I've been reviewing games for 16 years. The entire time, I've tried to avoid using the word "fun" because it's so subjective. It's a fine concept when you're just shooting the breeze with friends. But as a critical observation, it's simply not helpful. Since it means different things to different people, it says more about the person using the word than the thing he's describing. I consider it a crutch for lazy writers.

There will be blood.

Today, I'm going to make an exception: Saints Row 2 is fun. It's so fun that I'm not sore about all the times it did something glitchy or just locked up. It's so fun that I don't mind the so-so graphics. It's so fun that I can easily look past the crass and occasionally tasteless writing. It's so fun that it doesn't need good driving physics. It's so fun that I didn't care if certain parts were poorly unbalanced or maybe even broken. It's so fun that if Crispy Gamer put numbers on its reviews, I'd be tempted to give it the highest number plus one. This is currently the paragon of open-world, city-havoc sandboxes, and it's a pitch-perfect example of a game that accomplishes exactly what it intends to accomplish. Like the first Saints Row, it out-Grand Theft Autos the best of them: Mercenaries, "The Godfather," "Scarface," Bully, Grand Theft Auto itself and even Crackdown.

Still only in Stillwater

The setting is Stillwater, which you might notice is mostly the same Stillwater from the original game, aka Generictown, USA. Fans will recognize certain neighborhoods ("Hey, that used to be my house!"), updated with better graphics. But the engine still struggles mightily. You can almost see the smoke coming out of its ears. There are bad frame rates; pop-up in the distance; texture pop-in and that same old ghost car problem that no one can seem to solve, where cars appear out of thin air and vanish again.

It wouldn't be an open-world game without a flyable helicopter.

Although Stillwater isn't that attractive, it's entirely serviceable. It's Stillwater, with plenty of traffic, pedestrians, explosions and even aircraft gameplay. There are even some nice views: you can watch a gathering thunderstorm, cruise between buildings in a helicopter while providing low-altitude air support, walk through a fancy downtown mall, or look out over a nighttime skyline. But Stillwater is no Liberty City, or even Venezuela. Instead, it's better because its priority clearly isn't aesthetics. Its priority is keeping you busy with fun -- yes, I said it again, fun! -- activities.

This is a game about running prostitutes, customizing a cool car and keeping it in your garage, going up to a high building to see if you can base jump, watching fights that have nothing to do with you break out on the street, trying to fly a plane under a bridge, or plugging away at a difficult challenge because you know something good is going to be unlocked when you finally complete it. This is a city built as a bustling amusement park or a lively arcade. This is your virtual playground.

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Step one: Break out of prison. Step two: Play Saints Row 2. Step three: Fun!

Like "Birdman of Alcatraz," but with shotguns

A short, violent prison break sets the stage, involving the death of probably about a hundred cops. Then you're turned loose. You'll likely set up your base first, playing a few prologue missions that call for the death of about a hundred more cops and a shotgun-toting judge. Then you can bop at will among three campaigns, each against a different enemy gang. Wrap these up and you'll get to a short series of ultimate missions. But all this is just the beginning.

It wouldn't be an open-world game without a Jet Ski.

Along the way, and well after the story is done, Stillwater is crammed with things to do. Saints Row 2 has an excellent game design, built around integrated "systems." Here, "systems" is just a fancy catchall term for things like driving, shooting, side challenges, weapons, clothes, storyline missions, gang wars, stunts, food, exploration, buying businesses, car upgrades and so on. These all have a place in the overall scheme, and many of them are related to each other. There is almost nothing you'll do just for the sake of doing it. The activities are designed to move you forward. Saints Row 2 knows you're a sucker for rewards and prizes. It's like a gumball machine that comes with its own pocketful of quarters.

Saints Row 2 has its own brand of monster truck madness.

That's not to say all the activities are great. Some definitely aren't. Driving around in a sewage truck and spraying passers-by should have been a hoot. It's not. It's horrible. Then there are weird little things like the sex-in-backrooms mini-game, which is little more than an excuse for Volition to put funny names for sexual positions on-screen. Unless you think "Double Fisted Spelunker" is funny (and let's face it -- it may be), it's just a lock-picking sex mini-game sans graphics. But, yes, I played it for 10 levels just to see what it unlocked. You will, too. That's what Saints Row 2 does to you.

With a forgiving checkpoint system for the tough missions and seamless cooperative multiplayer support, this is one of the best-paced games you can play. There is nary a brick wall to be seen in Stillwater: no invulnerable bosses, no scripted chases (well, okay, there's one), no "gotcha" jumping puzzles, no taking away all your weapons, no cheap shots -- nothing to make you sigh and stop playing. Combine this with a great set of Achievements for the Xbox 360, and you'll get a lot of mileage out of this game.

