Saints Row 2 Comments by Rob Fahey

"I've got review code on both platforms, and played both pretty extensively before reviewing the game - so whatever you consider the "premier" platform to be, consider yourself catered for. If there were any major differences, they would have been mentioned. "

K. Perhaps you should take care to mention the equality too - the expectation that the PS3 implementation will, in some way, be weaker has been built up by yourselves to the extent where I now 'expect' the 360 to be the better version. I'm not fanboying, it's just the impression I get with the constant drubbing the PS3 has been getting in EG's own comparison articles although, admittedly, it seems to be closer more recently ...

"Regarding the humour, which a lot of people have mentioned - I liked it. The scriptwriting in general seems solid and pretty funny, to me at least. If anything I think it should appeal to British sensibilities fairly strongly; there's a lot of what I'd consider very British humour in there, especially if you select the "Cockney Gangster" option for your character's voice. Frankly, if you're going to take offense at some creative swearing and the odd misogynistic reference, you probably shouldn't be playing games like GTA and Saints Row in the first place... "

I had no 'sandbox' experience at all prior to SR but still utterly fail to understand how anyone could take anything in the game seriously - is it not immediately obvious that it's an exaggerative pisstake?!

@Tetsuo_Shima

+1000000

Play.com are packing my copy as we speak. I went for the pre order version with a couple of codes for in game extras. can't wait until Fri.

@ shin, well said and spot on. I'm a southerner so it will be the cockney option for me.

Cockney Gangster voice?! It just gets better! I didn't think it was possible to make this game even more of the antidote to GTA4 's po-faced seriousness but they managed it. I'm praying this arrives tomorrow from Play to help make my day off work even better.

My order with Play is also "packing" and has been for hours, I'm just hoping they don't do what they did with the last game I preordered (Infinite Undiscovery so its not like they ran out of copies) and leave it in "packing" for 4 days so they send it the Monday after it comes out. Hopefully what'll happen is it'll be a Devil May Cry 4 or Bully situation where it arrives on the Thursday!

edit: I'm from the east end of London so cockney gangster it is!

""I ve Eurogamer very high in regards towards their scoring system, but i think this is way to high (even if i havent played this game). "


Sometimes in these threads i cant tell if people are being ironic or moronic... "

I was just about to remark on the above statement too. I hate marmite (although I've never eaten it).

Disappointed in the number of GTA bashing comments.

Its that syndrome people have when something becomes a huge mainstream hit which instantly makes it shit in their eyes.

From play.com at 11:30

To: duffman
Your order for Saints Row 2 (with Pre-Order Pack and Play.com Exclusive Personalised Sleeve Offer) has been posted.

Fookin great. I wonder if I can finish Bully tonight or tomorrow, only 60% to complete!

@chaz
Its that syndrome people have when something becomes a huge mainstream hit which instantly makes it shit in their eyes.

Not in the slightest. I wouldn't have spent money on a game just to have the opportunity to slate it later on. I wanted to like it - really. For me it had a poor £'s:hours played ratio. Not saying it was bad - not just not my sort of thing. Overweighed with a sense of it's own expectation, importance, seriousness, whatever. I just didn't find it fun.

And it had the single most annoying video game character in the form of his useless, whiny, insecure, clingy cousin. If there is ever a patch so I can shoot him in the face at the start of the game I would try it again :)

This game seems to address the things I didn't like about that game, albeit at the expense of other areas - but mostly areas I don't care about that much..

It's called an opinion. I could just as easily type
Its that syndrome people have when something becomes a huge mainstream hit which instantly makes it brilliant in their eyes.

Fine knocker, I'm old enough to appreciate people have differing opinions to mine. Just disappointed like I said, GTA is a brilliant game and lots of people seem to have had a big falling out with it.

PS. how can you say it wasnt good value for pounds spent against playing time, I had to go to hospital and then lose my job within the same month before I had the time to finish GTA4!

For the record, I loved GTA4. Still play it now :)

Most fun and enjoyment from any GTA , for me is V.C.
Child of the eighties you see, many wonderful memories listening to soundtrack during missions.
I think we all have to say that 4 was a bit po faced, save for Brucie who was class.

Saints Row 2 will bring the fun back into our sandbox lives

Hi Mr B the game is being compared to GTA (obviously, it is the same genre) and in many quarters it is being viewed as maybe better. this may have something to do with the hate.
I think SR1 was better than the all the previous gta's (apart from VC) I say that as someone who was completed all gta's and Saints, not just played a few hours in.
On pro-mo vids and after reading lots of comments I think that SR2 is going to be a better gaming experience then gta4, and I think this is what is pissing people off. I like you find it hard to understand but hey who gives a toss as long as we like it.............
We Will. I also expect to love the gta4 dlc when it comes out, at least I have kept hold of my game in anticipation.

For the record I am not upset about saints row scoring high! :-)

Are the controls decent, unlike GTA4?

@CHAZBIGPOTATO
That's people for you. Fucking inconsiderate bastards having varying point of view.

"PS. how can you say it wasnt good value for pounds spent against playing time, I had to go to hospital and then lose my job within the same month before I had the time to finish GTA4!"

