Rockstar Games have helped to redefine the sandbox genre with mayhem filled cities that place the player on center stage with the guilty pleasure of being able to explore and do almost anything that they wanted as a member of the underworld. Volition, on the other hand, is probably better known for its seminal science fiction starfighter epic, Freespace and its sequel, the Red Faction series, and RPG forays with Summoner and Summoner 2, which are as far away from the streets of the inner city as you can probably get. While Saints Row is a first for the developer in many ways, it is also one of the best efforts made to break into the neighborhood that Rockstar has built for itself.
A Tale of Four Crimelords
The decaying city of Stilwater is a place where the rich and powerful rub elbows with the underground power brokers that live just across the street. The urban underground is controlled by four powerful gangs that traffic in power, prestige, blood, and guns, and will defend what they have without remorse and this has been the status quo for some time…until the player’s character is pulled into the war that is about to explode. The 3rd Street Saints, a gang that has seen better days, has been rallied together to take back not only their neighborhood but to bring the fight against their rivals in a bid for complete control. You become the latest recruit and will soon find yourself fighting for respect on the streets as the gang retakes the city…neighborhood by neighborhood.
Canonized
Aimed at the players who may be looking for the kind of urban warfare that the next generation has to offer, Saints Row can easily feel like it is copying much of the core aspects that have helped to make the Grand Theft Auto series great. However, while they are similar, Volition’s title sets itself apart from its rival with a degree of polish and a set of gameplay enhancements that help Saints Row tag a name for itself.
The generator used to help create your street persona is filled with a large number of options to help make your character as unique as you want them to be (aside from gender and height). You can even import your unique look to the online portion of the game to show off your custom face and body work. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve got the look that will spread fear throughout Stilwater, you’ll be quickly introduced to the 3rd Street Saints who are looking to add a little more muscle to their numbers. After a street lesson in initiation, you’ll soon be ready to start taking on jobs that will have you facing off against the three largest gangs standing in the Saints’ way.
Or you can ignore the story entirely and explore the city on your own. The choice is yours once you’re on your own.
Play Style
Saints Row is filled with plenty of third person action filling the screen with bullets and mayhem, cars for the taking, and missions that will have you doing everything from taking out rival racers with automatic weapons to intimidating hair dressers. If you’ve played any of the recent GTA titles, the gameplay will feel very familiar to you. But while it may feel like it’s copying the formula that Rockstar made famous, it also makes it very easy to get into the highly refined experience that Volition has created out of it.
The controls work well for shooting and driving, but not so well with hand to hand fighting using kicks and punches. Its a minor gripe, though, as players will likely be armed to the teeth with a variety of weapons that they’ll either pick up from the dead or purchase from one of several stores in the city. Weapons are aimed using an FPS-type scheme on foot and can also be fired in almost every direction from a car, allowing you to shake off your pursuers with a healthy lead-filled send off. Other weapons are also available, including grenades and Molotov cocktails, although aiming throwables isn’t as easy as it should be, requiring you to eyeball the throw more often than not.
Saints Row maintains the fun factor by focusing on what players would rather be doing instead of punishing them when they fail. Here, most missions will allow you to pick up right at the beginning of the job…usually at the doorstep of where you need to be…or quit out of one so that they can come back to it later. On the street, although you can earn money, the only real currency is respect and by performing missions and activities throughout Stilwater, your character will earn what they need to unlock extra jobs that they can try out. You won’t earn extra statistics for your character, they won’t get “stronger” or learn new skills, instead focusing on the action and how well you can drive and shoot at the same time.
Volition has packed Stilwater with a ton of activities and extras to earn even more respect and cash that you can blow on the newest styles for your character. You can ignore the main story missions and do hits on the side, hold up stores, break into them at night…and fight any extra security that the owner my have hired since last time you robbed them blind, race through the streets, try your skill at a demolition derby, or even engage in insurance fraud. There’s a lot to do and a variety of achievements that you can unlock during the course of the game making it feel as if there is always something there to try out. Many of these scale in the challenge that they offer and allow the player to pick up at the last level that they had completed. Although you can only earn experience once by going through most of these activities, you can always repeat them for more green that you can spend.
Ink
Stilwater’s shops give your character a lot of options to try out as long as they have the cash. There’s a relatively good selection of clothes available to deck out your character with, haircut shops ready to lend your look the latest style, and a plastic surgeon that you can use to change the look of your character, all so you never have to feel that you have to start all over just to change something that you don’t like.
