Here we are, more than 2 weeks after my initial review and I had a lot more time to find the ups and downs of this game.

In my previous posts, I said I could not find many downsides to this game. I unfortunately found several now but I also found some new good sides.

The Bad

1 – Other cars are stronger than yours.

Although, like I said previously, driving is reasonably easier in Saints Row 2 than in Grand Theft Auto 4 there is one MAJOR problem. No matter what kind of vehicle you are driving, the other cars inertia will always be higher than yours. I had instance of motorbikes pushing my SWAT tank out of the road and of 10-wheelers being hopelessly stuck between 2 golf carts. If you lose your momentum you’ll never get it back.

2 – Other cars hate you.

Every time you have to chase or to be chase by someone, other ‘civilian’ cars get an instant dislike to you. I don’t mean it in a ‘get out of my way damn it’ way. I mean incoming cars REALLY careen out of their lane to come hit you. Not because you are/were in their lane, not because their way is blocked or that they are bad guys, they just come at you and try to hit you suddenly just as they are about to pass you. This is even worse when afoot. More often than not you end up being hit by a civilian car passing at 100mph during a firefight. I honestly think I got killed more often by those random cars than by bullets. This gets frustrating over time. I suspect they could not manage to get their A.I smart enough to be challenging in a chase scene so they had to ‘cheat’ by using the civilian NPCs to get in your way.

3 – Car goes boom.

Vehicles are very explosive in this game. Although I admit that having to empty 2-3 clips of assault rifle to blow a car in GTA4 was excessive, having your car explode in a fraction of a second series of crash/pileup is not realistic either.

4 – Bugs.

There are, unfortunately, several of them. From the game refusing the save the sniper ammunition that I bought (having to re-purchase very expensive ammo every time I load the game gets old fast, I’m not using the sniper rifle anymore in this game while it was my weapon of choice in GTA4) to hitting invisible walls while in midair, there are several things to make any decent programmer grind his teeth. I also had this game crash my Xbox more often than all of my other games combined.

5 – The meaning of existence?  Line of sight!

The biggest downside however is that you can’t count on anything out of direct line of sight to still be where it was a second ago. In GTA4, whenever you saw, for example, a blue car turn right at an intersection and disappear from your view, you could reasonable expect to see the car again if you turned right at that intersection too. That’s not the case in Saints Row 2. That car that JUST passed you that you wanted to jack? Not there anymore. In a firefight in the middle of the boulevard, you can see 3 miles behind you with not a single car on it, change your view to forward and you can be sure than a split second later 4-5 cars will pile-up on your back. That even worse with the model of cars that you need to steal for some missions; the car is waiting at a red light, you walk besides it, lose it from your screen one tenth of a second because your character felt like doing a 360 before opening the door and voila, the car is 3 blocks away, literally FLYING over obstacle. You can literally see your gang-member disappear on the radar once you pass them. The only things you can count on not ‘de-spawning’ are police and rival gangs cars.

The Middle

A few things are different than GTA4 without being worse or bad.

1 – Storyline

The character customization in SR2 is great however the storyline is extremely linear, no moral-choices like in GTA4 that allows you to get different missions/ending here.

2 – Radio

I liked the different style of radio stations in SR2, a dedicated 80’s and classical music channel were a great idea but each station has like 6-7 songs top, it gets boring quickly.

The Good

1 – FUN!

Like I previously said, this game is a lot of fun. Not having to stop between missions to play darts with a Rasta man or bringing your damn cousins to see titties is a big plus. All those events and side missions are an unending stream of laughter plus the economical side of the game (having the possibilities to invest in business) gives some depth to the game.

2 – Content

SR2 has a lot more ’side’ content than GTA4 and although Stillwater itself is a lot smaller than Liberty City, this does not really affect the quantity nor quality of content. It’s just that there is less brown and useless crap between the good parts. The SR2 storyline seems to go (and end) quicker than GTA4 but that’s only because you don’t have to start over the same missions 3-4 times each.

3 – No cousins

Period.

Conclusion

Although I’ve cooled down since my initial assessment of Saints Row 2, I still find that this game is a must have for anyone who likes sandbox games. I don’t want to start a flame war over Grand Theft Auto 4 and Saints Row 2, I liked both games and don’t regret purchasing either of those but if I had to bring only 1 to a deserted island, I’d bring SR2.

Related posts:

1. Saints Row 2, an early review by Niko Bellic.
2. A Letter To Game Developers: Game Difficulty Woes
3. Music in Games, who should pay for it?
4. Portal: The Future of Gaming