Saints Row

The Grand Theft Auto III (GTA) series pioneered the open-ended sandbox style of “thug simulator” and proved to be an unprecedented critical and retail success---making it no wonder that a handful of competitors have since published their own mimics of this genre. But few, if any, have come close to the high standard set by GTA. So along comes Saints Row, which is clearly one more “me too” game built unabashedly upon the Rockstar Games foundation. Everyone hates a poser, so Saints Row was going to have to put in some serious effort to overcome this stigma and be taken as a serious effort in its own right. Does it achieve this tall order? While not quite spectacular, Saints Row ends up being perhaps the most competent and compelling GTA clone to date. In short, Saints Row may still be a poser, but manages to be ‘pretty fly for a white guy.’

The gamer finds himself as an anonymous street rat who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thankfully, the leader of an upstart crew of ‘ganstas’ (spelling purposefully incorrect, of course) comes to your aid and, before you know it, you find yourself part of the 3rd Street Saints gang. The Saints appear to be an altruistic gaggle of thugs, their leader Julius fed up with the rival gangs that run the city of Stillwater. It’s the Saint’s mission, and therefore yours, to take over the city ‘hood by ‘hood by eliminating the rival gangs that control it.

As with any game of the GTA variety, a solid open-ended world supports the whole structure. Stillwater isn’t a huge city, and it’s certainly not going to rival San Andrea’s one state/multiple city sprawl, but it’s big enough. Stillwater has downtown, waterfront, industrial, commercial, ghetto, and residential districts. Each district is populated by plenty of characters going about their daily business, chatting and generally making crass remarks or simply diving out of your way. The city feels alive as it should (and does admirably well in that department); fun can be had simply walking about town, taking in the sites and people. In fact, you could spend countless hours scouring Stillwater and frequenting its many shops. There are car shops, clothing stores, fast food joints, tattoo parlors, jewelry stores, and more! There is also a plethora of vehicle types---trucks, cars, buses, bulldozers, and sports cars are all present with each handling differently. Some are pure brutes that can put up with a great deal of punishment, others are tremendously nimble and peppy, some are based on pure speed. With all this variety, Stillwater offers plenty in tertiary gameplay. As you might expect, the carjacking system is in full effect here. Walk up to any vehicle, press ‘Y,’ and you’ll throw the driver to the curb and take control. You’re also able to permanently add a car to your collection by driving it into the garage of one of several “cribs” (read: houses), and pimp them out (read: upgrade) at car shops with your earned cash. Your cribs store all sorts of purchased swag as well, such as wardrobe and weapons. This is a good thing as there’s a remarkable amount stuff you can outfit your character with to suit your own tastes. I had my own goodfella suited up like a Gucci assassin, looking pretty slick in his fedora, chains, tattoos, and black suit. While it’s all handily mapped out and fun in and of itself, this customization also has a further gameplay centric incentive: it helps you earn respect.

There are two types of currency in Stillwater: cash and the aforementioned respect. Cash speaks for itself and is earned by completing missions and activities. Respect, on the other hand, is earned solely by completing activities that can then be used to unlock missions (which are story-based and brings you closer to your ultimate game goal of city domination). Activities include stealing hookers from rival pimps, racing rival gangs, becoming a hired hitman, hijacking cars, competing in a destruction derby, and the standard sort of fantasy-based thug life stuff. As you complete an activity, you earn the respect needed to participate in the missions, and once missions are completed, your respect is depleted---you’ll have to complete more activities to regain enough respect to complete additional missions. Character customization comes into play once you’ve completed an activity: the better dressed your character, the more respect you earn. In this way, the game links disparate aspect of gameplay in a logical fashion, further encouraging players to get to know the city better.

Since you have to engage in activities to get anywhere in the game proper, it’s a good thing that most activities are great fun. In particular, the “Mayhem” and “Drug Trafficking” activities are a blast as these two activities are the highlights in Saints Row’s proclivity for action. Mayhem has you doling out massive amounts of destruction in an effort to inflict as much property damage (measured in dollars) before time runs out. Drug Trafficking puts you in the passenger seat of a drug dealer’s ride while he goes about his business; your job is to protect him by taking out cops and rival gangs that are in hot pursuit. It’s not uncommon to have multiple vehicles in a chase, with everyone firing madly! Ultimately, parts start flying off damaged cars, engines begin to smoke, and eventually it will all end in a spectacular explosion (or two or three)! You can also place some well-aimed bullets through the windshield, shatter it in Hollywood fashion, kill the driver and watch as the car careens wildly off the road. Taken all together, the height of the action produces some spectacular and viscerally satisfying experiences.

