While the original Saints Row had a tiny dash of realism thrown in to the mix at times, Saints Row 2 just abandoned it completely in favour of a cartoony, slightly surreal game. Seeing as SR was how it was, Volition knew that fun was the way forward, and, given any type of world and a set of weapons, players would try and destroy everything in sight.
Thus, the game doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t. Instead, it capitalises on the very fact that people just like to mess around and have a blast. Missions are still meaningful, mainly full of shooting and explosions but hey, that’s what we love and if it progresses the story at the same time I’m not complaining. There’s added humour, too, in the form of your gang lieutenants, who had me laughing out loud on several occasions. Only in Saints Row could you be shooting down helicopters whilst your gang buddy sings along to Ne-Yo in the car. One might think that all the shooting gets old, but it really doesn’t. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh, and whilst you’ll definitely get a sense of deja-vu here and there some clever mission structure will keep you guessing.
Throwing another person, a simple game mechanic, is something that’s always been a source of entertainment in SR2. If I see someone fishing on the pier I walk up behind them and throw them into the water, or if I’m taking a casual stroll on the top of Mount Clafflin and I see some other gent out admiring the scenery, I make sure he gets the best view…while plummeting to his death at 100 mph. I once used a helicopter to reach the top of the tallest building in the city and found people casually sitting around in the highest office. I broke a window, grabbed one of them a hurled them out – interestingly, I also received an achievement for this. Volition knew that if you give people high places and the ability to throw things, they’re going be entertaining themselves by hurling NPCs to their doom (i.e. by being assholes).
Activities return in SR2 as the main way to earn respect, bringing back old favourites whilst introducing a slew of new ones for you to do. Insurance Fraud returns and is as good as ever – it’s not as easy as in Saints Row, but it’s more rewarding, with a couple of new game mechanics to mix things up. Two of my favourite additions – Septic Avenger and Fuzz - are available. The first has you – believe it or not – spraying parts of the city with raw sewage in an attempt to lower property prices, while the latter allows you to dress up as a Police Officer and take down criminals for a reality television series (a parody of COPS, if you’re unfamiliar with American TV). Fuzz is the most tongue-in-cheek, sometimes asking you to break up “the battle of the century”; once you arrive, you’ll be encountered with Pirates fighting Ninjas. These, along with Insurance Fraud, make up possibly the best three distractions ever to be introduced to a sandbox game (in my humble opinion).
In SR2 the respect system is expanded past activities and gang kills to the point where pretty much anything you do earns respect, from running people over, performing stunts in your car, base jumping…you name it, you probably earn points from it. The game is essentially keeping score of all the crazy stuff you do, so anything from car stunts to shooting people in the nuts rewards you with respect.
Diversions are also introduced in SR2, and would be immediately familiar to anyone that’s touched a GTA game. Get in a taxi, for example, and you’ll be able to ferry people around – you know the drill. However, SR2 adds to this in weird and wonderful ways, such as a diversion for skydiving. Upon jumping out of an aircraft and opening your parachute you’ll be prompted to start the diversion, which will paint a target on the ground (one of your parked gang cars). Landing close to the target rewards you with respect, whilst landing on the gang car rewards you with no fall damage. That’s right, you can jump from as high up as you want and when you splat on the ground you’ll be fine. It actually added a new dimension to my pursuits in throwing people, where I could chuck them off buildings and then jump after them.
SR2 ticks the “cheats and secrets” boxes, too. A healthy list of cheats are available for players to use, naturally disabling achievements/trophies and the like so you can’t cheat your way to a bigger e-penis. They are great for messing around though and are reminiscent of the variety in San Andreas, changing the environment rather than solely spawning new vehicles or weapons. Similarly there’s an extensive list of secrets, from strange islands scattered around the coasts of Stilwater to hidden areas in the city. You can explore the developer offices, check out a cave dedicated to Volition or even make a giant bunny rise from the sea. Crazy.
I could talk for hours and hours about the Saints Row games and why I love them so much. To me, they’re a breath of fresh air in a genre gone stale. There are the GTA games and then all the other games trying to be GTA, with no real innovations of their own. Saints Row is a classic example of situation where the imitation is better than the imitated, ballsily (it’s word, honest) copying aspects of GTA but cutting out what doesn’t work and introducing new gameplay mechanics of its own. The number of times I’ve thought “How come GTA never included this?” far outweighs the number of times “this copies GTA!”.
Rockstar did try to put the fun back into GTA by releasing two episodes for GTAIV, titled The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Have these made up for past sins? By most counts, they have indeed. Whilst everyone has their favourite out of the two, TBoGT stands out as trying the hardest to go back on the mistakes (yes, they are mistakes) of GTAIV. Missions are fun, over-the-top and part of a much more exciting storyline than Niko’s outing in Liberty City. Vehicle-wise, cannon-wielding APCs and heavily-armed helicopters are the order of the day, with Luis (the guy you play as) sporting impressive weapons (think automatic shotgun with explosive rounds).
Interestingly, this seems like a bit of role reversal, with Rockstar taking a leaf out of Volition’s book in how they crafted SR2, alongside remembering and injecting the fun that used to be present in GTA games. Hopefully the inevitable sequel remains the same and uses TBoGT as a grounding, instead of GTAIV.
For me, though, there’s no competition – SR2 is the best sandbox game out there at the moment. Until Saints Row 3 is released you can find me at my crib, sporting purple and proudly playing SR2. With strippers. Probably.
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