It's over the top and entirely rediculous, but thats it's charm.
Pros
Cons
Saints Row 2 takes place many years after the original.
In case you didn't play, well at the end you were blown up.
So in prison they give you plastic surgery which sets up the games pretty extensive character creation mode.
Theres a billion little sliders you can tweak in order to make a totally unique character.
You be male or female or something in between.
Can choose from various taunts and compliments, which far as I can see don't do much other then kind of look funny but it's still neat.
Can pick from a few different voices and you can put male voices on female characters and the reverse is also true, which could make for some humorous moments.
So the story can pretty much be summed up with you're trying to rebuild the Saints and take over the city, which gives you an excuse to jack cars - beat up old ladies and generally cause some mayhem.
The missions for the most part are of a "go here and blow this up" or "go here and kill those guys" nature, but occasionally things get mixed up for some variety. For example in a couple of the Ronin missions theres a neat, sword fighting mini game.
In fact theres a lot of mini games in Saints Row 2.
Theres kind of two classes of mini games I guess.
Theres activities. Some of which return from the original, for example Insurance Fraud which has you chucking yourself in front of vehicles to reach a specified dollar goal or Mayhem which well... Has you cause Mayhem by pretty much killing everything and blowing up everything within a specified area.
There are also new activities like Fight Club which I guess is pretty self explanatory.
And Fuzz which casts you as a cop on a "reality" show who solves a variety of crimes in terrifically violent ways. You might blasting a dude with a flame thrower for littering crosses some sort of line, but damn if it wasn't fun.
And then theres diversions, which are just sort of on the spot things you can do.
Like streaking. If you take off all your clothes and press the button to activate the diversion you can streak and try to get seen by as many people as possible. Or vehicle surfing. Where you stand on top of a car and try to maintain balance as it cruises along it's merry way.
Theres a tonne of things to do, so if you don't like one diversion or activities theres probably another that will suit you.
And all of this is doable Coop.
Missions. Activities. All of it.
Some activities are even altered slightly with the addition of another player, which is kind of neat.
The best thing about Co-op is in my mind that it's doable over System Link.
I'm always raving on about how local Co-op sometimes appears to be a dying thing with a lot of games focusing solely on pleasing the online masses, but it pleases me greatly that Saints Row 2 allows System Link.
Now a few things before I wrap up.
The game looks good to me.
It's no GTAIV, but it's an improvement over the original and it still looks fine.
Theres a tonne of good voice acting and audio work, except perhaps in some of the guns.
Especially I think the sub-machine guns. They often don't sound so.. Hot. They sound kind of like toy guns, there doesn't feel like theres much impact in those shots.
But the rest of the audio is pretty top notch.
Will note that your character has a "favourite song" that if it appears on the radio he'll start singing along too. Badly. It's hilarious and you get an achievement for it, which is neat.
For the record mine was singing "The Final Countdown" was hilarious.
The controls are pretty solid.
Cars have added cruise control which can make drive-bys quite a lot easier.
Some people have complained that the cars feel too floaty. They are a bit. And they're pretty prone to flipping out through the sky in ridiculous fashion. But in my book that's just part of the games charm.
That's the best thing about this game.
It doesn't take itself seriously.
A character might die in the middle of a cut scene, but a great deal of the impact is lost when you're in that cut scene dressed in a hot dog suit. It's pure, unadulterated fun and in a world where many games are going for having a dark world of greys and browns and being all grim and serious Saints Row offers something quite different to all that.
To quote or perhaps merely paraphrase something I read in Australias Official Xbox Magazine - GTA IV raised the bar, Saints Row 2 takes that bar - holds it against it's pelvis and pretends it's a dick. And thats just fine!
- A juvenile sense of humor. This might be a con in your books, but I'm all for some dick and fart jokes.
- A fully fleshed out co-op experience with LOCAL MULTIPLAYER.
- Over the top cut scenes with plenty of call backs to the original Saints Row.
- Over the top action.
Cons
- Occasional glitches, some that can get you stuck inside specific places in the environment. For example I got stuck INSIDE some train tracks.
- No talk radio is a major downer.
Saints Row 2 takes place many years after the original.
In case you didn't play, well at the end you were blown up.
So in prison they give you plastic surgery which sets up the games pretty extensive character creation mode.
Theres a billion little sliders you can tweak in order to make a totally unique character.
You be male or female or something in between.
Can choose from various taunts and compliments, which far as I can see don't do much other then kind of look funny but it's still neat.
Can pick from a few different voices and you can put male voices on female characters and the reverse is also true, which could make for some humorous moments.
So the story can pretty much be summed up with you're trying to rebuild the Saints and take over the city, which gives you an excuse to jack cars - beat up old ladies and generally cause some mayhem.
The missions for the most part are of a "go here and blow this up" or "go here and kill those guys" nature, but occasionally things get mixed up for some variety. For example in a couple of the Ronin missions theres a neat, sword fighting mini game.
In fact theres a lot of mini games in Saints Row 2.
Theres kind of two classes of mini games I guess.
Theres activities. Some of which return from the original, for example Insurance Fraud which has you chucking yourself in front of vehicles to reach a specified dollar goal or Mayhem which well... Has you cause Mayhem by pretty much killing everything and blowing up everything within a specified area.
There are also new activities like Fight Club which I guess is pretty self explanatory.
And Fuzz which casts you as a cop on a "reality" show who solves a variety of crimes in terrifically violent ways. You might blasting a dude with a flame thrower for littering crosses some sort of line, but damn if it wasn't fun.
And then theres diversions, which are just sort of on the spot things you can do.
Like streaking. If you take off all your clothes and press the button to activate the diversion you can streak and try to get seen by as many people as possible. Or vehicle surfing. Where you stand on top of a car and try to maintain balance as it cruises along it's merry way.
Theres a tonne of things to do, so if you don't like one diversion or activities theres probably another that will suit you.
And all of this is doable Coop.
Missions. Activities. All of it.
Some activities are even altered slightly with the addition of another player, which is kind of neat.
The best thing about Co-op is in my mind that it's doable over System Link.
I'm always raving on about how local Co-op sometimes appears to be a dying thing with a lot of games focusing solely on pleasing the online masses, but it pleases me greatly that Saints Row 2 allows System Link.
Now a few things before I wrap up.
The game looks good to me.
It's no GTAIV, but it's an improvement over the original and it still looks fine.
Theres a tonne of good voice acting and audio work, except perhaps in some of the guns.
Especially I think the sub-machine guns. They often don't sound so.. Hot. They sound kind of like toy guns, there doesn't feel like theres much impact in those shots.
But the rest of the audio is pretty top notch.
Will note that your character has a "favourite song" that if it appears on the radio he'll start singing along too. Badly. It's hilarious and you get an achievement for it, which is neat.
For the record mine was singing "The Final Countdown" was hilarious.
The controls are pretty solid.
Cars have added cruise control which can make drive-bys quite a lot easier.
Some people have complained that the cars feel too floaty. They are a bit. And they're pretty prone to flipping out through the sky in ridiculous fashion. But in my book that's just part of the games charm.
That's the best thing about this game.
It doesn't take itself seriously.
A character might die in the middle of a cut scene, but a great deal of the impact is lost when you're in that cut scene dressed in a hot dog suit. It's pure, unadulterated fun and in a world where many games are going for having a dark world of greys and browns and being all grim and serious Saints Row offers something quite different to all that.
To quote or perhaps merely paraphrase something I read in Australias Official Xbox Magazine - GTA IV raised the bar, Saints Row 2 takes that bar - holds it against it's pelvis and pretends it's a dick. And thats just fine!
