Saint's Row is a game that is a blantant rip-off of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, from everything right down to the way you steal cars out from people driving them on the street. But make no mistake: This isn't some rushed piece of garbage simply set out to make money off the GTA franchise. It has a little bit of TLC put into it by the game developers, as well.
Similarities to GTA:
-You can do storyline and free roaming missions
-steal and customize cars
-participate in Turf Wars taking over neighborhoods for your gang
-customize your main character
-wield a large variety of guns
-listen to a large variety of music
-and generally play the game however way you want.
Enhancements over GTA:
-Much superior graphics
-better map
-a GPS system for your maps and vehicles
-customizable cell phone, with allies you can call for backup
-customizable music playlists (in case you get sick of the randomness of the radio stations and want to hear your music anywhere, anytime)
-the hands-down BEST car customization in any non-racing video game, ever!
-health items (food) you can access anytime
-self-regenerating health that heals up from about-to-die to full health in about one minute or so
-superior firearms (albeit none of them look very unique)
-a slightly better menu interface to access your firearms (I just wish they hadn't put the food and weapons in the same system; it gets confusing)
-the police are the most minor threat in the game
-public transportation is available to you (although you more than likely will never use it)
-if you find yourself stuck in water, you can skip having to swim to shore with the "warp" feature, which will do that for you. Pretty cool feature! Why aren't things like that in other games?
-shooting style & difficulity are fair (The shot target is in the fixed-center of the screen and you move the camera to aim, but it's a little harder to use then in GTA)
-both men, AND women, can be recruited as allies in your gang, or killed in other gangs. Hurray for murder equality!
-celebrity voice acting (I instantly recognized Mila Kunis as Tanya and Michael Rapaport as Troy)
Worse from GTA:
-No bikes or motorcycles to ride which is diaspointing
-no boats or planes either (not that they're really needed here)
-character can barely swim
-only one safehouse in the entire city/game
-clothes choices are lame and uninspired
-despite the good voice acting, the dialogue is terrible and it sounds like it was written by the whitest people on the planet (shades of "187: Ride or Die")
-an excessive overuse of cursing (if you're going to use it in every other word, it's impact and gravitas is completely lost)
-the A.I. is stupid, and the enemy gangs have that "random spawning" effect whenever you have a "wanted level" by them
-it's mandatory to do the side missions as you have to earn "respect" in order to do the main storyline missions, and respect is only gained from the side missions
-many of the side missions are hard or just plain annoying, like the later level Escort missions
-your character, although he has great stamina, has terrible running animation, and trying to shoot while running just looks retarded.
-the prices of things are way too high/too much (if you're just staring off and haven't saved up any cash, a fifty dollar hamburger may be a bit much). I'd prefer them if they kept them at "real-world" prices.
-the "humor" of the game is just weak and lacks any level of subtlety whatsoever, like the Wendy's burger chain parody, "Freckle B*tch's" for example
-the radio stations are horribly put together, and their names are awful, too.
-the music is generic and lame, and there's only a few "name brand" artists contributing to the game's soundtrack. Mainly, the Clipse and Twista.
-there's no difficulity setting and the main missions in the game are a bit too easy (while the side missions are often too hard)
-the "escape the police" method in this game is weak and lame. It's a drive-thru confessional booth, not that you'll ever really need to use it. I never even been in "Forgive and Forget" before.
-your recruited allies are complete idiots and you'll spend more time than anything reviving them because they rushed headlong into a dozen or so shooting enemies. They're more of a hassle to use than any kind of help, sort of like bringing young children along for grocery shopping.
-it's pretty easy to die in situations that don't call for it. Your health bar, despite it's regeneration, can't take much damage and a few shots from two or more enemies can take you from full health to death pretty quickly. Like, in three seconds quickly. This is darn frustrating and happens A LOT in the stupid Pushback missions that pop up randomally that you can't avoid skipping over.
-there's NO Body Armor, anywhere in this game, which only adds on to the annoying "easy to die" problem I mentioned above.
-the randomally popping up, mandatory "defend your turf against invading gangs" Pushback Missions. They were just as random and annoying in San Andreas and they're even more annoying here. What's worse is, in order to successfully defend your turf, you'll have to seek out special "lieutenants" instead of just killing everybody in sight. And these 12 or so lieutenants tend to hide out in weird, hard-to-reach places, and you'll have to make your way through dozens of enemies, risking your life, just to make your way to them. It was easier in GTA when you just had to kill everybody invading your land. Here, you'll literally be in an urban battlefield going against dozens of enemies, making your way to one of the four spots in the area your enemy lieutenats are at. (they only hang out three at a time and are scattered wide across the entire neighborhood warzone.) The worse thing about these missions are that they're more or less mandatory, and you won't have time to save whenever they pop up, and they'll pop up often after JUST completing a really hard mission or side quest. At least in San Andreas, it was fun to do these missions, partly because they were do in intervals and all you had to do is be the last man standing. Here, they're just a REALLY annoying chore.