Speaking role

As for the main storyline, it's not much of a story. Unlike in the last Saints Row, you're no longer a silent cipher. Your exhaustively customized avatar is now a fully integrated and downright chatty part of the cut scenes. You'll find some nice recalls to the original storyline and if you care at all about what's going on, there are some surprises. The writing is mostly coarse, without a single gag as memorable as the riff on "the Los Gatos" in the original game (a little Michael Rapaport goes a long way). In fact, there's a conspicuous absence of lightness in the Saints Row 2 story. The Brotherhood campaign is nearly torture porn for its grim exchange of killing and maiming. And the game's grand finale is strange for how harsh it is towards a rather mild bad guy. Imagine facing Attila the Hun, then Pol Pot, then Hitler, only to eventually come face to face with ? Donald Trump? Really? That's my ultimate nemesis? I thought he'd be ? taller.

Customize your avatar, your car and even your gang members.

But the story is just another activity, little more than a way to turn bits of the map over to your gang color. Think of the story as one of the "systems." Contrast this to Grand Theft Auto IV, which imagined itself telling a serious story and was therefore unable to laugh at itself. I loved Grand Theft Auto IV, and parts of it were absolutely breathtaking (most of them for technical reasons), but it rarely made me smile, grin or giggle. Saints Row 2, on the other hand, is wonderfully goofy, mostly unserious and doggedly focused on chasing down that elusive concept of fun like a child trying to corner a chicken. Grand Theft Auto IV is the pretentious brooding artist who, it turns out, is a pretty talented guy after all. But Saints Row 2 is the drunken life-of-the-party frat boy who everyone likes having around. Which one makes for a better game? Which one would you rather hang out with over the weekend?

These bad dudes aren't even the main villains.

Let me put it this way: I spent a lot of time driving around Liberty City, drinking in the aesthetic, wishing there were more and better activities. But I didn't spend nearly as much time wishing Stillwater looked better; I was too busy enjoying what it had to offer. The assassinations that play out like really cool scavenger hunts -- much easier and more interesting than the first game's punishing needle-in-a-haystack searches. The chop shop garage lists of cars, which are a great excuse for keeping track of all the different vehicles you'll find. The sublime Mayhem challenges, which reward you for inflicting the most property damage in a short amount of time (although it's a bit odd that the best way to win is to find and shoot up some place with a bunch of fences or outdoor furniture). The dynamic Cops Gone Wild missions, a virtually infinite source of amusement. There are more races than you can shake a checkered flag at, and they actually work, with cars that know how to drive the courses. The Zombie Uprising activity is just a taste of what could have been the definitive "Night of the Living Dead" game. Hey, Volition, are you reading this? Since Capcom isn't doing a proper Dead Rising sequel, maybe you could bust loose a little bit with Zombie Uprising on a larger scale as downloadable content.

Saint-on-saint violence

And of course there's the new multiplayer. The co-op is pretty much everything you could ever want from a game like this. A friend can drop into your instance of the world and bring along all the toys and unlockables he's won. He can help you with any mission or virtually any activity. And while your friend is there, be sure to kill him -- yes, kill him -- so the two of you can discover the joys of Cat & Mouse, an undocumented multiplayer mode.

You get by with a little help from your homies.

Yeah, yeah, sure, there are deathmatches in relatively small arenas. But the real multiplayer muscle is the Strong Arm mode, which is like a tournament-structured variation on the multiplayer in Grand Theft Auto IV, played on carefully built maps. By default, it runs players through a set of four randomly chosen side activities, such as racing, gathering VIPs, demolition derbies, capture the flag and so forth. The winner of each round gets a cash bonus in addition to the money earned during the activity. He who has the most money at the end of the match wins.

And you can configure your games to your liking with an almost Halo-like level of customization. All rocket launchers, all the time? No problem. Do you hate when races come up? Switch them off. Do the special power-ups for tagging locations seem unbalanced to you? Get rid of them. Multiplayer in the original Saints Row was a poorly done afterthought. Here it's good enough to almost be a separate game.

In a way, this is a repeat of what Saints Row did two years ago. It came out after Rockstar had upped the ante with San Andreas, an undeniably brilliant and uneven bit of work. By being designed first and foremost as a solid game rather than a bunch of "wouldn't-it-be-cool?" concepts, Saints Row trumped Grand Theft Auto. And here we are again. Once more, Volition has trumped a flawed Rockstar masterpiece. Let's hope these leapfrogging accomplishments continue. Because there's really only one winner when you compare brilliant, flawed games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row 2: those of us who play them.

This review is based on a review copy of the game provided by the publisher.