This action philosophy guides the game as a whole. In a few of the aforementioned activities, you’ll have your standard bevy of weapons to choose from, each with infinite ammunition---so all you need to worry about is pulling the trigger. There is no auto-aiming or lock-on features to speak of; you simply aim and shoot as in a basic action game or first person shooter. As you take damage, your health will deplete as expected, but simply stay away from harm long enough and it will regenerate on its own. Should a cop take you down or if you’re killed in action, you’ll simply be released from custody a few hours later at the closest police station or revived in the nearest area hospital---the only real penalty coming in the form of a small percentage of your cash being taken away. You are able to save anywhere in the game and activities, once completed, can be entered into again at the next level of difficulty with the simple press of a button. As you progress further in the game, you gain the ability to recruit AI-controlled followers that will aid you in a mission or activity (they do a fine job of carrying out their appointed tasks). There’s even an incredibly intuitive map that sets waypoints and directions to assist the player in getting to a particular objective, mission, or activity. Put together, Saints Row’s structure serves to ease the player into the game by emphasizing fun and limiting frustration, throwing you into the action as quickly and frequently as possible, rather than stressing about the consequences of failure. While this may render the game somewhat unchallenging at times, the difficulty ramps up progressively (as it should) with a few missions and activities requiring several attempts to complete.

The emphasis on action seems to have carried over into the technical side of things as well. Saints Row employs the Havok physics engine quite well: cars bounce around the streets, debris flies off in spectacular fashion, characters flump about with rag doll physics. Besides the physics engine, there are other things that Saints Row does well---explosions and lighting, in particular. When much of the game is spent shooting-up cars, they had better explode real well…and they do. Once a vehicle finally blows, its fiery chassis ascends while flipping end over end in a brilliant display of smoke, blurring heat waves, and fire. Take on a Mayhem activity, and you’ll see this repeated a dozen times---and it never gets old. The lighting is also fantastic. As time passes, the lighting outside adjusts accordingly. Sunrise resembles the feeble light of early morning, the afternoon has the intensity of full daylight, sunset looks just as it would in the real world and, at night, street lamps and car headlights spill over objects in pixel perfect fashion. Also, lighting from the flashers of a cop’s car spill over surrounding objects with great effect, as do the muzzle flashes of weaponry. Take on a Drug Trafficking activity in the evening, put all of the aforementioned effects into the mix, and you’ll have an orgy of lighting effects!

Everything else in the game is fairly solid. Character models look great, the draw distance is commendable with areas streaming in seamlessly, and texture detail is equally impressive. Having said this, Saints Row is likely much better appreciated in HD than SD.

As much as Saints Row does well, however, a few flaws serve to take the game down a notch. When action becomes really crazy, for example, things can get quite cluttered with the frame rate dropping noticeably. V-syncing issues (horizontal tears during movement) rear their ugly head during gameplay and cut-scenes. Finally, there a few glitches here and there: the ground will occasionally vanish beneath you and your character will occasionally become irreversibly stuck in walls and other geometric objects.

The biggest surprise of all is just how well the storylines are presented. Voice acting is a standout with notable actors such as Michael Clark Duncan and David Carradine playing gang bosses. Furthermore, I’ve rarely seen a game with such fine motion-captured acting. Mannerisms and body language are carried out in a believable fashion that perhaps best suits the medium and the culture: that is, exaggerated. Whatever the reason, it looks fantastic and is carried out with cinematic flare to boot. The story is compelling with enough drama and unexpected twists to keep you interested. Mind you, this is thug life/hip-hop culture through and through; most will either love it or hate it. The language is foul, the acts violent, the sexuality vulgar, and the racial connotations not so subtle. Each gang is divided up along racial lines: the Carnales are Latin American, the Vice Kings are African American, and the Westside Rollerz are Caucasian. Oddly, given the racially segmented gangs, the 3rd Street Saints are comprised of a multicultural assortment of characters---seeming to suggest that the developers attempted to level out the controversial nature of their game by introducing some political correctness into the Saints. This makes the game seem somewhat ‘poserish,’ somewhat unauthentic (if the subject matter is controversial to begin with, why bother holding back?). Finally, scripted dialogue is cleverly written and most of game, while squarely situated in its subject matter, is played out with its tongue firmly in its cheek---which may just be its saving grace.

While Saints Row may be the biggest of impersonators, it manages to differentiate itself by offering up online competitive play. Modes include: “Ganster Brawl” (death match with a team variant), “Big Ass Chains” (dead players drop chains which are picked up and dropped off for points), “Blinged Out Ride” (drive around picking up chains for cash which can be then be used to upgrade your car), and “Protect tha Pimp” (one team acts as hitmen while the other team protects their pimp from elimination). Successful play earns you cash, thus enabling you to buy clothing and customizations for your online avatar---it can be a riot seeing some of the bizarre characters running about online. Conceptually it appears a lot of thought went into making the online play fresh and original but, regrettably, in execution it falls nearly flat. While creating and joining matches is done with ease, considerable amounts of lag often plague matches. Furthermore, hit detection is all but absent: you can take damage without even realizing it as there are barely any audible or visual cues---you’ll be dead before you know what’s going on. Finally, the matches are generally void of sounds effects (such as pattering feet) giving a barren feel to the whole process. There is still some fun to be had here, but it’s obvious the online play was left somewhat unfinished.