Saints Row 2 is out now on PC in the US, both at retail and on Steam. It doesn’t reach Europe until the 30th January. The delay is apparently due to localisation, which seems odd for a months old console game. I’ve had a copy for a while now, and below is Wot I Think of the single player game. We’ll take a look at the multiplayer once the game arrives in Europe.
It had me with the shit-spraying. Of the very many non-story tasks available in the sandbox world, the one that made me realise I love this revolting game was the septic tank challenge. I was tasked to reduce the property prices of an area for a corrupt real estate agent by coating the buildings, the cars and the people in gallons of faeces. The police keep coming, and I kept splattering them in the brown stuff until their cars careered of the road, and the officers lay drowned in the crap. Enough damage racked up, the challenge was complete, and offered me level 2. Then 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Saints Row 2 is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a GTA clone. There’s no escaping it, there’s no point pretending otherwise. From the driving to the narrative structure, from the animation as you pull someone from their car to glowing mission markers on the streets, the most generous, non-litigious word you could use would be “tribute”. However, there’s two reasons why this doesn’t matter. First, it’s really good. Second, while it lacks the conviction and emotional complexity of Rockstar’s GTA IV, in many ways it’s a hell of a lot more fun.
It’s also a sequel, of course, but to a game that never saw an appearance on PC. It’s surprising how much the story tries to pick up where the previous game left off, especially when there’s absolutely no need for this to be the case. The first Saints Row distinguished itself (and barely) from GTA with the gangs. Rather than playing your way through a single narrative, instead you played through a series of narratives as you take territory for the Saints Row gang from the other rivals in the city of Stillwater. At the end of that story, your character finds him or herself in a coma. Years have since passed, and now your character wakes again.
Which is problematic, since SR2 begins with one of the most fantastic character creators I’ve seen. Finally City of Heroes has been bested. The freedom you have to create your character is extraordinary, but more impressive is that no matter how hard you try your result is going to look like a sketchy character. Mine is a slightly overweight, almost-pretty Latino girl, with a dodgy hair dye. She’s believable. Of course, she has nothing in common with the character I played that time I previewed Saints Row.
You begin, after waking from your coma, by busting out of jail. Once free the next task is to rescue your former boss from the courthouse where he’s about to be sentenced to death for hundreds of murders. The solution? Kill everyone in the court building (including the judge if you choose to go back and get her). Once he’s recovered, together you take over a new base – an underground, run-down hotel. From this base of operations you once again begin the process of taking back the city’s territory for the Saints.
However, there’s a just extraordinary amount of freedom. Not only are there three separate stories to work through, in any order you wish, but there’s dozens of mindless side-games that will earn you money and respect, the latter used to open up more gang missions. These are multi-stage tasks that invariably involve doing something extremely childish: setting yourself on fire and trying to burn as many people as you can, in a checkpointed race; helping doctors commit insurance fraud by throwing yourself in front of as many cars as you can in a time limit; and of course spraying districts in shit.
Of course, much of the game is about driving, and oddly it’s here that SR2 is at its weakest. The controls themselves for the game are a mess, with more options required than I could comfortably fit onto my 360 controller. Going to mouse and keyboard, I was then infuriated to find it doesn’t recognise the fourth and fifth mouse buttons, and while you can program something to the middle button, the game will then refer to it as, “Press to open door.” This scrappy porting feels at its worst when driving, the cars steering in peculiar increments with the keyboard controls, rather than smoothly turning as you’d obviously hope. It takes some getting used to, and while it’s serviceable, it’s never enormously satisfying. Different cars handle extremely differently, which is in many ways a good thing – it gives you that correct desire to get the fastest, sleekest vehicles – but with the twitchy steering getting too fast can just be uncontrollable. Then there are problems with lag. Despite having a fairly decent machine, I was having to ration the graphics settings to get something in which I could steer before corners were memories, without playing in a washed out world. Not really good enough.
On foot you’ve got a decent amount of sprint, and with the mouse you’ve obviously got a big advantage when aiming. Strangely, I found myself more comfortable out of the cars a lot of the time, and the game seems to know this. Most of the story missions put their emphasis on indoor sequences, or using cars for minimal transport between bouts of murder. And this really is about murder. There’s none of GTA IV’s sentimentality or imaginative justification for your actions. This is no-holds, all-out butchering. It’s the game the Daily Mail thinks GTA is. In fact, I’ve a feeling it’s the game that’s trying incredibly hard to make sure to be that.
It’s astonishingly immature. This occasionally bubbles over into the unpleasant, especially with some of the jokes referring to race and sexuality. However, it’s oddly toned down since the first game’s rather desperate attempts to be controversial. You’re no longer bombarded by shrieked jokes about their burger joints being called “Freckled Bitches”. Instead they’re just shouted a bit. Cars mechanics work at Rim Jobs, there’s a women’s clothing store called On The Rag. You shouldn’t be expecting anything smart.