You can also deck them out with all sorts of shiny bling to make them stand out in a crowd, or cover them in tattoos. Volition has also made it possible to go down to the level of where you can even select what tattoos you want on what arm or leg, or what rings you want to wear on either hand. In addition to simply looking good, many things from the clothes that you wear and the ice that you show off add respect modifiers that act
as bonuses for when you earn respect in doing things around Stilwater, making them even more of an important consideration than simply acting as a fashion statement.
Most of the cars that you bring in can also be customized to an extreme degree of detail, allowing you to decide if you want anything from spinners for your hubcaps to a mix of paint schemes that you can apply. You can spend quite some time just playing around with the look of a particular car with all of the options available to you for most, hooking them up with everything from nitro to spoilers, exhaust tubes to detailing.
City of Industry
Volition’s custom engine brings the city of Stilwater to life with many of the people, including your character, having a sort of CG cartoonish look to them especially with the colors that are used to show off each gang’s affiliation. But the diversity of scenes and sets in the game really help to make many of the different areas of the city stand out. From the industrial area to the posh neighborhoods of the rich and affluent, to the towering buildings of corporate power and governmental responsibility that fill its heart, there’s a lot to simply take in. Although the draw distance is pretty impressive, buildings that pop up in the distance is still something that makes a return although it isn’t as obvious as it is in GTA which should be expected. As night falls, the city is bathed in the glow of the coming sunset and cars light up the roads as they make their way to wherever they’re headed. The cars are also as diverse as any that you might find on the roads today, not only with each gang having their own colors and their own preferred rides, but in the regular vehicles that cruise the streets of Stilwater going about their business.
But the eerily brutal physics guarantee the “M” label that it wears on its sleeve. Hit another car head on and the driver, or you, might fly out of the windshield. Gun someone down behind the driver’s wheel and watch them slump behind it. All of it is driven by the engine, so they might fly out of the car if it collides or simply stay in their seats, even when you drive away with their ride. The mini-game activity of Insurance Fraud makes use of the rag doll physics in the game, taking an Ikaruga-style approach to success by asking you to literally walk into traffic and ‘pretending’ to fall as a car smashes into you, earning points for how far it might drag you beneath its wheels or had launched you into the air. The vehicles also share in the physics-driven mayhem, with side panels that crumple or fly off, fragments that fly everywhere as bumpers jar loose, glass shatters, headlights break, and wheels go flat, or steel debris goes flying everywhere as they explode.
Saints Row also brings a huge selection of music to the table, ranging from classical to 80’s hair band rock ‘n roll, reggae, and alternative. With an in-game player, you can also “purchase” tracks from shops and build your own playlist, or use one that you’ve already created for yourself on the 360. The selection of licensed, full-track music, is pretty rich.
As for the voice acting work, Volition had also gone for serious street cred by hiring the likes of Michael Clark Duncan, David Carradine, Tia Carrere, Clancy Brown, and Keith David among others to give life to the many characters that the player will run into. Aside from the main characters, many of the other happy inhabitants of Stilwater also have some things to say as the player runs into them, dropping the occasional F-bomb or Latino-flavored insult into their face. Saints Row doesn’t shy away from the language of its material, but it doesn’t overplay it to the point where it feels like they’re just trying to sound tough.
The player’s own character is as silent as a tombstone throughout the game, but he isn’t entirely quiet and does get in a few lines at certain points in the title. His silent treatment does become something of a running joke, but the voice that you finally hear wasn’t something that I was expecting. It’s not horrible, but it certainly didn’t sound as intimidating as I thought it would have been after laying waste to most of the city’s underground.
As for the AI, it’s actually pretty competent with everyone ducking for cover behind open car doors, vehicles, corners, and taking shots at you when they can. At one point, you can also gather together a few followers that you can take with you when you go on missions or just to cause mayhem in general and they’ll do a decent job in covering your back. They’ll even pick up more powerful weapons that might be lying around to keep themselves alive. And if they go down, just pour a limitless bottle of 50 over them within a certain time limit and they’ll get right back up. It’s kind of weird to resurrect your buddy in the middle of a fight, but it does save you from having to go back and find someone else to replace them. Pathfinding is pretty much hit and miss. Sometimes, your posse will simply stand at the edge of a ledge and refuse to follow you down, or they might get stuck behind walls or other obstacles as a message comes up saying that you’re about to leave someone behind. It can get pretty annoying when you’re trying to get away and you can’t get into the driver’s seat because the AI is trying to get in first and can’t for whatever reason.