Well I didn't play it much. Never really got into it. I keep meaning to give it another try but there are too many bloody games to play.

Losing your job and going into hospital just to finish a game is f'ing hardcore.

@ bonker
"See I just fail to see what the problem was with the first game, I really do. I can only assume it's people with hard expectations set by the GTA series. I've never played any of the GTA games so I had a blast with SR and I'm really looking forward to this too. "

Horses for courses I suppose. But despite making an exact lookalike and playing some of the game, I couldn't help but turn off and turn on old GTAs. It's hard to rationalize but for all the flaws (and every game has a few!) GTA just kind of takes hold if you REALLY get it (sorry for sounding like a snob). :)


"Most fun and enjoyment from any GTA , for me is V.C.
Child of the eighties you see, many wonderful memories listening to soundtrack during missions. "

+ infinity dude!

But I still think GTA4 is amazing and honestly don't get the "boring" "dull" "s**t" comments. I REALLY can't see it, hell I even have fun just listening to music watching a taxi ride!

I'm trading in GTAIV to get this on Friday...

SR1 absoulutely rocked once you got into it, and made me laugh out loud so many times... GTAIV depressed n bored me to death...

Can't wait to get back to 'FUN' in SR2

Saints Row's best feature: Keith David.

I'm looking forward to the streaking mini-game for some odd reason... LOL

The ONLY question that matters is...
Which console is it better on? PS3 or 360?
WE DEMAND ANSWERS!!!

"the radio stations are understocked to the extent that the '80s station seems to play The Final Countdown at least three times an hour"

I fail to see the problem here

/grows Europe style hair and dons super tight trousers

@Albull
Gotta agree on that one :p. I was actually majorly disappointed by the radio stations in GTA4 - I think there might have been 6-8 songs at the most I genuinely liked (and San Andreas, from what I recall, was even worse). A sharp contrast to the brilliant 80s nostalgia trip in Vice City.

9/10? have eurogamer team been playing a different game i played this today on the 360 and it was pants it was like playing GTA from 5 years ago, poor poor effort, if this is a 9/10 then you better give gears 2 10/10 regardless of whether or not you've played it.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/o...

:) For the hard-of-thinking.

Sorry, I like Eurogamer and its usually fairly and accurate in its reviews etc. However, I am mighty suspicious over the 9 awarded to this game. Like most decent gamers ( I imagine) one can tell fairly soon by playing a release what kind of score it deserves or is going to deserve. I am 5 or so hours into this and, unless it has a monumental moment just around the corner, there is no way this is a 9 scoring game. Why? Well, It looks worse than the first one, it feels like the first one, yes it has some laugh out loud moments - mainly in the character creation set up and in general does nothing new. I understand that games don't necessarily have to innovate or push boundaries (although it helps) to score highly and that simple fun factor is very important. If its being scored on that basis how is it more fun than the first SR? or, indeed how is mercenaries less fun than SR2? (and that looked better than this and scored less I believe). With all the promo stuff splashed all over this site - sorry Eurogamer - but I smell a rat. Still, each to their own. I will be interested to see what others think of the full game............

I've just played the first good hour and a half, and so far my main issue with this game - aside from the less than pretty graphics - is the car handling. Granted I've only been in six or seven different models so far - including an ATV - but they all felt very similar, extremely twitchy and with virtually no feeling of weight at all.
This is a huge step back from the improvements made in GTA4 (if I recall correctly the previous GTA games were a tad twitchy as well, although surely not as bad as SR2?), and damn near impossible to go back to in my opinion. The cars and bikes and Mercenaries 2 had a vastly better feel to them as well - and were a blast to drive in first person view.

And is it just me or isn't it possible to change to a different driving camera? I can live without internal cam for games like this, but the one in SR2 is a tad too far pulled back for my taste and only makes the driving experience even worse.

Mine turned up today.
Taking it back tomorrow. Woah, how badly over-rated is this game?
Actually worse than the original imho.

-a.

This game doesn't feel finished because of the glitches,bugs and lack of polish (360 version tested) :-

I changed the control scheme from A to B at the beginning of the game but when I tried to shoot the gun whilst escaping on the boat it didn't work.Paused game,changed back to control scheme A and the gun worked so that was my first glitch/bug.

Broken animations:- saw a ped repeatedly sit down mid-air then re-appear several feet where they should of sat,stuck in a loop.
- hit a ped with a car,ped became stuck in bonnet constantly tumbling.

General sloppiness:- Following cars around corners can completely disappear,cars can also spawn unexpectedly.
- Peds generaly walk blindly into each other and don't react well causing them to judder around each other
rather than walking around each other.Dumb AI or lack of a collision reacting animation?
- Traffic doesn't move realisticaly,merely jerking to a set speed.Car AI can crash constantly into walls
indefinitely until they get around the obstruction moving back and forth sometimes stuck in a loop.
- Peds can annoy with repeated dialogue sometimes repeating from more than one character at the same time.