However, despite all this the writing is often superb, and the performances are almost all fantastic. Cutscenes are invariably a pleasure to watch, even if they are seemingly based on a fourteen year-old’s understanding of how gang culture might work. This same childishness extends to many details. When decorating your private crib, in one corner you have a pile of boxes. The upgrade options read in order:
Boxes
Nice desk
Stripper pole
Idiotic. But this is a game that celebrates everything you do. Have a crash and fly through your windscreen, and the game will boast how far you travelled, and whether it’s a personal record. It self-references throughout, most impressively during the Fuzz minigame. In a spoof of Cops, you are dressed as a police officer and accompanied by a camera man, asked to deal with various crimes in a way that will gain enough ratings. So you gun down litterers, slaughter old ladies driving too slowly in their cars, launch rocket attacks at skateboarders, or baseball bat your way through a queue for an ice cream van. But some of the arrests you’ll have to make feel very familiar. Someone’s spraying sewerage over the town, someone else is setting people on fire, another is committing insurance fraud.
This unrelenting stupidity is the game’s success. While I’ve struggled to stomach the brutality of other games in this genre, somehow the crazed, sociopathic dispassionate nature of SR2 runs straight through the wall of taste and out the other side. That twinge of guilt you get when you run someone down by mistake in GTA is never present here. Here you aim for each and every one of them, knowing that the lackadaisical police will likely not care at all. This is SR2’s other masterstroke – while you can get yourself stars for illegal actions, they’re pretty hard to come by despite some of the abhorrent acts you might aim to do, and they’re easily cleared. Where GTA has the mechanics who’ll respray your car to get the cops off your back, you have to reach them without accompanying blue lights. Here they could follow you through the drive-thru forgiveness buildings and it wouldn’t matter. In fact, if you’ve got heat on your tail, just start a side quest and, ping!, they disappear. It’s ridiculous, but it sums up the game entirely: SR2 puts having fun far ahead of realism or conviction.
The cartoonish design is possibly the factor that keeps this outside of grotesque. Well, that’s not true – it IS grotesque, but the cartoon stops you from having to find a priest for absolution each time you play.
Stillwater is a huge, elaborate city, amazingly detailed and extremely destructible. Carving your own route through backyards and trailer parks is fun. It would have been better if it weren’t designed to run at full spec on super-computers from the future, as it seems the PC should be able to emulate the 360 without having to strain. And if the steering were smoothed out, there’d be less frustration as you explored it.
However, it’s still a ludicrously good time, with a motherload of things to do. Be fully aware that this is about as stupid and immature as a game can get, and blimey, you’ll enjoy yourself.
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Personally I loved GTA IV’s more serious approach and I definitely got caught up in the narrative. Maybe it was a bit melodramatic at times but a lot of good gangster stories are. Of course it’s not for everybody, my brother-in-law plays like a complete psychopath so the tonal shifts from his style of playing to the stories tone are quite jarring, and that’s why it’s great that there are games like Saints Row. Not my cup of tea but I certainly see the appeal but I hope Rockstar keep going in the direction they are headed.
A buddy put it best:
“Saints Row 2 is great because it’s GTA, except GTAyer.“
Face, I’d say with a decent spec machine you’ll be fine. I was disappointed by how low I had to set things on my computer, but then Alec had no problems at all. However, it’s such a stupidly fun time I ended up not caring about the lighting effects so much.
Angel – I agree. I’ve appreciated but never loved a GTA game before IV. IV let me sympathy, if not empathy, with the character I was playing. In previous GTA games I’ve wanted to shoot the guy I’m controlling far more than his targets. Somehow SR2 goes so far beyond trying to let you care that I found myself enjoying it for it.
If Volition bring out a performance patch, I’ll buy it. If they bring out a performance patch before Rockstar does for GTA IV, I’ll buy Saints Row 3 no matter how it turns out.
At what point did developers decide that goodwill towards the playerbase counted for nothing?
I have to agree with the HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE PORT, DON’T BUY group. GTA4 is still worse, but that’s not saying much, sadly.
Angel – I agree. I’ve appreciated but never loved a GTA game before IV. IV let me sympathy, if not empathy, with the character I was playing.
Same here – it is the first GTA that has really grabbed me. I am still at a total loss what the “fun” is people claim to miss in GTA IV, but have found in the previous ones. It’s a better story with better characters, with the core mechanics driving and shooting significantly improved.
As for Saint’s Row – I’ve watched a few trailers, and I don’t think it’s for me, really.
The first Saints Row stars an almost completely customizable character also, it’s just they didn’t have female options. Or a voice. (And the SR2 editor’s probably better, I’ve only played the first.) My character’s an obese Asian guy with blue dreadlocks. And a goatee, as I recall.
