Saints Row 2?

[QuadDamage2k]

Just got this game. It's not GTA 4, I'll tell you that much.

It is like GTA3 with better looking visuals. It's all gang related. It has some fun side mission and everything runs off respect. The driving system is pure shit, if you compare it to GTA 4. The cars can take alot of damage and do hairpin turns like nothing. It's very adult. You can whore yourself out and other things. The story so far isn't bad. You auto heal and most people die in 1 or 2 shots if your good.

It's not worth $39.99


Check it out from a friend or when it comes on sale.


I would give it a 7 just for the fun factor, but just don't think it's going to one up GTA 4 it doesn't.

Game runs smooth on my system, but mine is a bit better then most

 

[coldmeat]

I have it for the 360 and had a lot of fun playing it. Probably some of the most fun I've ever had on my 360.

You can't compare it to GTAIV, and you shouldn't. Saints Row and GTA have gone in two different directions.

 

[AlgaeEater]

I got it for the PC on release day and just finished it myself.

Overall impressions are pretty mixed. As a person who never played a GTA like game outside of GTA II back in the days, it's ok. One of the major selling points was how the game allows you to customize this and that and honestly, this was GROSSLY exaggerated. If you ever played a game called City of Heroes / City of Villains on the PC, that's an excellent example of design freedom with your character design and look. Being a PC gamer spoils you in this regard, since a lot of PC games have fan mods or official modding tools such as in Oblivion and Fallout 3, its easy to nit-pick.

Performance was way below par for a PC as my own, but playable. It definitely was not optimized in the slightest, so negative points for that. The voice acting was done pretty well, not GTA star quality well, but ok none the less. Pierce was probably my favorite character and voice actor of the entire game.

What else can I say? A lot of the missions feel repetitive, the weapons aren't very diverse (No point in using older variants of weapons), and there's not really much re-playability unless you like the side games. Story length was pretty decent, but not entirely too long.

In the end though I had enough fun with it, I guess I was just expecting so much since people on the Xbox gave it such glowing reviews. Probably spoiled it through hype I guess. I don't know where I'm really going with all of this, the whole thing really did just feel like a 7 out of 10 as QuadDamage2k said. Finished the game and now life goes on, I guess.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: coldmeat
I have it for the 360 and had a lot of fun playing it. Probably some of the most fun I've ever had on my 360.

You can't compare it to GTAIV, and you shouldn't. Saints Row and GTA have gone in two different directions.

Same here. 360 version and I shelved GTA4 after getting SR2. It just a much better and more fun game to play. GTA4 took it too seriously and got very boring. I have no interest in the PC version as I am sure its a very buggy port. Seriously, some games should not be ported to the PC. I only play games that are MADE for the PC, ports are becoming so common that PC only games are becoming scarce.

 

[Maximilian]

I just got it for the 360 and its a lot of fun. It takes some of the tried and true but still piss annoying things about GTA and gets rid of them, no longer will you have to hunt for a hotdog or look for burger stands to heal your gunshot wounds as health regenerates, no longer will you have to resort to using the autoaim to tell you where enemies are as they can be seen pretty clearly for the most part. Aha and probably the smartest thing, no more failing a mission because the stupid fucking AI friend dies... the amount of times phil bell died on that warehouse coke run against the russians in GTA IV was ridiculous "cover me nico" he would yell then run in and die 5 secs later. You can revive downed comrades in SR2, like gears of war. Also the friend AI is smarter. So you need 3 hoes and the car only holds 1 hoe? No problem! The other two hoes can drive and will take an empty car and follow your car! Clever stuff.

I havent gotten that far yet but its got a lot of fun elements, throwing people, human shield, that gun with grenade launcher and infinite ammo that looks like the pulse rifle from aliens you get for mission 2 or 3, you cant keep it but its still a blast to play around with. The only thing i miss is the car damage detail in GTA IV, it was really nicely done in. Also GTA IV has slightly better physics as pushing cars out of the way can be a pain in SR2. Not to say the physics in SR2 are bad theyre great, its just cars dont have the same weight they do in GTA IV. Oh also the radio station "mix" is awesome!! Its just like flashback fm from GTA III (which almost entirely used the soundtrack from the movie scarface) or wave 103 from vice city, GTA IV never really had a great 80's station as the rock station only had a couple of good 80's songs.

If you liked GTA IV you should probably like SR2, if you liked GTA III/VC/SA then you will almost definately like SR2.

 

[Billyzeke]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
I just got it for the 360 and its a lot of fun. It takes some of the tried and true but still piss annoying things about GTA and gets rid of them, no longer will you have to hunt for a hotdog or look for burger stands to heal your gunshot wounds as health regenerates, no longer will you have to resort to using the autoaim to tell you where enemies are as they can be seen pretty clearly for the most part. Aha and probably the smartest thing, no more failing a mission because the stupid fucking AI friend dies... the amount of times phil bell died on that warehouse coke run against the russians in GTA IV was ridiculous "cover me nico" he would yell then run in and die 5 secs later. You can revive downed comrades in SR2, like gears of war. Also the friend AI is smarter. So you need 3 hoes and the car only holds 1 hoe? No problem! The other two hoes can drive and will take an empty car and follow your car! Clever stuff.

