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 4 of 4

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.

Unfortunately, the PC version uses an amalgam of Games for Windows - Live and GameSpy. The weekend after the game's release, it was pretty difficult to find a multiplayer game. If the servers stay this unpopulated, Saints Row 2 is going to quickly be good for nothing but single-player gaming.

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 retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.