I have the chief of police as my homie.
Together me and him fight the otaku street gang.
How is the multiplayer? What kind of game modes does it have?
Unclelou – I am still at a total loss what the “fun” is people claim to miss in GTA IV
While the story in GTAIV is top-notch, the missions leave a lot to be desired. Halfway through, and every one involves killing someone with minor variations (are they surrounded by four walls and a gang of thugs, or a car?), or driving somewhere. The preceding PC GTA featured burglarizing a military base with a forklift, burning down a weed field, stealing police bikes and storing them on a moving transport, and piloting remote-control aircraft through an RTS-alike. Those are the boring missions. Contrast with the homogenity of IV’s gameplay, and it seems a disappointing failure of imagination even with the ambitious storytelling and mechanics.
So I’m another what bought Saints Row 2 for PC (thanks, RPS… and Yahtzee). I’d agree with the crappy porting* – this game has a boatload of ridiculous problems stemming from outright drunken playtesting. Still, when you get it running (hint: gamepads bad), it’s chock full of ridiculous fun, and incorporates all the best elements of the GTAIII series inexplicably left out of GTAIV. I’ve just got to find a way to make the cars less sensitive – SR2 is ripped to the tits on PCP, and it’s gone straight to the driving controls.
*Still a better port than GTAIV, though it’s far, far lazier. The problems with the SR2 port really do seem to be laziness or drunkenness, while the other has problems that go far deeper.
I’ll happily put the res and detail to zero so long as I can get a decent framerate and a good draw distance. My computer: Intel C2D e6400, 4gb RAM, 8800gts 640mb.
Good enough? It ran GTAIV with 3/4 draw distance, all bars minimum, but no slowdown to speak of.
Oh yea. And did not like GTAIV. San Andreas, on the other hand, is my favourite game.
We have Saints Row 2 at home on the PS3. Its the most fun I have had in a game this year, even including WoW. (Except for that bit where I played some Deus Ex with that texture pack)
The thing about Saints Row 2 is that I could jump right in and start exploring the entire city. I could steal a car, a motorbike, a boat or a helicopter and start mini games of awesome fun straight away. GTA 4? The city is closed off, the fighting in cinematics is completely different to the game play.
In Saint Row 2 I had fun pulling up parking meters and chasing down pedestrians and enemy gang members. I got to run over pimps and surf on cars. GTA 4? The very first time you have to beat up those guys beating on your cousin, the melee mechanics were so dreadful I turned off the game and never went back to its dark and dingy world and entered the colourful and fun world of Stillwater.
Its even fun to watch some one else play. Especially my house mate. She has a pommy geezer in a pink dress, high heels and a tiara. And that makes the cut scenes cool.
And damn if the missions aren’t fun too. even of the PC port has problems, I’d go with it over GTA4 any time. The immature, gangsta silliness is part of the charm. If I wanted some serious story I’d watch a damn movie. I just want to play being a mean gangsta in the silliest way possible, in a city where airport security is left to the citizen : )
I ended up settling on using a gamepad for the driving sections and the mouse/key for everything else.
Stupid Fun FTW.
If you’re still not convinced, one of the gang leaders is voice by Worf. Come on.
While the story in GTAIV is top-notch, the missions leave a lot to be desired. Halfway through, and every one involves killing someone with minor variations (are they surrounded by four walls and a gang of thugs, or a car?), or driving somewhere.
That’s the first complaint I hear about the actual missions – most people seem to claim a lack of things to do in the “sandbox mode”. While I agree that the missions lack variety, this has always been the case. Original missions have been few and far between, and mostly sound more fun on paper than they actual were. Which is why I’ve never been a huge fan of the games, only this time the story is better, and driving and shooting is fun due to the improvements in that regard.
“While the story in GTAIV is top-notch, the missions leave a lot to be desired. Halfway through, and every one involves killing someone with minor variations (are they surrounded by four walls and a gang of thugs, or a car?), or driving somewhere. ”
Indeed. And even the killing missions were more fun in San Andreas. How can you not have fun assassinating a construction site foreman by waiting till he goes to to the toilet, then tipping the portaloo into a ditch and filling it with cement?
“If you’re still not convinced, one of the gang leaders is voice by Worf. Come on.”
Michael Dorn? SOLD!
Yeah San Andreas is still the king of the GTA games. It was just stuffed to the gills with activities and things to find and do. SR2 puts up a good show as well but GTA4 doesn’t even come anywhere close in terms of side activities away from the main missions. And of those that are there in GTA4, most of them are quite pedestrian and just aren’t very fun.