Rap Sheet
The story for Saints Row isn’t bad, and the different gangs each have their own stories to tell with many colorful characters ready to share them at the point of a gun. Each gang is very distinct from each other, and the missions reflect each of their personalities right down to their colors and the cars that they drive which does a good job in setting them apart and lends an identity to their neighborhoods. Of course, if you happen to start blowing away anyone that isn’t wearing your favorite color, you’ll start to draw a lot of unwanted attention to you as more and more of their members come gunning for revenge. A meter measures how much they hate you, elevating to several levels until it seems as if they’ve started to send their entire posse to bury you.
The same thing will happen if you annoy the cops, going so far as to send the FBI after you along with SWAT trucks that start blocking roads and helicopters that start dropping count-terrorism teams to take you out. Saints Row provides “Forgive and Forget” booths located throughout the city allowing players to drive, or walk, through and pay a small price to have everyone forget how much they really hate you. While it’s a major lifesaver, it also made getting out of trouble a little too easy especially if your pockets were full with cash. They’re not on every street corner, though, and you’ll occasionally find yourself in deep trouble far from salvation.
Multiplayer
Although Saints Row one ups its rival by providing this kind of gameplay right out of the box, it isn’t as exciting as it probably could have been. Much of this is because of the severe lag that I had run into in several games that I have tried, finding myself suddenly smoked by unseen gunmen or trying to fight opponents that skipped frames onscreen as if they were going in and out of thin air.
When it does work, it’s not bad. Supporting twelve players in any game mode, there are a variety of unique, gangland flavored, gametypes. You can even earn money to deck our your online persona who starts off in baggy jeans and a black shirt just as they did in the single player. There’s “Protect the Pimp” which is a variant of a VIP mission where one player is the pimp and it’s up to their team to protect them as they make their way to a designated safe area. There’s “Big Ass Chains” where players compete to collect the most chains before time runs out. There’s “Bling My Ride” where teams compete to find gold chains to turn in for money that can be used to upgrade their car and then ultimately show it off in all of its pimped out glory. And then you have regular deathmatching and a few co-op missions. Most of these modes are fun, but only when there’s plenty of other players to compete against. The maps can be pretty big and when you only have three other people online, it can get ridiculous to find your own teammate much less your opponents.
It would have been nice to see a listing of available games instead of having it simply match you up with any game that fits your bill. As a result, it can easily put you in a game with only one or two people in it or with ones that have six or eight. There’s just no way to really tell as far as I could see. While it makes it easy to simply go out and connect to games, you may have to try a few times to find the game that you really want to get into. Saints Row multiplayer is a good step in the right direction but it could use a lot more polish.
Shattered Rims
As much fun as Saints Row is, it comes up short a few rounds in a few other areas. I’m not sure if it was Volition’s engine pushing the 360 to its limits or if it was something else entirely, but there were several occasions where there would simply be slowdown during the game…especially if there were a lot of cars, effects, and people onscreen at the same time. It isn’t bad enough to kill you from an unseen assailant, but it was jarring to see it after the rest of the polish that was visited on everything else.
There were other oddball issues that I had seen, such as cars sinking through the map and my own car falling into a sort of “pot hole” on the road. I jumped out of the car and watched as it sank and disappeared into the street. There was also the issue during a mission of where I was supposed to ride shotgun but we had to switch cars. Somehow, the AI got into one side of the car and I got into the driver’s seat, but because of how the mission was scripted in that I wasn’t supposed to drive, I was stuck. I couldn’t get back out or do anything else except pan the camera around, resetting the game my only escape. Fortunately, it seemed to only be a small glitch, but it was at the worst moment.
While it offers an extremely strong single player, don’t expect to spend as much time in it as you may have with, say Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is probably due, though, to how friendly Volition has made the gameplay for players who may no longer have to backtrack as far as they may need to during missions among other things. It’s still a great experience, and the multiplayer helps to extend its shelf life along with the wide variety of achievements and activities that it makes available.
The Streets Are Yours
The comparisons to Grand Theft Auto are going to be inevitable, but the polish that Saints Row has given the basics that it uses to provide its gameplay help make it stand out and above its rival in the urban street sandbox scene. The fun factor is definitely there, even without planes or jets, with the many activities and missions that the player is pulled into easily filling in what some may miss. While it might not take the crown from Rockstar’s flagship franchise, its still a hugely satisfying trip into the city of Stilwater as the player tries to bring the 3rd Street Saints to the top.
A sequel is almost certainly guaranteed by the end of the game, a risky gamble that Volition had covered its bets with a surprising ending that could be interpreted in several ways. Given how fun the game was, I can safely say that the story of Saints Row isn’t over yet. Volition started off by providing only one city to hang around in, but it’s a city packed with enough vice, gunplay, and guilty underworld style pleasure to be an experience that shouldn’t be missed.
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