Saints Row 2 Review

Now THIS is how you make a game, people. Saints Row 2 (SR2) contains everything the modern gamer should desire in a game: lots of action to go along with a fairly decent plot, a lot of interaction with the game environment, heavy weapons, hookers, strippers, fast cars, plenty of side missions to keep you from getting bored, and a whimsical attitude which is often lacking in games these days. This is perhaps the finest game I've played in the past several years and you should be playing it, too.

Let us start with the plot. I never played Saints Row 1 but from what I was told at the end of the game your character was blown up in a boat. SR2 starts you in jail where you have been recovering from your injuries for some time. Right from the get go the absurdity begins as you are allowed to make your character look and sound however you would like since obviously your character needed extensive plastic surgery to recover. With the Volition character design engine the possibilities are staggering for the freakish monster you could create and call your in-game avatar. While I originally considered making a 300 pound female heffer named Matilda with the voice of a 12 year old child, I eventually settled on Batman's loyal man-servant Alfred Pennyworth whose taunt move is to teabag a victim's corpse. Stay classy, Alfred!

So of course you bust out of jail and end up on the docks of Stillwater where your entire criminal empire from Saints Row 1 collapsed and so you have to start from scratch. It's obviously hard to find good help to mind the store. I suppose with some games at this point they would fire up another tutorial or offer some guidance on what to do next. But Saints Row 2 does not treat you like an idiot and instead simply drops you in the world and says "Good luck, sucka!" For most open ended games I imagine this is akin to a slow suicide since they can not give you enough content to keep you occupied or they waffle between letting you do whatever you want and then trying to have you get back into a story of having dinner with your cousin.

But SR2 doesn't believe in wasting your time with forcing a plot down your throat so it gets right to the heart of what every gamer wants in such an open-ended environment: the ability to be a complete and total dick. Face it, most gamers are introverts who get their papers stolen at school by the jocks, get ridiculed on Facebook, and stumble over what to say to the girl they like. SR2 lets you be the super alpha in this world and so you might as well go whole hog before school tomorrow when someone will just jam you in a locker. Every sick, depraved, and warped violent fantasy that you might have -- and probably a lot you never thought of -- can occur in this game. Jacking cars, pistol whipping, and crazed gunfights with rival gangs are just the tip of the iceberg and to be honest if that is all your doing you're really not thinking hard enough or you are in the wrong midnset about this game. Think crazier, man.

Imagine walking into a mall and you come up to a security guard. Now the guard didn't do anything to you but hey this is a game so get nuts. First, beat up the guard, then take his taser. Now go taser an old lady. If she has a pace maker she'll probably have a seizure. Think about this for a minute. These sick developers programmed that in, then they tested it to make sure it worked right! That's some loving attention to detail which should be admired and studied by all future programming generations. Then of course I cooly walked into the clothing store and decked Alfred out in a yellow silk suit, matching bowler hat, and tons of gold chains while the heat from the police died down. I am currently out-blinging Erik B. and Rakim and the ladies love it. And that's just a tame example. The most gratutious act of violence has to be throwing someone into a spooled up jet engine. But I felt justified doing it when I was awarded a couple hundred bucks. Hey, I had to protect my client from his fans, what's a bodyguard gonna do?

The question should not be what can you do in this game but the real question is what can you NOT do in this game? Do you want to work on your trick jumps? The game provides 80 unique ramps and jump points all of which give you points. Do you need some cash? Why, go and do some crazy side missions (there's about 15 unique ones) such as spraying raw sewage on the city or people, or take a four wheeler while wearing a pyro suit and burn down the city, or the coup de grace, be given an infinite amount of ammo and destroy as much property as possible before dying to the cops or upset civilians.

The opportunity for side missions (and hence extra cash) come from all corners of the game even when you're in the middle of other missions. So much so that it becomes like an MC Escher drawing where things start wrapping in and around themselves. For example, if you steal a taxi, no matter what else you're doing, you can then start picking up customers and taking them around town for tips. Or steal a car full of passengers and you can start a hostage stand off mission. Or my personal favorite: hop on the hood of a stopped car and the driver will take off with you on the hood, launching you into the car surfing mission (a.k.a. Ghost Ride the Whip).

The beauty of all this is that every single thing you do in the game will either get you respect or money. Did you complete a mission? Great have some cash. Oh, your car spun ninety degrees in the air and then crushed two rival gang members after you jumped out in mid-air? Beautiful, have some points for the trick jump AND points for wiping out some rival gang members. After a while the points do not mean anything but the game holds up its end of the bargain of being a game and continues giving me points for whatever new crazy thing I can think of, even if it does involve wiping out a trailer park of meth heads with a sewer truck.

I suppose most games when given a choice between art and fun are now leaning towards being artsy since programmers seem to think they need to provide a deep sense of purpose in their games. The consequence of this is that they forget the game part sometimes as they try to convey a deeper meaning where none exists. SR2 reminds us repeatedly that it is indeed a game, that it knows its a game, and for this we shoudl be thankful that for once some game developers didn't get full of themselves and stayed focus on making a game fun.