them than nothing at all. The music selection is quite diverse, from your regular East Coast and West Coast rap stations to classical compositions from Bach and Wagner. Another little neat feature is that the radio doesn’t turn off completely when you exit the car – it can still be heard from around the car.
There’s a lot to see and do in the city of Stilwater. Side missions tend to make up a lot of what players will be doing outside of the main story, since you need to complete them to build up respect to start other missions relevant to the story. They come in fairly distinct flavours – some are conventional, and a little boring, but others are completely off the wall, and an absolute ball to play. Racing missions are pretty self explanatory, but quite unforgiving, making them a bit of a chore. Chop Shop has players working for a mechanic who will ask you to find specific models of cars to bring back to the store – starting off with basic cars before going on to looking for imported cars with modifications and the like. Unlike the GTA equivalent of this mode, Saints Row will provide you with icons on the map to show you the location of the cars (if they are in your general vicinity), which makes it a little easier to digest when you’re chasing those last few cars. Demolition Derby is exactly what the name suggests – you get thrown in a dirt ring with a bunch of other cars and have to trash them. Unfortunately, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is, thanks to the game’s inconsistent vehicle physics.
Guest appearance from Master Shake?
Hostage missions are triggered when you carjack someone with a passenger, with your objective being to hold that passenger to ransom while keeping the car’s speed high enough for them not to escape while avoiding the police’s attempts to take you down – which can be quite exciting. Drug Trafficking involves the player being recruited by a dealer to ride shotgun with him while he delivers product to his clients. The player must protect the dealer from the police and rival gangs, which can become quite a handful on the later levels of the task. Going to strip clubs will trigger the Escort mission, where the player must act as the driver while the client and a stripper get up to naughty antics in the back seat. Why are you in a car? Well, the Paparazzi just happen to be tailing your car, looking for filth to put on the front page of tomorrow’s tabloid. In the Hitman missions, you will be hired by a gangster to take out a series of key witnesses in an upcoming trial. The witness’ basic location will be revealed to the player, and you will have to go to the location and take him down in the method prescribed. Pimps can be contacted for Snatch missions; that is stealing whores from other pimps and returning them safely. They tend not to let them go easily, so it’s good to blast them before you cop a pimp hand.
Mayhem has the player working for a rather sour divorcee, who is out for her husband’s money. Your job is to cause as much damage to vehicles, property and people as possible in the time provided – you even get bonuses for working to the lady’s specifications. Arguably, the best of these little side jobs is Insurance Fraud. Teaming up with an unscrupulous lawyer or a rather shady doctor, players will be asked to feign a series of injuries in order to get a big insurance settlement. There’s only one sure fire way to convince the court of your claims; play in traffic. By throwing yourself in front of passing vehicles, you’ll rack up insurance dollars, but if you have witnesses or hit a civic service vehicle, the claim will be multiplied. When you combine this mode with the game’s implementation of ragdoll physics, you’ve got a formula for hours of fun.
When fast food queues get ugly.
Side missions aren’t the only thing to do in the city. Players can shop ‘til they drop at the variety of stores for clothes & shoes, jewellery, guns, drugs, alcohol, cars and music. Dissatisfied with the store’s service? Rob them. By kicking down the back door and cracking the safe’s combination, players can get their mitts on the store’s cash, or even some stock to take to the local pawn broker. Other locations such as the plastic surgeon and tattoo artist will allow you to change everything regarding your character’s appearance, including his ethnicity. There’s a stack of other little gadgets accessible to your character which make cruising Stilwater quite fun. Satellite navigation is everywhere these days, and Saints Row is no exception, with the game’s navigation system displaying the fastest way to get to a waypoint based on your current location. Players have access to a cell phone which they can use to call various numbers that are found around the city for amusing messages, or for calling the police or ambulance when they’re needed. Music can also be played on your player’s portable music player at any time, provided you’ve bought the songs from the music store, or have loaded them from your Xbox 360’s hard drive.
Saints Row’s single player mode is fairly lengthy, and should last players for about 25 to 30 hours, but there’s also a multiplayer mode on top of that. It’s pretty cool that Volition has gone to the extra length of adding support for 12 players over Xbox Live, effectively beating Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto to the punch. There are four modes to play online which include Big Ass Chains (collect the chains from the players as you kill them and drop them off), Protect the Pimp (self explanatory), Gangsta Brawl (a deathmatch battle) and Blinged Out Ride (upgrade your vehicle as quickly as possible). Whilst you’re waiting for players to join the game you’re taken into an interactive lobby where you can shoot other players and warm up for the real game.
The game also includes co-op support, but it’s not quite as enjoyable as it first seems. The co-op mode seems like it has been thrown in at the last moment and you can only play two co-op missions which include mob rule and turbulence. In Mob Rule you need to carry boxes to a specific area whilst you’re being attacked. In Turbulence you need to race to the end of a level as fast as possible. There just aren’t enough co-op options for this mode to be all that enjoyable, but we wouldn’t be surprised if more were added later on in a downloadable mission pack. It’s worth noting that we also experienced some lag in multiplayer and often it felt like we were waiting for the game to connect for a decent five minutes, but a patch has just been released which would appear to fix these issues.
Saints Row doesn’t pretend to be original, and it isn’t without problems, but it does provide enough high quality gaming for players to overlook the game’s few shortcomings. It introduces a lot of cool little features while providing enough entertaining gameplay to keep players coming back for months to come.
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