[Saints Row] Not original, but great fun

I’ve seen many shameless rip-offs, but this game is not just a rip-off. Not only has Volition stolen the concept from Rockstar, everything else looks almost exactly the same. But who cares? Are there developers that make original and ground braking games? There are, a few. As for the rest of them, they all steal elements from one and other. There isn’t anything I can blame Voltion of. The game is faithful to the GTA games, but does it also match its gameplay?

Saints Row is not a rip-off of Grand Theft Auto by any means. The sandbox concept has already been used by a number of developers, and I’m not even sure whether Rockstar “invented” this genre. After all, Driver was the first free-roaming 3d racing game. With GTA III, Rockstar combined free-roaming driving with everything else a decent action game contains. Rockstar gave people a giant city to play with. The game didn’t force players to do anything at all. Rockstar did a great job by putting all these elements in one game. But was the game entirely ground braking on every level? Obviously not.

Fudge tha police coming straight from the underground…

But back to Saints Row. In Saints Row, you play a gangster, who joins the 3rd Saints. This gang competes with three other gangs over the control of the city of Stillwater. There is a Latino gang, a gang that is obessed with cars, an African-American gang that specializes in music and prostitution and of course your gang, a racially diverse one. Your gang must gain control over every inch of territory by competing with the other gangs. Once Stillwater is won, your mission is completed. Obviously, the other gangs prevent you from doing this.

Although the gangs are different from each other, the city isn’t very diverse. There are minor differences, but it’s not that the Latino’s territory is significantly different from yours. That’s a thing I liked about Vice City, the different areas. The Hispanic area is different from the beach area. Different cars, different architecture etc,.

In the begining of the game, you have to create a character. There are dozens options to choose from. You can be either an African-American, a Caucasian or an Asian. Furthermore, you can modify almost every part of the body. This also goes for the multiplayer. I’ve seen a bunch of different characters, which is really cool. You’re also free in how you dress up your character. Again, there are a bunch of different garments, chains, tatoos, everything. This works, especially in the multiplayer. Online gangs can identify themselves by wearing the same clothes. A nicely done feature.

She’s on fire, and she burns through the night
At the speed of light, She’s on fire,… lol.. I’m on fire.

The missions are great fun, but not any different from other action games. Steal a load of drugs, capture enemy territory, compete other gangs in a race or in a fight. The tasks feel mostly right, not too hard not too easy. However, there are fewer missions than in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas or Grand Theft Auto Vice City, which is why you’re done with the single player in an hour of 10. There are also activities, which give you all kinds of unlocks. Too bad you won’t get any unlocks that add up to the gameplay. A new chain, a garment, a new paint job for your car. Nice, but it’s not that the game gets more fun or you can beat something without clearing the activity. It would be more interesting if an unlock gave you access to a new mission. I wasn’t all that interested in finishing all the remaining activities after completing the main story line.
You do unlock Xbox 360 achievements, and that’s the only reason why I wanted to beat every activity in town. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. There are various activities: racing missions, insurance fraud, mayhem, escort service. There are three of each of them and they’re all the same, which is why it became boring on some point.

Volition put a lot of different vehicles in the game, though there are only cars. There are many different cars, but a plane, or a motorcycle would have been nice as well. The devoloper admitted that due to a lack of time, they excluded other vehicles.

There are several radio stations that air nice songs which you’ve never heard of. Unlike Rockstar, Volition included mostly unkown bands and artists. The music is fine, I liked most of it, though the tracks aren’t as flashy as in the GTA games.

Hand to hand combat my ass, drive-by pwnage, mulaghaka!

What does Saints Row have, what everyone wanted from the GTA games? That’s right a multiplayer. There is a multiplayer in Saints Row, which disappoints on some level, but is entertaining though.
There is a death match mode, a capture flag variant which is called “Big ass chain”, “protect the pimp” in which one team must guide the pimp to the exit point, while the assassins must prevent him from doing so, there are team based modes, and the most intersting one: “Blinged Out Ride”. This game type involving cars, lets you compete other players by pimping you car. You earn money by killing other players, you use the money to pimp your car. The first team that reaches level 4, can win by showing it off. The other team can prevent them fron winning the game by destroying the car.
This mode proved to be very entertaining. Players must work together in order to win.
But now my biggest problem with the game, which limits the amount of time you are going to spend with the game.
There are too few maps. Each mode has only three maps. I was really hoping that the players would get the chance to create maps. And why not? The maps from the multiplayer were taken from the single player map. Now we have to wait and let Volition do the job. It’s a shame that they charge you for every new map they release. The game would have been much more interesting if players could make their own maps and use them in the online multiplayer. Now players are limited to just a few maps.

Closing comments

Saints Row is not orginal but is a blast to play. The singe player lasts 20-30 hours, and when you’ve beaten the game, there is a fun multiplayer which will keep you busy for many months. However, if the players were able to create their own maps for the multiplayer, the game would have been much better.

Score: 8

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