Saints Row

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Rockstar North, the developer of the Grand Theft Auto series, should be very, very flattered by Saints Row. After all, developer Volition's take on an open-ended criminal action game is almost criminally similar to GTA on first impression.

Like GTA, Saints Row offers much the same combination of driving and shooting action; it's set in a fictitious, modern American city. But this superficial lack of originality only hurts the game at first glance, if at all. As outstanding as the GTA games are, you'll find that Saints Row is similarly enjoyable in many important respects--and even better in a couple of key ways.

You begin play by determining your character's appearance, and you have what seems like a limitless number of options to choose from. The game starts with you nearly getting caught in the cross fire of a gang war. You're saved by Julius (voiced perfectly by Keith David), the charismatic leader of a racially diverse gang called the 3rd Street Saints, one of Stilwater's four biggest criminal groups. And he invites you to join up. The game's introductory cutscene has a couple of lines of painfully bad dialogue in it, suggesting that Saints Row will go on to bombard you with horrible clichés and an appalling fake attitude. But, somehow, somewhere, the story gets really good.

The beginning of the game sets up how the gameplay experience itself is structured. There are several different main story arcs for you to follow, involving the Saints' war against its three rivals. Each enemy gang has its own identity, preferred vehicles, and major characters, and you may attempt to take over their turf in whatever order you wish. However, you can't just jump from one story mission to another. The game makes you earn "respect" before you can take on missions, which is mostly a contrived way of forcing you to try out the many different ancillary activities available in Saints Row, rather than just blowing through the story. This structure might seem heavy handed at first, but since there are many fairly easy and entertaining ways to earn respect in the game, it turns out to be more good than bad.

The search for more respect will introduce you to some of Saints Row's many amusing minigames. Though most all of them are fun, the best ones are probably "insurance fraud", in which you must deliberately throw yourself into oncoming traffic as violently and in front of as many witnesses as possible, and "mayhem", which simply tasks you with causing as much death and destruction as possible within a certain time limit.

The reason basic activities like rescuing hookers and defending drug dealers going on their equivalent of a paper route are entertaining in Saints Row is because the game has rock-solid driving and shooting controls. The game's action is gleefully and appallingly over-the-top to the point of being silly, though the liberal use of profanity and adult content in the script earns this game its MA15+ rating with honours. The dozens of different cars in the game not only look great but also have distinctly different handling characteristics, yet they're all quite easy to steer through tight turns and oncoming traffic and so forth. What's more, the game is filled with truly spectacular explosions and a good selection of guns. Also, you'll frequently get to fight alongside up to three computer-controlled "homies", who'll do a thoroughly competent job of following you around and helping you kill whoever's shooting at you.

With the exception of a few fairly tough story missions and higher-level side missions, the game is very forgiving. Your character's health automatically regenerates if you avoid taking damage for a while, and you can suffer a lot of punishment before you die anyway. Also, you can carry health-restoring food items around with you, but even if you do get smoked during a mission, you're then conveniently prompted to start it over from the beginning, instantly.

Saints Row offers some other conveniences that are on the verge of being innovations, most notably in its map system. Your onscreen minimap doesn't just point you in the general direction of where you need to go (if you have a mission objective); it shows you an optimal path to get there. Saints Row even lets you save your progress whenever you want, and your hideout can be magically used to store dozens of different vehicles and an unlimited supply of basic weapons. All of these little things add up to make Saints Row, in a couple of words, very playable. You get to spend your time in this game getting to places you want to go and undertaking action-packed missions, rather than getting stuck in trial-and-error ruts, getting lost, staring at a lot of loading screens, or feeling like you're not making progress.

Much like GTA's world, the world of Saints Row looks a lot more realistic than it really is. You can safely ignore all traffic laws, and even if you do start to commit wanton acts of unprovoked violence, there's little real consequence. This doesn't mean it isn't fun to stir up trouble, though, such as by holding up a liquor store or driving down a busy sidewalk. Getting into serious trouble takes a little work, as the cops won't come after you for speeding or running red lights or anything like that. In fact, they'll ignore you even if you jump on the hood of one of their squad cars with a shotgun in hand. It takes a fairly deliberate and violent act to draw the authorities' attention, and you also need to watch out for rival enemy gang members, who may come after you in increasing numbers should you start killing their own.

The game's lack of originality is probably the worst thing that can be said about it, but Saints Row does have some other shortcomings. For instance, it doesn't have much in the way of mission variety. Since driving and shooting are the two main aspects of play, there are only so many different variations on these themes that the game is able to cook up, and you've probably seen most of it before in other games. Saints Row is a satisfyingly long game that'll probably take you about 20 hours to get to the end of the main storyline, but while you'll likely have many activities left to do and only around a 60 percent completion rate by that time, you won't necessarily feel compelled to keep doing the same types of missions over and over again.

Saints Row features a complete multiplayer component for up to 12 players, playable online or via system link. There are a variety of modes of play, most of which are familiar in concept. There's "big ass chains", in which players must gun each other down and drop each others' necklaces off at certain points on the map. The more necklaces you're carrying before you drop them off, the bigger you score, forcing you to decide just how many necklaces are worth risking your neck for. There's also a round-based mode in which one team must escort a pimp to safety while the other team tries to mow him down. The pimp is unarmed, but his slap is deadlier than concentrated fire from an assault rifle. There's a pure deathmatch mode and a team-based variant, and there's also a mode in which teams must fight each other to try and upgrade their cars as quickly as possible. Finally, there are a couple of two-player cooperative missions, in which you and a friend must team up to take on lots of computer-controlled gang members. We experienced noticeable lag in larger multiplayer matches, though the co-op missions played smoothly.

Games don't have to be different to be great. What makes Saints Row appealing straight off the bat is that, assuming you're familiar with the wildly successful GTA series, you'll know exactly what you're getting into from the moment you jack your first car in this game.