Saints Row

"(insert generic Grand Theft Auto comment here)"

Yo homie, this game be off the charts dawg! You be hooked 4 LIFE! Bling bling! Sorry for the ghetto talk but I figured it was appropriate to start the review of Saint's Row that way, considering you're fighting gangs in the hood. And I'll say it right off the bat, yes, this is a major Grand Theft Auto clone. More on that later.

STORY
Welcome to the strangely clean city of Stillwater. It's a nice place if you exclude the fact that four rival gangs are constantly battling each other and putting people through harm's way, and if you consider the fact that drug dealers, pimps, psychopaths and other colourful characters are apart of it. You play as some random guy who nearly gets killed by a big gang fight down the street. Luckily you get saved by one gang called the 3rd Street Saints. They're feeling the hurt and desperate to get back on top and eliminate the other gangs. So of course (because what else was there to do) you join their gang and help them take over the city. The storyline was rich and I had a blast watching those cutscenes. And there are a lot. The best part is there's a theater in town that you can use to rewatch any cutscene you just saw. That's always good in my book.

GRAPHICS
The graphics are very nice. Keep in mind that you're in a massive city that's totally open and free for you to cruise around in. And this city is filled with a whole slew of buildings that have open doors and some nice architecture inside. The explosions in this game are freaking awesome. When you blow up a car, EVERY single piece of that car goes flying in a different direction. I mean when you blow up a whole line of cars....it's intense. And that's really all I need to say. The character models are for the most part pretty decent, and I really liked how you could customize your own character's appearance. You can totally morph his face like jello. The only problem I had was that I felt Stillwater was too clean a city. I mean you look at the streets and there's no garbage lying around or anything. But I digress.

SOUND
As for audio, this game wasn't as annoying as I thought it would be. Me, I'm not a fan of hip-hop or rap, and I assumed that this game would feature nothing but in the music. Luckily I was wrong. There's a whole variety of songs to listen to and they all were very nice to listen to. The voice acting is golden. Heck any game that has David Carradine of Kung Fu fame playing a character, I'm automatically sold. There are quite a few celebrities and well known voice actors in this game. You got Tia Carrere, Michael Clarke Duncan, Mila Kunis, Michael Rappaport and various others that put some real soul into the characters of this game. And by soul I mean vast amounts of swearing. Seriously, never put this game anywhere near kids. There's f words and n words and all kinds of bad words being thrown out every 10 seconds. But....at least it sounds funny! The game looks good and it sounds even better, so I had no problems in the presentation side.

GAMEPLAY
But what about the gameplay which I already called a complete GTA clone? Despite having a VERY familiar formula, it does bring innovation and most importantly, fun to the table. Seriously the formula is exactly the same as GTA. You are in a sandbox city known as Stillwater. You do missions in order to earn money and respect. You can carjack anyone on the road and keep their car in a garage. You can buy handguns, sub machine guns, and even rocket launchers right off the bat too. Assuming you have enough cash anyway. It's very reminiscent of GTA, even the radio in your car feels almost identical. Now if it were a terrible rip-off I'd be offended and turned off for the rest of the game. But in reality this game was actually fun to play so I didn't really care. It actually does things a lot better than Grand Theft Auto in my opinion. Like take getting chased by the cops.

In the GTA games you always had to find some stupid star icons just so you could lose them. It's annoying and stupid, because you could be on a rooftop for 10 hours and they'd still be on you. And then you got Saint's Row. Provided you stop committing crimes after getting caught, if you wait long enough the cops will lose you. They will stop looking for you and the chase will be successfully avoided. This awesome feature really made me realize how stupid and annoying GTA's system really is. In order to complete missions in Saint's Row, you need respect so that the Saints will deem you worthy and allow you to help them. You can get respect in a number of ways, but the funnest ways are by far the activities. Throughout the city are random jobs that you can accept, each with it's own little cutscene to justify why you're doing what you're doing too. And some of them are so hilarious and addictive that I just couldn't put the game down.

Like Insurance Fraud for example. In this activity you put yourself in harms way by getting into car crashes, diving in front of cars, and just finding all kinds of sick ridiculous ways to injure yourself. And the best part is you can't die! (aside from fire...don't get burned) In that mission all you have to do is pull the right trigger and your character goes limp and just loses all control of his body. It's hilarious watching your character trip and get his head bashed in by a car. There are a ridiculous amount of activities, each unique and special in it's own little way. There's a destruction derby, street races, drug trafficking in which you escort a drug dealer and protect him/her from enemies, and soo much more. And they're all ridiculously fun. So fun that I'd stop doing the main storyline altogether and just do activities all day. Kudos to THQ and Volition for that one.

The controls of your character are pretty good for the most part and I found fighting tons of enemies onscreen really satisfying. The only thing Saint's Row is missing is a lock-on button where you can instantly aim on whoever's shooting you. It isn't the biggest problem but it does get desired when you keep getting shot and can't find the shooter. The missions always try to mix it up which I appreciate. Sometimes you're escorting, other times your racing, and there's even one mission where you enter a race, but the objective isn't to win, instead it's to kill the other drivers! Combine these fun missions with the interesting storyline and I found myself hooked to the game. Another great aspect of the game was the customization of your character. When you start the game off you get to completely morph his body as you see fit. What kinda hair style he has, how fat or skinny he is, what his ethnicity is, and you'll also completely customize the facial features too.

When you start the game off you're wearing nothing but jeans, a shirt and some shoes. But as the game progresses you stumble upon jewelery and clothing stores, and you can totally create the kinda person you want to be. And that's just awesome. Especially since you can play this game online. Zuh?! Multiplayer? Are you kidding me? That's awesome! Though I don't know if anyone plays the the game because I had a hard time finding people to play against on it. Saint's Row is a ton of fun.

IN THE END...
Though it screams Grand Theft Auto at you within the first halfhour, you won't even think to play that game by the time you're done. The cutscenes were wellmade and even funny. The gameplay was fun and addicting. The amount of customization you can do to your character is awesome as well. I had a really great time playing Saint's Row and I definitely recommend everyone pick up their own copy. You won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/30/07