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THQ delivers quite a fine Grand Theft Auto rip-off. There is absolutely no question in anyone’s mind that Saints Row was inspired by Grand Theft Auto to the point where the two are basically the same game. While other GTA clones tried to change the GTA formula just a bit to distinguish themselves, Saints Row sticks to the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it mentality.” Thankfully, the underlying gameplay is so good—and small yet valuable features have been added— that you can forgive the game’s lack of originality.
Saint Rows begin by letting you create your own character. You can change ethnicity, facial structure, build, and clothes with a number of sliders to make the character as unique as you want him to be. Once you create the character, you find yourself in gang crossfire and you’re saved by 3rd Street Saints leader Julius. After the initiation into the gang, you find yourself tasked with helping the Saints become the biggest of the four gangs in Stilwater, the game’s fictional American city. Unlike the Grand Theft Auto games, however, Stilwater isn’t directly based on any city although it is more similar to Grand Theft Auto III’s Liberty City than anything else. And if you were wondering—the game definitely earns its M rating with plenty of adult content and profanity.
The game itself is setup similar to the gang warfare aspects of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The Saints have three rival gangs in Stilwater, each with their own main characters, turfs, and identity. The missions directly relate to one of these three gangs as you’re basically trying to foil their plans to become (or remain) Stilwater’s most influential group. Saints Row is unique in that it doesn’t let you play the missions without playing the game’s side missions. These include side missions like snatch where you’re stealing working women from rival pimps, escort where you’re riding other working ladies around town and mayhem where you basically have to take out as many people as possible in a certain period of time. Completing these side missions gives you respect. Once you get enough, you’ll unlock enough respect to complete missions. Aside from the missions and side missions, the game includes stronghold missions in which you try to take over a turf from a rival gang. These missions are a nice change of pace since they dissolve into shooting a number of people in a short period of time. As expected, you can buy jewelry and clothes, find collectibles, customize cars in aesthetics and structure and so forth.
Saints Row’s gameplay is familiar yet top-notch. The game includes plenty of cars each of which handles a bit differently but not to the point where the handling would distract from the game’s ridiculousness. The shooting is fine despite the lack of auto aim since the Xbox 360’s controller’s intuitiveness for such actions. The action gameplay is made easier—though not damagingly so—by the fact that your character’s health regenerates if you avoid taking fire for a few seconds. If you need a full boost, you can carry up to four food/health items with you. In addition, and in another nod to San Andreas, the game lets you control up to three homies, which do a very good job of defending you. All of the computer-controlled characters in the game can be revived within 30 seconds which gives you a never-depleting army of backup and removes the annoyance of losing a mission because an AI character died.
Aside from this, the game has other useful tweaks to the classic GTA formula. Quite possible the most “why didn’t anyone think of that sooner” feature is that the game shows you the path to any location on the game. For missions, you’re shown the best path of getting somewhere or you can pull up the map and have the game route you to any location. The minimap also shows you all of the enemies and cops onscreen to give you a heads up if you’re driving into hot territory.
Where Saints Row really one-ups other games is in multiplayer. Saints Row has full Xbox Live support for 12 players or you can play via system link. The game has a number of different modes in the game. The expected deathmatch and team-deathmatch modes are included, as well as a pimp escort mode and a sort of collect the flag. The game even gives you the ability to form a clan of players to compete against others online. It’s fairly fun although the real meat of the game is obviously the singleplayer.
The game’s visuals are great. Stilwater, like other fictional cities before it, looks an awfully lot a typical American city. There are several different neighborhoods in the game each with its own distinct style and citizens. The car models are very detailed even if the actual car looks beat-up. There are several cars and citizens onscreen at any given time, although at times parts of Stilwater can look like a ghost town. The game looks particularly good when you take an RPG and blow up several cars and watch the debris and explosions build around you. Technically, the lighting and weather effects are decidedly next-gen and give the game a shiny, new feel. There are a few graphical glitches in the game since the geometry or textures rarely don’t fully load. In addition, the framerate has a drop every now and then.
The game’s audio adds a lot to the authenticity of the game. The soundtrack includes many great radio stations with a variety of artists, although the names aren’t quite as big as the GTA games. You can also create your own playlist with any of the game’s songs and of course, you can play your own music from the Xbox 360. The voice acting is superb, really pushing the story along without feeling forced. Like with everything else, there are a few cool tricks in there. For instance, if you’re playing music in the car and get out, you can still hear the song playing from the car as you would in real life.
Saints Row isn’t particularly original. No one would have been surprised if the game was released as Grand Theft Auto IV. On that note, that is an amazing compliment to the game. It works very well and tweaks the Grand Theft Auto formula just enough to make it somewhat fresh. There is definitely room for improvement as the game doesn’t include boats or motorcycles for instance but Saints Row is a must have. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Oct 8, 2006
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