-each gun has it's own set of bullets, making it hard to get ammo. In other games like GTA, bullets are shared between guns of similar types (universal pistol ammo, universal shotgun ammo, etc.), but here, each gun is different with it's own unique bullets in them, and you can only have one gun type (pistol, shotgun, etc.) at a time. BUT, because you can't use ammo from other guns, that you'll often find off of dead bodies, you'll constantly be having to decide whether to swap your gun that's low on ammo out for the one of a gang member you just shot. If so, you'll quickly run of of ammo for that, too. If not, you'll just have an empty gun on you. And thus, you'll be deciding which gun you have that is more fuel efficent, quite often in heavily heated turf wars or in missions with tons of enemies to kill. What's worse is every single gangster carries different random guns on them. If the Vice Kings just all had Vice pistols and the Carnales had a different pistol type they all shared, it'd be a lot simplier. But, no, every time you kill someone, it's "do I run out of ammo, or pick this up instead, even though it only has five more bullets in it than the one I already have?" Basically, you'll easily use up all the ammo for whichever gun you have and will have to replace it for another gun (which only has a few bullets in it) and back and fourth like so. (In other words: YOU'RE *ALWAYS* RUNNING OUT OF AMMO!)
Overall, Saint's Row is a worthy edition to the GTA genre of video games. Although it's a rip-off, in every sense of the word, it's defintely not of inferior quality. In fact, Saint's Row is even better than most of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game, at it's core is nice, but what really bogs it down are the minor negatives, which as you can see, really begin to add up. The game is much better than Three Stars, but all these little things keep it from being Five Star worthy. Other than the numerous minor flaws, the only problem is the story, which is pretty lame and generic, and the script, which is just laughably cheesy in it's attempt to sound "urban" or "gangsta" or "hip hop" or whatever. San Andreas' dialogue and script felt 100% genuine. Saint's Rows, however, sounds forced, like they were too lazy to do their research and just decided to "wing it."
It would be easy to just make a Grand Theft Auto clone that's pretty bad (True Crime has proved that, for us). It would also be pretty easy to try to make your own game, using many of the famous GTA elements involved (I.E, CrackDown). But Saint's Row, however, is a true Grand Theft Auto imitation, that manages not to photocopy the game, but use it as a worthy starting off point for their own series. I like mostly everything in this game, and the only real things keeping it from being superior to every GTA game ever made on the older consoles, is it's cheesy dialogue, numerous small annoyances, it's and cheesy writing, and lame attempts to be "funny."
Other than that, Saint's Row is a worthy duplication of the "sandbox shooting and driving" genre created by GTA itself, and it definitely deserves to be played, even if only as a week-long rental, by ANY Grand Theft Auto fan.
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So long as you don't include originality as part of your game evaluation process, Saint's Row is a stellar, stellar piece of programming. It fixes five of the six problems with the GTA series, and offers tons of little "next-gen" improvements that make it more palatable for older gamers.
1)Graphics: The draw distances and general graphical ... "cruddiness"... of the PS2 (and even the XBOX) versions of GTA are a thing of the past. The game looks great. There's some pop-up with long streets, but the explosions, character models, and polish is simply a vast improvement. I actually thought San Andreas looked worse than Vice City, so this is almost a two-step improvement for me. The explosions, weather and lighting effects, and reflections are really incredible when you consider the lack of loading times.
2)Auto-Aiming: It's gone. I'm not quite used to the borrowed FPS style yet, but anything would be better than the broken auto aiming feature of GTA. It shan't be missed.
3)Save Scheme: No longer am I limited to the GTA "one save per half an hour of playing" madness. Hallelujah. I can't devote large chunks of time to a game, and if I can't save frequently, I lose interest fast.
4)Restarting Missions. Recovering your weapons and restarting missions from the beginning (actually, before the beginning) was asinine in GTA. It wastes time and annoys gamers without really upping the difficulty. Also won't be missed.
5)On-line. Haven't had a chance to play with my own copy yet, but watched someone else play. It might suck, it might be great, but at least it's there.
