Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the one game that caused me to defect from PC gaming to console gaming. I bought my
Playstation 2 back in December of 2002 and the rest is history. Given the success of the GTA franchise, many have looked to imitate the style in many different ways. And some games have shamelessly tried to mimic the formula exactly. Now the
Xbox 360 has their own GTA clone in Saints Row. Saints Row is probably the best GTA clone to date. It's largely successful in replicating the formula of a mission-based wide open 3rd person shooter, while improving on GTA's shortcomings.
Story
You are a nameless character who is caught in a gang war in the fictional city of Stilwater. Right before you're about to become another statistic of gang violence, you are rescued by the 3rd Street Saints, one of the lesser gangs in the city. After being saved, you are invited to join the gang as it's the only way to really make a name for yourself.
The plot follows the story of the 3rd Street Saints rise to prominence in Stilwater as you gain notoriety yourself. You partner with the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, Julius as you fight for the Saints on a variety of missions. The plot takes many predictable twists and a few ones which might catch you by surprise. The plot isn't limited just to gang warfare, but it'll also branch out to other corners of society. Overall the plot seems a little light at first since your character has, well, no character. But by the end I was surprised how deep the story is because it really makes you think on multiple levels. In that sense I think it's rather underrated among many gamers who play this game.
Gameplay
Saints Row is your typical 3rd person action shooter game set in the same style as the Grand Theft Auto games. Also like GTA, the game is wide open in the sense that you have multiple options to complete the main storyline missions as well as side missions that can be completed at almost any point in the game. The missions are short in that they only last about 5-10 minutes and involve multiple goals in its successful completion. Most missions involve infiltration of a location, escorting a person to a location, eliminating a target, racing to a set of points on the map, or a combination of all of those. The mission styles are close to that you'd find in GTA, but they lack the flair and variety that existed in those games. That is they seemed really repetitive. However the missions are fun because they take unexpected twists in the same way as GTA missions.
The missions are the meat of Saints Row. The story missions are filled with cutscenes which further the plot and reveal more about your environment. Side missions lack the cutscene frequency and can take longer to complete. Many of these side missions involve a specific task like rounding up prostitutes from abusive pimps, or eliminating targets. These missions have several components which get harder and harder to do as you progress in the game. In this sense they are a lot like the R3 missions in GTA only not as tedious and not quite as challenging or unforgiving for that matter.
Saints Row has a very diverse arsenal of weapons which aid you in your missions or allow you to wreak havoc on Stilwater. Available from the outset is the garden variety of weapons like handguns, shotguns, sub machine guns, assault rifles, melee weapons, explosives, and rocket launchers available at your local Friendly Fire weapons shop. In addition there are many hidden weapons scattered throughout the city like the pimp cane shotgun, sniper rifle, and some overpowered machine guns. You also have very diverse methods of transportation as well including a variety of Coupes, Sedans, and Trucks with vastly different speeds, accelerations, durability, and handling. There's also an impressive collection of sports cars, all of which can be pimped out as well as police, fire, and construction vehicles.
During the game you'll acquire phone numbers of homies which can aid you in missions or general mayhem throughout Stilwater. You'll also acquire respect with your gang which allows certain missions to open up earlier. Respect is earned by killing rival gang members, completing certain missions, and dressing with gang member colors. However the more you terrorize a particular gang, the more aggressively they'll try and track you down and kill you. You’ll also find yourself in the same situation with the police when you attack citizens on the street. Still in both these cases, it's not too hard to evade both if you're a halfway decent driver in a fast car. Eventually you can just hide out until the heat dies down. However, the only way to get them off your tail in a timely manner is the forgive and forget.
Money is obtained mostly from completing missions. You can also collect cash from random people on the street and rival gang members. However missions get you the more worthwhile cash, while random people off the street seem to only drop a few bucks once every ten deaths. The economy is much more frugal in this game the GTA or other GTA clones. That is, it's a lot harder to amass a fortune or multiply your earnings.
There's also an online component to Saints Row that supports up to 12 players. There are several different modes including a deathmatch, a variation of capture the flag in Big Azz Chains, Protect the Pimp which is a mode you'd might see in a game like
SOCOM 3, and a kill relay called blinged out Ride. Despite the variation of games, most of these modes play out the same as a typical deathmatch circle-shoot-fest you see in most online first or third person shooters. Saints Row really doesn't have a lot of different gameplay dynamics like Halo or Gears of War to really make this terribly enjoyable, but it is fun. However, Protect The Pimp does include some variety despite the lack of specialized controls for a stealthy escape or assault.
Controls
The controls are almost identical to that of Grand Theft Auto. You have different control schemes whether you're on foot, in a vehicle, or doing some other random action. Like Grand Theft Auto, the camera is controlled in almost every situation with the right analog stick, while the left analog stick controls the motion of you or your vehicle or targeting receptacle. The face buttons do common actions like sprinting, accelerating in a car, jumping, braking, entering or exiting vehicles. The trigger buttons act mainly to attack or do quick looks in vehicles. The fighting system is pretty robust and it uses all the buttons individually or in combination to fight. Finally, the dpad is used to recruit gang members or switch music tracks.
