Before Volition completely jumped the shark with Saints Row 3 and 4, the studio gave us a (mostly) down to earth, open world sandbox game that instantly became one of my favorite games of all time. When I first played this game back in the day I was super surprised about the amazing depth this game had. You could completely customize your character and customize basically all of the cars (including adding spinners to golf carts), plus you had free roam of the city of Stilwater.
Maybe it's just me being impartial because I love Saints Row and Saints Row 2 so much, but Stilwater has got to be one of the best fictional locations ever immortalized in video game form. The city is depicted much better in SR2, but I can't hate the first iteration of the city because it's just so memorable. I hadn't played this game since, probably 2008, and I still remembered the layout like the back of my hand. I think that speaks to how good of a job Volition did crafting the city from the ground up.
In this game, we see the Saints as just an ordinary street gang fighting to become the ONLY street gang by eliminating their competition; the Westside Rollerz, Los Carnales, and the Vice Kings. Your character is recruited after a rough run in of gang violence, after which your "canonized" and welcomed into the Saints, led by Julius Little (voiced by Spawn himself, Keith David). You play as the right hand man of Julius, tasked with bringing down the other gangs with help from lieutenants Johnny Gat, Troy (more of a background character though), Dex, and Lin. Each gang has their own series of unique missions, with about 10 or more for each gang, so there's a lot of activities to do that works your way to a 100% completion.
Speaking of activities, the side missions in this game are known as activities. These side missions are essential in raising your respect level, and your respect level is essential for playing the missions because you need a certain level of respect to initiate the missions to begin with. It's not as bad as it seems though, activities are actually pretty fun with a ton of variety. Just to go over a few, there's chop shop, which tasks you with finding a specific (sometimes rare) car somewhere in the city and bringing it back for money and respect. Hitman tasks you with finding targets in the city and eliminating them with a specific weapon. My favorite activity is Insurance Fraud, where you throw yourself in front of cars and rag doll yourself across the world to earn cash. There's a decent mix of serious and, let's be frank here, ludicrous activities, but they're all fun and hold your attention very well. Also, if you completely clear an activity, you're rewarded with either borderline cheats (like infinite sprinting) or something crappy, like your notoriety for a specific gang will drop quicker.
Weapons are handled well in Saints Row. There's no auto target, but the aiming mechanic is good enough that you wouldn't need such a thing anyway. You can hold a bunch of weapons at a time, but only one version of a weapon at once, like, you can hold either a desert eagle or a 9mm in the pistol slot, an AK-47 or an M4 in your assault rifle slot, etc. You can also hold a melee weapon.
The music is composed mostly of rap and hip-hop, and while Saints Row 2 had a better soundtrack, this game has a memorable soundtrack as well, but it'll serve you better if you're a fan of rap and hip-hop. If that's not your bag, just flick the music off, you won't be losing much.
Overall, I'd say Saints Row is a great game with tons of fun, and a good story. If you are, or ever were a fan of the early Grand Theft Auto games, Saints Row plays almost exactly like one of them, it just looks better and has more fun by going over the top every once in a while. I highly recommend it, even if it is getting close to (or is) a decade old now. Good times all around.
- Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