6)Timed, pizza-delivery missions. They haven't really reared up yet, but hopefully these annoying time-wasters are gone. We'll see.
The main problems I see with Saint's Row I *suspect* will be solved with Xbox live "updates"/purchases. It took me an hour to realize that there were tons of cars, but no motorcycles, etc. I have a feeling we'll have to pay for the privilege of flying a chopper or driving a boat. That will suck. It better be cheap, because the lack of these vehicle options doesn't feel like a game limitation, but like a conscious programming choice.
The story seems pretty derivative, but I'm not far enough along to really evaluate it.
I can't really see myself ever playing any current version of GTA ever again. After only a few hours of Saint's Row you realize that GTA has too many annoying idiosyncracies that should have been fixed long ago.
For fans of the sandbox genre, this is the game to buy, and may be for quite some time.
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Look, this game is not as good as GTA, especially the amazing experience that is San Andreas. However, this game is still very good and will hold over GTA fans until IV comes out later this year. If you enjoy playing GTA, chances are you will enjoy this game, especially where this franchise made some significant improvements. If you didn't like GTA games and are offended with overt violence, strong language, and direct sexual references, then steer away from this game. Here are the pros, cons, and "washes" as they compare to GTA:
Pros:
Better graphics
Better sound effects of cars and weapons
Cars are cooler
Superior implementation of the map functionality.
Save system is improved, but I can not understand in today's day and age of gaming why RPG-action games like this don't have a "save-at-any-time" functionality or at least provide reasonable interim mission save points which this game did not.
Ability to save up to 70 cars in your garage
Insurance Fraud missions are arguably the most enjoyable missions ever envisioned for a sandbox game.
Some other missions that were direct rip-offs from GTA are arguably more fun like the pimp missions, hijacking, and hit-man.
Cons:
There is no mistaking that overall feeling of an awesome atmosphere you get in any GTA game that just wasn't present in this title. I can't put my finger on it, but you will see what I mean if you get to experience this game vs. any GTA game.
Story was a little better in San Andreas
No planes, boats, motorcycles, helicopters, or bicycles.
Voice acting is superior in GTA San Andreas. With that said, there was just way too much cursing. Cursing in any game or movie is good for adult entertainment when it is appropriate for the setting. This title just went way over the top on the cursing and was mostly out of place.
Music selection is superior in San Andreas in both amount and quality.
Washes neither better or worse than GTA:
Open world sandbox environment enabling diverse ways to execute missions
Driving mechanics of the cars
Despite popular opinion, weapons functionality, though different, have about the same difficulty/ease factor.
Map size and mission amount/scope is more epic in San Andreas, but this title is probably a little bigger that GTA III and possibly Vice City. Not too shabby.
Honest reviews on Saints Row (Platinum Hits)
This game is basically like the Grand Theft Auto series, but in HD and with more options. I am a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, so this game is right up my alley. I would highly recommend this game to anyone that has similar tastes in video games.
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Welcome to Stillwater, a modern American city full of great food, commerce, and unrestricted gang warfare. With the 3rd Street Saints, Vice Kings and the Carnales waging a city wide turf war for supremacy, there has never been a better time to visit.
The game opens up with your customized character getting caught in the crossfire of a gang war. You are saved by Julius, the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, and are recruited into his gang in an effort to clean up the streets. The first couple of missions serve as a sort of introductory sequence that teaches you the mission structure of the game and introduces you to some core characters. The game has three different story arcs, one for each rival gang, for you to tackle in whatever order you would like.
After each story mission you must build your respect before you will be offered the next one. There are numerous ways to build your respect, but the easiest way to do it is to take on various side missions located throughout the city. These missions range from drug trafficking to street racing. The activities get harder as you complete them, maxing out at level 8 and awarding you a prize such as unlimited shotgun ammo at your crib or taking less damage in car crashes.
Almost all of activities are pretty fun, but the two most enjoyable are probably mayhem and insurance fraud. In mayhem, you are tasked with going to a certain area of the city and causing as much damage as you can within a certain amount of time. You are always given a few weapons with unlimited ammo and bonuses for destroying certain targets. Destroying everything in sight with a rocket launcher on mayhem's level 8 is one of the most enjoyable moments of the game. In insurance fraud, you attempt to throw yourself in front of traffic to collect money from lawsuits. You earn bonuses based on things like air time, hitting police cars, and the number of witnesses.
