Saints Row 2 (PC)

Saints Row 2 is enough to make a guy use the F-word
1/12/2009 8:36 PM | 0 Comments | Page 3 of 4

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?

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.

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.