In comparison to GTA IV, Saints Row 2 has far more variety in it's game play but suffers greatly because of the severe lack of polish to it's AI,animation,graphics rendering and physics.
Saints Row 2 feels like it's hiding it's faults by displaying ludicrous rag doll physics in near zero gravity and awful pedestrian animation and dialogue.You get bored of seeing the same peds constantly giving you the finger and the dialogue that starts off funny quickly annoys after repeated moments.
In the end,you can' help but compare GTAIV to Sains Row 2 and in doing so you will love one more than the other.
I ended up going back to GTAIV and despising the new pretender to the sandbox crown.
Saints Row 2 has quantity but GTAIV ultimately has quality.

I give Saints Row a score of 6.
Hope this helps but I'm getting rid of my copy of SR2!

Was playing this all last night.. Enjoying every minute so far.

Which was more than i couldve said for gta4 on first play.

- So far.. Better than gta4... and everything gta4 should've been if they'd stuck with actually making the game "fun" as opposed to devoting all their efforts on the renderer, shit camera angle during driving, and awful physics system.

When comparing the 2 it basically comes down to this:

If your a all the time serious, gotta to have uber-polished graphics with as much realism as your ever going to get in this type of game, you'll prefer GTA4.

If your a gamer who actually remembers a day when games were about having FUN and not trying to be as close to real life as possible, then Saint's Row 2 (and 1 for that matter for all the people who missed it!) will be better.

Personallly i prefer Saints Row (1 and 2) over GTA now-a-days, but i still think GTA4 was a must-play game, another think gamers seem to forget now we live in this time if deadly serious games is that it it's actually possible to have two games of similarity and they can both be worth playing! or dare i say it, even more than two :o *shock, horror*

Now stop your e-beef and go and enjoy the most fun game to come out in 2008.


And just in response to ChromeMud's rediculous "review", there will always be graphical glitches in a game this big, you make it sound like a GTA game has never had any! If i was as idiotic as you i could list about 3 pages worth of graphical glitches during my 40+ hour playthrough of GTA4.

I totally agree with Chrome on this, I got SR2 for a bit of a laugh but the game is atrocious. Vanishing cars, pedestrians popping out of car roofs when you shoot them and the animation i lacking (i jumped out of a plane from thousands of feet and it was like my ped was frozen. no arm or leg flailing) so I will be hoping I can get ASDA to take this back on Friday and I'll grab a real game.

GTAIV did lack a lot of the crazyness and fun of San Andreas, but it was and still is a far better game than this supposedly 9/10?

@ Barry619

No need to flame me,I was just giving my opinion and comments on the game.My opinion may be valid by those
who value quality over quantity.If you think fun is seeing bodies thrown around like they were made of sponge
or cars that drive like remote control toys no matter what model of car then more for you.
GTAIV may be more realistic but I think that makes it more fun when you do go on an insane killing spree.
'Saints Row 2' is so easy even on hardcore,the police are wimps,just stand your ground kill,rinse and repeat,
not that fun IMO!

I got this because of you Eurogamer.

I think I'll stop reading your site now...

this game is probably the silliest game I've played in ages - im loving it for that though. Just one problem I cant seem to get a multiplayer game on the ps3 - just hangs on the second screen where the matched players are shown, anyone else had the same problem? anyone know how to alleviate it?
cheers

I didnt like SR1 at all, but I love this game and I seriously agree with a 9/10 or a high 8 score. Even though the graphics arent great it's quite a silly (and very fun) game, tons to do, customisation, etc and it's all lol hilarious. GTA4 was amazing while it lasted, cinematic cutscenes etc, but after completion (which didnt take as long as SA or VC) I never touched it again. Controlling the planes and helicopters with the sixaxis is wicked. I too thought SR1 was trying too hard to be all sweary and macho to garner as much interest as possible from a certain section of the GTA customer base, but SR2 really has found it's own niche as a fun game next to GTA4's serious and brooding story driven game.
Only bad points for me= disappearing cars and pedestrians and slightly rubbish gfx. I cant recommend it highly enough.

Had the exact same problem paulf. Gave up trying to get multi-player to work. Shame, as I loved the single-player campaign.

Just finished it. Totally agree with the score. So much fun. I couldn't put it down.

For me, this peed all over GTA4 which just seems so.....dull....in comparison.

The gameplay in this game is pure crap, especially the driving. I'm not going to elaborate as I couldn't be arsed.

It's a weak game and is DEFINITELY NOT A 9/10 GAME BY ANY MEANS.

Poor form EG, you creditibility is taking a bashing of late and rightly so.

I've heard of metacritic but if anyone knows a site with decent reputation for rating games send me a message, thanks.

@warzin

What planet are you on???
Driving mechanics are 10 times worse than GTA IV.

Anyone thinking of buying - don't.
edit: the controls are pretty crap too... Just had to get that in.

best game i've played for the ps3.

more fun than uncharted and gta4.

I'm about 20 hours into this now, only done the first three missions. 9/10 is in some ways a low score for what has to be the most hilarious and engaging time I've been given on my 360 to date.

Utter, utter fun. Plenty of weaknesses and things that could have and should have maybe been improved on, but none of them, jointly or individually, really matter in the face of the epic lulz contained herein.