Saints Row 2

[Winnow]

Surprise game of the fall releases so far. SR2 is a lot of fun.

Comparing it to GTA IV:

Character Customization

Amazing. Best yet. As I was going through the customization I noted some of the adjustment sliders for various parts of the face:

6 crown
3 forehead
6 brow
10 eyes
8 chin
15 mouth
14 ear
13 cheeks
19 Nose (19 separate sliders just for the nose!)

There's a bunch of hair choices

makeup options, etc

Where Saints Row shines even more is the personality section

there's 20 different walks you can choose from for your character's default walk.

3 male and 3 female choices for your voice (means they recorded the entire dialogs six times for the story)

can pic from about 20 each for your default taunt and your default praise sayings/animations

Everything is R rated. Lots of "fuck yous" etc. Some of the taunts are raunchy as well. There's an animation of you taking a dump or lifting your leg to piss. (Funk will love this game, spit and vomit animations present!)

You can even change your default facial expression (around 20 choices)

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Now all this wouldn't matter if they didn't take advantage of these details but you see your character exactly as designed in lots of cut scenes.

When you get out into the city, the clothing options are impressive as well. Seems like almost every piece of clothing has three colors to modify. Primary, Secondary and a highlights type color area.

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The story itself is OK. GTA IV is what you should play for the real movie type story. Saints Row 2 is entertaining though.

Saints Row is all about mayhem. You can run people down all day and not get into too much trouble...or at least I didn't seem to attract the police. It eases up on the realism of GTA IV and lets loose on having fun causing trouble. It's meant to be fun and not to be taken too seriously.

Good stuff!

[Soreali]

been playing this since last tuesday.. its a neat game.. gotta tryout the zombie uprising!!

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Saints Row 2 > GTA?

[Winnow]

been playing this since last tuesday.. its a neat game.. gotta tryout the zombie uprising!!

I like the sidejob where you play the bouncer and have to protect the asshole celebrity from crazed fans, getting more points for throwing them into objects that most likely will hurt them more.

The firetruck vehicle is pretty fun as well. You're supposed to go around putting out fires but spraying people with the water cannon as you drive around was too entertaining and I failed the mission.

To slow the pace of the game down a bit, you need to fill up your respect meter in between main storyline missions. You can do this by randomly shooting rival gang members (or running them over, whatever makes them stop breathing), do some stunt driving. there are 50 ramps around the city to discover, points for driving against traffic, driving on two wheels, close calls, etc, tagging walls with your Saints sign, upgrading one or many "cribs" you can buy for your gang. There are 45 neighborhoods you must take back control of, go steal cars from a wanted list (GTA style), steal a car with someone in the backseat of passenger seat and start a hostage mini time trial (drive for a minute without slowing enough for them to jump out until they pay up)

I've had some monster police chases. It's a lot harder to get caught than in GTA IV so you can have more fun. The cut scenes are funny to me because they're not trying to be serious. Some of the missions are fun. Not as polished as GTA IV for sure. Took me awhile to figure out how to destroy the shacks in your first crib (old buried hotel). Can't take the crowbar directly to the shacks. Have to lineup the bums between you and the shack and then beat them back into the structures to destroy them. Odd but works.

SR 2 is entertaining. It does nothing the best but does lots of little things very well. It gives off a very open world feeling. Take the time to make a good character during the generation phase. You'll enjoy the cut scenes a lot more. Tribal Pigtails (+1)