Besides those side missions, there are a few other ways of gaining respect. Robbing any store you want will give you a small amount of respect. Tagging over other gang's graffiti will also net you some respect. To help you speed up the time it takes to earn respect, you can spend your money on clothes, jewelry, and tattoos for your character. These items give you respect bonuses when you complete missions. Overall, the side mission system works pretty well. It creates a good pacing for the game, preventing you from blowing through the missions in just a few hours.
Besides allowing you to unlock new missions, as you gain more respect you will be able to recruit more "homies" (up to three at one time). "Homies" are friendly gang members which will help protect you by shooting out of car windows while you drive and following you around on foot. They do a pretty good job of helping you kill whoever is attacking you and hardly ever get stuck on objects such as trees. When they die, you have thirty seconds to revive them before they are permanently dead. At first this sounds like it would make the game too easy, but the "homies" are not overly effective, and don't take too much to kill. If you had to go find new ones every time one of them died, it would become pretty frustrating. So having 30 seconds to revive those that died turns out to be pretty convenient.
When you are not building up respect, you will literally be taking back the city block by block. Completing a story mission in a certain area of the city will put that area under the control of your gang. Controlling areas of the city actually has some impact on the gameplay. You will see friendly gang members patrolling the streets, providing you a safe area to run to if you are being chased by police or enemy gang members. Controlling different districts also gives you money every day that you can get from your safe back at your crib. The more territory you control, the faster you gain money. You also get new save points as well. The game allows you to save whenever you want, placing you at the closest save point from where you saved when you reload the game. So controlling more save points is definitely nice. Sometimes rival gangs will attack territory that you control, at which point you need to stop whatever you are doing and rush there to help push back the attack. If you wait too long, you risk losing your territory. This is a nice touch, and makes you feel like you are just one small part of a larger turf war.
The story missions themselves are pretty well designed and not overly difficult or annoying. There were many missions in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas that I personally found extremely annoying and simply not fun to play. While the missions in Saints Row are challenging, I didn't run across any annoying missions like those in the GTA games. I always felt like I was making progress. The cinematic sequences for each of the missions are pretty well directed. The voice acting is great as well. The storyline turns out to be memorable and one of the highlights of the game.
While playing the game, it's safe to say that you will be doing a lot of driving and shooting. The game features tons of cars, all with rock solid control. While none of them are real licensed cars, they all look different from each other and handle differently as well.
There is a pretty good selection of weapons in the game as well. Most of what you would expect to see is here, including pistols, machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and more are present. The shooting controls are vastly improved over those of Grand Theft Auto, allowing you to control the player like you would in a first person shooter. You won't find any lock on targeting here. This goes a long way in making the firefights much more intense and fun then those in GTA.
The game features other big enhancements over Grand Theft Auto, the most important of which is the map system. At any point during the game you can bring up the map to set waypoints and locate new activities and missions. You can sort the map by stores, activities, missions, strongholds, and cribs to make finding locations very easy. The on screen minimap will show you the most efficient route to your waypoint or next objective, which makes navigating around the city a breeze. This is especially helpful during fast car chases.
Another small but significant improvement is the ability to shoot enemies in cars through the windshield. So instead of having to fill the car full of lead to get it to stop, you can instead take out the driver with one well placed shot to the head. This is extremely useful while in car chases. Since you can drive and shoot at the same time, it's not that difficult to shoot the driver of the car chasing you through his windshield.
Besides those gamplay enhancements, Saints Row is also packing some amazing visuals. The entire city of Stillwater is rendered in glorious high definition. Everything in the world is extremely detailed. The game also features pretty good looking lighting and real time weather effects. The cars in the game look excellent, especially the way they crumple on impact. When cars explode, they send pieces of metal and tires flying everywhere. The frame rate is mostly pretty solid, though it can take a dive at times when there is a ton going on. However, this never hindered my enjoyment of the game.
The biggest criticism that you could have against the game is its lack of originality. In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with a game copying another, especially when it manages to improve on its inspiration. The fact that Saints Row sticks pretty close to the Grand Theft Auto formula means that inherits many of the good qualities of the GTA series, making Saints Row a pretty good game in the process. Since it does manage improve upon GTA in many aspects, it's worth while for fans of the GTA series to play it. It's probably fair to say that if you liked Grand Theft Auto then you will enjoy Saints Row. If you found some aspects of GTA annoying, as I did, then it may turn out that you like Saints Row even more. In my opinion, Saints Row is the best game of its kind to be released. When GTA 4 comes out later on it may vary well topple Saints Row, but until then, Saints Row is the king of free roaming action games.