I havent gotten that far yet but its got a lot of fun elements, throwing people, human shield, that gun with grenade launcher and infinite ammo that looks like the pulse rifle from aliens you get for mission 2 or 3, you cant keep it but its still a blast to play around with. The only thing i miss is the car damage detail in GTA IV, it was really nicely done in. Also GTA IV has slightly better physics as pushing cars out of the way can be a pain in SR2. Not to say the physics in SR2 are bad theyre great, its just cars dont have the same weight they do in GTA IV. Oh also the radio station "mix" is awesome!! Its just like flashback fm from GTA III (which almost entirely used the soundtrack from the movie scarface) or wave 103 from vice city, GTA IV never really had a great 80's station as the rock station only had a couple of good 80's songs.

If you liked GTA IV you should probably like SR2, if you liked GTA III/VC/SA then you will almost definately like SR2.

Sounds good. I'll have to get this!

 

[ShawnD1]

I just played this game at a friend's house. Honestly, no joke, I give this game a 0/10.

If you thought GTA 4 was released as a beta, you haven't seen Saint's Row 2. They somehow managed to make it perform even worse than GTA 4. You need a quad core if you want to get more than 20fps. Another problem is that the menus are not controlled with your mouse. You use the left ctrl key to scroll right and the shift key to scroll left then drop down with the up and down keys. It's a bloody mess. To top it all off, the driving is basically impossible. If you simply tap the keyboard to steer left or right, you're immediately out of control. GTA 4 felt like driving tanks that under steer; Saint's Row goes the opposite way and makes them over steer which is arguably a hell of a lot worse.

This game is absolutely unplayable. Another person posted a similar review it on metacritic, and I agree with him completely.
metacritic

Danny G gave it a4:
I played SR2 for a while shortly after buying it off of steam and came across 3 problems. Problem 1: The game does not like my Saitek keyboard. This is the only application I have run across that thinks that one of my keys is stuck. The menu looked like a slot machine cycling over and over again and my character had the sudden urge to run off once I got started. After unplugging the usb connection and reconnecting it a few times I can occasionally get it to work. Vista and Fallout 3 don't share the same issues. Problem 2: The game lag. Running on an AMD Turion 64 at 2.21 ghz with a gForce Go 7600 and 4 gigs of ram is defiantly not enough for all that is going on in the game. Even after all of the effects are off and lowest settings are chosen, game play is very jumpy. Don't plan on buying it unless you have a very good graphics card with DX10 to fully benefit. Problem 3: Keyboard driving. If you like the mouse and keyboard setup, don't bother. Tapping the directional driving key to go left makes you veer out of your lane, across the opposing lane and right onto the side walk. This affect is increased as speed is increased. I'm guessing Violation didn't test this thoroughly but there are reports that there are plans to fix this issue in the future with patches. Other thoughts: The over all story seems interesting and the fact you can do basically whatever without the game telling you "NO!" and swatting you with a news paper is quite refreshing. There is even the possibility for a cross dressing gangster nitch if you see fit. I'm hoping with future patches and fixes this game will meet my initial expectations before playing.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
I just played this game at a friend's house. Honestly, no joke, I give this game a 0/10.

If you thought GTA 4 was released as a beta, you haven't seen Saint's Row 2. They somehow managed to make it perform even worse than GTA 4. You need a quad core if you want to get more than 20fps. Another problem is that the menus are not controlled with your mouse. You use the left ctrl key to scroll right and the shift key to scroll left then drop down with the up and down keys. It's a bloody mess. To top it all off, the driving is basically impossible. If you simply tap the keyboard to steer left or right, you're immediately out of control. GTA 4 felt like driving tanks that under steer; Saint's Row goes the opposite way and makes them over steer which is arguably a hell of a lot worse.

This game is absolutely unplayable. Another person posted a similar review it on metacritic, and I agree with him completely.
metacritic

Danny G gave it a4:
I played SR2 for a while shortly after buying it off of steam and came across 3 problems. Problem 1: The game does not like my Saitek keyboard. This is the only application I have run across that thinks that one of my keys is stuck. The menu looked like a slot machine cycling over and over again and my character had the sudden urge to run off once I got started. After unplugging the usb connection and reconnecting it a few times I can occasionally get it to work. Vista and Fallout 3 don't share the same issues. Problem 2: The game lag. Running on an AMD Turion 64 at 2.21 ghz with a gForce Go 7600 and 4 gigs of ram is defiantly not enough for all that is going on in the game. Even after all of the effects are off and lowest settings are chosen, game play is very jumpy. Don't plan on buying it unless you have a very good graphics card with DX10 to fully benefit. Problem 3: Keyboard driving. If you like the mouse and keyboard setup, don't bother. Tapping the directional driving key to go left makes you veer out of your lane, across the opposing lane and right onto the side walk. This affect is increased as speed is increased. I'm guessing Violation didn't test this thoroughly but there are reports that there are plans to fix this issue in the future with patches. Other thoughts: The over all story seems interesting and the fact you can do basically whatever without the game telling you "NO!" and swatting you with a news paper is quite refreshing. There is even the possibility for a cross dressing gangster nitch if you see fit. I'm hoping with future patches and fixes this game will meet my initial expectations before playing.

But the GAME is great. The port is a POS.

 

[AlgaeEater]

Oyeve sums it up best I assume, since I never got to play the console version.

 

[hans030390]

What Oyeve said.