This is a great system because it partitions the controls in such a way that most tasks take place in one area of the controller so you're not wondering which button an action is. Also it allows analog style controls to be used in logical situations like lateral movement and camera position while more digital-like actions assigned to fact buttons like car acceleration. I don't like the two analog stick driving style from games like
Halo 2 it's just too clumsy and easy to screw up. Veterans of Grand Theft Auto will definitely have an easy time adapting to this game.
Graphics
The graphics in Saints Row are clearly better than in any other GTA game. The textures are cleaner, the city is brighter, and the draw distances were larger. Still, given what the folks at Epic accomplished with
Gears of War the graphics look somewhat inferior. Still, the city looks vibrant and realistic. The tones and textures are bright and lifelike. Animations take on a realistic feel; while character and vehicle models all looked they're ripped right out of real life. The only exception is the morbidly obese hookers in thong bikinis that appear in this game. I think the developers at THQ should cut down their visits to biggirls.com.
The Havoc physics engine really makes for some somewhat realistic animations. The Havoc engine is a truer rag doll engine where bodies go limp and can arrange themselves in many amusing positions when hit with an explosive or powerful weapon. However, I say somewhat realistic in that I would think people wouldn't go limp so quickly at will when being blasted with a shotgun. I would think they're muscles would go stiff and they'd freeze in place when something that traumatic happens, but I'm no doctor.
Sound
The audio in Saints Row is mediocre. The voice actor who plays Julius was a horrible casting decision. He speaks too fast and too low. He just doesn't come off as a gang leader. To make matters worse, your character is practically silent as well. Some of the other characters like Johnny Gat and Troy come off as more realistic, but their scripts were just so cliche that it was wince-inducing at times to listen. Most of the other characters came off as more realistic, but from the outset, it just didn't help convey the story properly.
The sound effects are pretty decent. There's nothing like the sound of a good shotgun blast in a good speaker setup to really get the heart pumping, and Saints Row really delivers. Weapon sounds really pack a punch in addition to the explosions that take place throughout the game. Besides weapons and explosions, there's also a decent amount of ambience to the city like horns honking downtown, commotion of a group of people, etc. It just feels realistic to be in Stilwater from what you hear.
The musical tracks found on the radio are not the same quality you'd expect from a GTA game. That is, you won't hear Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, or any other big name artist. Still without the familiar artists, the selection they picked wasn't bad. Just not realistic given that these folks would never appear on the radio. Such groups include: Iggy Pop, Jane's Addiction, Method Man, and Masta Ace. Such genres included on the radio include adult contemporary, rap, reggae, metal, rock, and classical. I find it really amusing to roll down the street listening to classical while performing a drive-by. Still, if this music doesn't meet your expectations, you can import your own music in MP3 form to your Xbox hard drive and play it in the game instead. This is an addition that really should have been in the Xbox version of the game if at all possible.
Replay
The story mode in Saints Row is pretty short. I probably completed the game in about 15 hours, and I'm known for being notoriously slow in completing games. However, once the main story is completed, there are plenty of side missions to check out as well like chop shop, hitman, insurance fraud, etc. Aside from those, there are roughly 1000 achievement points to unlock, most of which are pretty reasonable to obtain (if you haven't already over the course of the story). Finally there are 60 CDs to unlock musical tracks in the game. I wasn't so much into the CD searching so much for the music, but more for the completion of the game. There is plenty to do besides the missions but once you're done and unlocked most of the achievements there little incentive to play again. The missions really aren't epic enough to replay them over and over, while the city just isn't fun enough to cause enough general mayhem to make it challenging to get away.
Overall part of me is astonished THQ can make such a competent game. Still with everything that looks good, it just doesn't have that edge that the Grand Theft Auto enjoys. Perhaps it's the way the gangs and police can't stand up to your might, or maybe it's just the bland and awkward mission structure, but the game just doesn't keep you on the edge of your seat. Yes the story is much more realistic and down to earth, but the rewards just aren't there. With Grand Theft Auto there's always incentive to move on whether it's the opening of a section of the map, the introduction of a new set of weapons, or the ability to obtain a powerful vehicle or mode of transportation. In that sense, the only reason to keep playing Saints Row is getting a good laugh out of the Havok physics engine, and that's more of a novelty than anything. I really got bored after an hour of making bodies fly all over a city block. Even the cheat codes aren't quite as innovative as Grand Theft Auto. In the end Saints Row is a good game, but I don't think Grand Theft Auto has lost any mystique as a result. Like Gears of War is to Halo, it's a decent enough effort to cause gamers to take notice. Not just that there's another decent GTA-like game on the market, but also THQ is capable of making an enjoyable game.
