Saint's Row 2 Standing Tall
When the first Saints Row was released I got nothing but the same mindless comments from people online and even some of my own friends about the game, they mainly pointed at the fact that Saints Row looks similar to that of GTA and it is just a clone, well I got the game and how wrong they were, the trait unfortunately carries over to saints row 2, but in the end its all talk.
Saint's Row 2 has a rather cartoony look to it despite the realistic gang war reality, Though this creates a much brighter and colourful game, You could also say it has a black comedy to it, People die, Personal wars flame out but you are left with a rather comical set of characters in the end, This sets a nice relaxed tone to the game and lets you relate to characters much more easily. Having a game character that is serious 24/7 implies that he has no emotion, I personally cannot relate to that as well.
Because of the slight cartoon look, the graphics aren't bad as such but they don't step up to the same level as some of today’s high standards, Think of it like bugs bunny with an AK47. With this said the graphics stand well in this style of game and I do believe it is more towards the style they were going for. The visuals for the explosions and the fire is really nice and rather satisfy, when you start getting immersed in the HD of today things look good, At one point I started trying to roast marshmallows on the fire I had created on a cop car.
They have improved a lot from the first also; the first improvement is the sheer amount of customizable items, including your gang. You start off by creating your character and the amount of custom sliders is overwhelming, for those that crave a truly unique character, they will be in heaven playing with the sliders as you create the biggest monstrosity known to man! When you get your first 'crib' you can start shelling out cash to upgrade the pad in general or define smaller objects within, you can get HD TV’s, a new double bed, pool tables, even a stripper pole!
Although all this sounds great, it's rather short lived as you find that you cannot place these objects yourself and you cant customize as such but rather just upgrade to something the game has preset for you, but its a nice touch as most games wouldn’t let you do this at all. Other customizable objects include the gang itself, you can make your saints dress in sporty, pimp, smart and gangster clothes, this is also nice since it creates the feel that YOU as the player created your own gang, later on you can unlock more and even unlock ninjas at one point, need I say more?
So, If you are the type of person who likes to customize their games you're going to enjoy this, I haven’t even scraped what is customizable, however the main great thing about this game is the amount of activities to do, I would be sitting here for a long while as I label them but streaking, flashing, drive by, skydiving, car surfing are just a few of the activities that await you, This game has great ideas and things you wish you could do you usually find you can do, its just a matter of exploring and going through.
When roaming around you notice some minor slow down at heavy gang war sections and sometimes when explosions are going off around you it can really bog the game down, but otherwise the frame rate keeps fairly high. The biggest flaw this game has is the sheer amount of glitches, play for five minutes and you have a good chance of experiencing something glitchy, the glitches range from people half in the ground, floating foliage, you falling UNDER the level, people appearing and disappearing... it all happens a bit too frequently.
With this said the actual game excels at drawing your attention away from this, the amount of things you can do and interact with will soon make you forget the little inconveniences however they will still be there gnawing at you, for example you could be playing a mission and halfway through you fall through the level causing you to restart from the begging, this can get annoying but its not difficult to forgive the game until it happens again, its like a dog chasing its tail. All in all Saints row 2 is a rather fun game it wont take you long to boom through the main story if that’s what you want but there is plenty more to do once the story is done, this should keep you occupied for some time, think of it as GTA's much more whacky brother with lesser graphics and physics but a hell load more content.
-Mk
