Saints Row

Title: Saint's Row
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: August 29, 2006
Date Played: May 2012
Time Played: 21 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:

My Stats
After Finishing
The Game
(click to zoom)

Saint's Row saw an opportunity and went for it. What's that you may ask? Almost a year of new hardware (Xbox 360) out in the wild and no GTA in sight.

When GTA 3 came out nothing could touch it with a 10 foot pole. Rockstar had the formula nailed and the only thing that would improve upon it were it's own games Vice City and San Andreas, both released on PlayStation 2 (initially), both using GTA3's engine. All were incredible. But it was the year 2006, and two years since San Andreas has been released. New consoles, which are dozens of times more powerful than the PS2 were noew in gamer's hands, and all of them were jonesing for the new GTA. Saint's Row was there to fill that need.

Volition (developer) took the GTA formula, put their own wrapper on it and released it to fairly good reviews and critical acclaim, at least good enough to follow it up with (as of today) 2 sequels.

Saint's Row takes place in the city of Stilwater. You are a random dude that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. You get saved from certain death by no other than the Saints from 3rd street, after which you find yourself as part of the gang. Following this basic set up the game world opens up and you are free to travel wherever you want and do whatever you want. You can steal whatever cars you see and largely do what you would expect to be able to do in a GTA game.

Saint's Row tries to be more comedic than the Grand Thief Auto series with making puns at real world events or locations (such as Wendy's restaurants, and radio personalities.) It has no shame, and goes over the top wherever it can, which to me personally meant a lot of funny moments.

The cars, guns and controls in Saint's Row feel just about right for a 2006 title and I had no problem with them. The missions cover your basic range of go kill that guy, go steal that car, go escort that girl, go drive that thing. Saint's Row does not go over the top with creativity, and I dont blame them. While it would have been nice, I can completely understand that learning and programming for the new hardware is not an easy task. Now that they got the basics, they have the sequels to innovate the genre.

Saint's Row is a good game, and from what I understand the sequels are even better, with 3rd one being amazing. However; playing this game in 2012, it is easy to tell that it was developed more than half a decade ago. There are numerous occasions where game-play design feels like a last generation game. For example, none of the missions have checkpoints, so you can find yourself being put back 20 minutes because someone turned the corner and shotgunned you in the face at the very end of a mission. I found myself frustrated a few times having to go through that.

Another silly mechanic is that you are required to do repetitive side missions in order to take on the story missions. While the side missions are mostly fun and give a decent variety, I feel that you are required to do way too many of them, which ends up being pretty mundane.

Saint's Row is a little rough around the edges, there are a couple of game breaking bugs that I encountered such as a car that I was supposed to escort ramming into a building and getting stuck forcing me to restart the missions, losing 15 minutes or more of progress. AI simply ramming your car, and even though they are driving the exact same make and model as you, somehow they are able to go 30 miles per hour faster than you. Inability to jump out of a flaming vehicle because the driver's side door is blocked by the 999 AI cars that have been ramming you during the mission (in GTA4 for example you are almost always given enough time to jump out).

All in all if you are able to look past these rough edges (which I was able to do without much effort), underneath of it all you have a great open world 3rd person shooter. It is much more lighthearted than the Grand Thief Auto series and I would tell you to go play it if you haven't; however, seeing that story is basically self contained, and with the third game being genre defining, I will say that you should just read the plot of this game on wikipedia, and for sure go play "Saint's Row The Third", released in November 2011.