The best thing about the side quests (insurance fraud, mayhem, etc.) in Saint’s Row were that they were actually fun. A lot of the side stuff in GTA is tedious but I actually wanted to do the side quests in SR.
Excellent! Can’t wait to check it out. Saints Row was so much fun.
Agree with this completely. I didn’t think I’d like the game much but ended up really enjoying a lot of the mechanics. The Insurance Fraud idea was great, and you could actually aim and shoot - amazing!
The city didn’t feel as fully realized as any of the GTA cities though, the writing was awful and the characters were nasty. GTA has always been a little tongue in cheek for me, but it was as though the writers on SA were taking themselves far too seriously, and writing cheese ridden, mean spirited racial steretypes. Made me a little queasy more than once. I couldn’t be more sick of faux gangsta crap.
From your lips to the Lord’s ear.
I was among those who didn’t think much of this game until I ran out things to play and put it in on a lark. A under-appreciated gem, to be sure.
One problem I had with SR that I hope they change in the sequel is that you couldn’t just set up in the middle of an intersection and kick-start some chaos. In GTA it’s fun to just start blowing things up and getting caught up in the ensuing chase… in Saint’s Row, if I recall correctly, it was ridiculously difficult to actually draw a crowd of cops. Unless you were in a mission.
Yeah I liked SR a lot. Psyched for the sequel. It was one of those games where I made a custom playlist of tunes for it (the integration into the game was nice). It was full of stuff like Afro Man and Beastie Boys and whatnot.
You could definitely do it SR, just took a bit longer. That’s how I got my Helicopter achievement. :)
I’m obviously biased since I worked on it, but I love the game too. Played it for 18 months before it even shipped and still enjoy it from time to time. It’s just fun.
My favorite bit, admittedly, is when you don’t quite control the entire city, and you stir something up in an uncontrolled district, then head racing back to your own turf with like three or four cars chasing you (cop or gang). The fact that you could just cross into a district you own and suddenly see friendly gang members start helping you out, starting this huge street battle was always satisfying to me.
One of my first posts here was something similar. I picked up the full game due to endless recommendation from here, and yeah, it’s great. The demo is a crap showcase of it, really.
I like Saints Row, and I’ll get round to finishing it someday, but I can’t say I particularly liked most of the music, and some of the missions were stupendously frustrating. They weren’t frustrating due to shitty controls or something the game shouldn’t really have attempted to handle, though, which San Andreas is guilty of to a ridiculous proportion, so I guess that’s something. Then again I think San Andreas is horrendously overrated, so what do I know?
Thanks for the info - I’ve been meaning to compare credit lists, but wondered if anyone had any insight, so appreciated.
“So a cowboy, a kung-fu master, and a guy in a Chicken suit walk into a bar…”
Another nice control option was that you can map the accelerate/steering to your left stick and leave your right as aim. Makes shooting at moving cars and shooting at anything while moving much, much better. I really hope they do away with the left bumper/right bumper window look in GTA IV.
Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. I loved the gameplay, and the city, and basically every improvement they made over GTA’s gameplay, but holy crap the writing bugged me. Misogynistic as all hell, too. Just because I’m playing a gangster-style sandbox game doesn’t mean I actually want to be a fucking gansta, Volition, so trim that shit back in the sequel, please.
My pleasure. It gave me a chance to sit back and wistfully reminice for a few minutes. wipes tear
On the original topic, I’m very interested to see what they do with the sequel. There’s a lot of new faces in key positions on the team, as I understand it. I have to admit I was extremely underwhelmed with the first screenshot on saintsrow2.com, though.
New preview up. Sounds promising. Going to have real online co-op this time like Crackdowns. http://www.gameplayer.com.au/Home/PREVIEWS/PREVIEWGAME/tabid/1484/Default.aspx?CID=e3b94146-4f13-41de-a61f-176d991fb212&v7Pager=1
Entire game and all side missions co-op. Wow.
They better work on their netcode, because the multiplayer lag for the last one was perhaps the worst on the 360 to date.
Was it still that bad after the patch? It was supposed to make things worlds better, but everyone I know who had played it moved on by the time the patch came out.
I just played it last week (it made me download an update).
It’s a bit better now, but players still jump around, disappear, float, and you see your health bar going down and then see your attacker warp in seconds later.
So, still a mess. Not sure exactly how “it’s a bit better” came from that description, but it was AWFUL before.
It has the advantage of being on more than just the 360.
Saints Row 2 is going to be better than GTA4.