They’ve made probably the most beautifully detailed living city in a game yet in GTA4, and yet they’ve left it almost completely devoid of things to do. Towards the end of it I found myself rushing through the missions just so I could get the game done and dusted so I could start something else. The feeling I got when I finished the game was more one of a sense of relief like “Thank god I’ve finally finished that!” rather than any sense of achievement or elation. As for tying up the story at the end, well the story stopped meaning anything to me after about a third of the way through anyway, as the game just pushed you from one set of gangsters to the next. Half the time I had no idea who the people were or how I’d come to meet their acquaintance in the first place. The best thing about it was the driving which it has to be said is bloody good. Racing around the city in first person view is a real rush, and it looks superb. The combat whilst much improved, I felt lacked any kind of kick. It was workable but not particularly exciting, and the cover mechanic was quite clunky. I still think GTA4 is a good game, but it’s just a rather dull experience.
Whatever other games writing emerges from 2009, I think this will retain the award for best opening sentence.
What settings were you playing it on? Your cinemas shouldn’t look like that. If you had dynamic lighting on simple, then you’re experiencing the same bug I am.
It is pretty terrible port. None of the textures were retouched for the low setting so there’s all sorts of design issues that arise. Normally you should be able to see where one wall ends and another begins, but that becomes very difficult when the game uses the same almost white noise styled texture because it assumes you have lighting/texture effects on. If there graphical techniques aren’t going to properly support low-end systems, they should just exclude those options.
Do the Ronin mission where you rob a casino and put it on custom with everything turned to low or none. Then go in with dynamic lighting set to simple, and if you have that bug, you won’t see a difference between low and simple inside. If you set it to all, then suddenly it comes back.
there=their. Ugh. I’m sure there’s other mistakes. Sorry about my bad grammar.
What I want to know is: can you use a female voice for a male character, and vice versa?
Yep.
You can even start with a male character and make them look like a female. Or make a female character and push their body to look like a male’s. All the clothes are usable by both sexes, and all the hair, including face hair is usable by both sexes. Seriously its one of the most comprehensive character creations I have ever played with. It could be better with more faces already made to choose from, since it is pretty hard to use sliders to create your own, or at least have t so that its all on a number value so you can record the number values you like and share them.
Its the best character visuals creator I have seen in a game.
I think the disparity between people who loved/hated GTA 4 are do inpart by the fact that the GTA’s playstyle allows different people to be able to enjoy the games in their own manners. For me, GTA SA was a frustrating experience at times, and I much rather enjoyed GTA VC in comparison. I could care less about the side missions and open-ended options. I was in love with the storylines and the AAA actors thrown in the mix of GTA VC that kept me glued to the main plot all the way through. I never finished SA, being far too annoyed by being forced to play silly mini-games as means to support the storyline. I didn’t want to have to mash buttons on gym equipment to advance the strengths of my characters. I could care less about defeating arcade-style waves of enemies to control my territories or being forced into DDR-style dance-a-thons. Not only that, but the acting and the cast paled in comparison to Vice City. All that being said, I loved the breath of fresh air that was GTA 4 from the last game. Though I can understand how those that loved all the silly mini-games and over-the-top action of the past GTA games over plot and immersion factor would have been turned off by the last offering.
Its not that you called a perfectly normal sized girl “slightly overweight”, its that you called a girl a “latino”. In Spanish, we use the term “latinA” to refer to a woman. “LatinO” refers to a man.
This article merits a revisit to bitch and moan that even after 2 patches SR2 is still “undrivable” on keyboard/mouse controls.
For all the comparisons to GTA, here’s what Rockstar did right: Tapping a direction key turns the wheels direction slightly. Holding the key down longer turns more sharply. Keeping the key down turns the wheel as sharp as it goes.
Period. Fucking rocket science I know.
Here’s what Saints Row 2 did: Tapping.. long press, hold down.. whatever: all = a 45 degree turn of the wheels period. There is absolutely no smoothing out your aim. There is absolutely no controlling your vehicle at any sort of speed. This is worse then 15 year old arcade driving games. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
And yet, if you play on a game pad? You suddenly are treated to gentle turns, slight taps easily adjust your course. So apparently, they DO understand that on a console, a wheel that only turns 45 degrees on or off is a bad idea, but they just didn’t GIVE A SHIT even after 2 patches to share that brilliance with the PC user.
If a PC game is only playable on a console game pad, then it’s not a PC game. It’s a console game. There needs to be a new label to boxes indicating this. “Cross Platform” or “Made for PC only.”
I would rather go without (or even resort to 100% piracy) then deal with this frustration of being a PC only gamer and finding out (expensively) that developers simply can not rise to meet the most fundamental tenants of the platform they are releasing their title for.
/rant
A lovely game with a brillaint sense of humour, shame the fragging port from PC console was handled by the fricking morons that seem to be constantly handling X-box 360 to PC porting these days.
In runs decently on my PC BUT CRASHES IN THE CUT SCENES. Madness.