Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed Review
Money for nothing.
Version tested: Xbox 360
Seeing as it's been more than six months since the game hit the shelves, you might have expected Volition to beef up Saints Row 2 rather more substantially than it has with this lightweight serving of DLC.
You also might have expected more content for your cash - Ultor Exposed carries a price tag of 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80), or GBP 7.99 on PSN. The hard sell is that you get to play with (or rather, alongside) US porn star Tera Patrick in three new campaign missions. It's headline-grabbing rather than crotch-grabbing stuff, and shockingly each mission can be romped through in around ten minutes. Ker-ching.
There's little to recommend about Ultor Exposed - even to players who agreed with Rob's exuberant assessment (9/10) back in October. As with many of Saints Row 2's campaign missions, the story arc feels like a by-the-numbers exercise in every sense.
Apart from wondering how Ms Patrick ended up as an ex-microbiologist working for low-life gangsters, it's a struggle to care why she's got a grudge against the Ultor Corporation. Instead you'll dive headlong into more drivin' and shootin' mayhem with nary a pause. That's why we're here, clearly.
The problem is the missions fall into dreaded openworld cliche from minute one. These sort of things may look great in edited trailers, but when it comes to actually playing the game it's the same old scene. Drive there. Shoot those guys. Drive after that truck. Shoot it. The ten minutes required to play the entire opening mission includes the time it takes to watch the cut-scene. Pulse-raising this is not.

Halo there, sir.
The second mission's even shorter. Unless you feel compelled to crank up the difficulty level, just seven minutes of your life will be taken up by chasing after a truck and shooting it repeatedly. After that you hop in the back for a bit of regulation on-rails shooting gallery nonsense, where an endless supply of helicopters and manic police cars line-up to be blown-up by your big gun with infinite ammo.
I would apologise for the spoilers, but anyone who has played either of the Saints Row games (or GTA-style openworld games in general for that matter) won't be surprised by the scenario. Any attempt by the developer to come up with anything remotely new is conspicuous by its absence.
By the third and final mission, you're losing the will to live. Drive to a hilltop. Shoot the nasty AI-deficient men in the face. Shoot the most hapless helicopters in the history of videogames out of the sky with a machine gun while they rain missiles on you.
OK, if you forget to avoid said missiles in time the climax can be a pain in the 36 double-Ds. But even if you're playing the game with your feet you'll eke no more than an hour out of Ultor Exposed's missions. It's little more than pointless fluff on the end of an already uninspiring campaign, where dire combat and lemming-like enemy AI conspire to make large portions of the game truly forgettable.
As with the original, there's no question that the most fun to be had in Saints Row is engaging in the many activities found scattered across the map - not to mention the diversions built into almost every square inch of the game. Shame none of this applies to Ultor Exposed, however, as Volition opted to not add any new mini-game content this time.
Elsewhere, the new competitive co-op mode is an interesting addition - assuming you have the inclination and the opportunity to play the missions through again with a companion. As you kill members and destroy vehicles during missions you'll accrue points, with extra ones for getting headshots and so on. When the mission ends, the player with the most points gets a cash bonus.
All well and good, but this mode is near enough useless to anyone who's already played the game - which will be almost everyone buying this. A minority of players will be coming to Saints Row 2 fresh, having just bought the game and the DLC, and to them it might be of interest. Real obsessives might welcome the challenge to pit themselves against like-minded obsessives - but again, they're likely to be in the minority.

Call up Tera on your phone and have her dispense her own special brand of justice.
So what else does Ultor Exposed have to offer? New clothing options are hardly headline material, nor are ten new hairstyles. Of far greater interest are the six new vehicles. These include the EDF Scout vehicle, complete with roof-mounted multi-rocket Annihilator, the Vulture chopper and AB the Destroyer aircraft. Then there's the crazy three-wheeled Pulse, Stallion racing car and super slick Temptress car. Fun, sure, but only of use for general sandbox play.
And finally, there are a bunch of multiplayer maps for the online community to play with. Two each for gangbang/team gangbang and the rather appealing Strongarm mode. At present, it's hard to even get a match going to test them out. Unless you're able to schedule matches within your own community, you'll struggle to get any kind of online play going.
As always with DLC reviews, the question of value for money creeps into the equation. There's no doubt that Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed falls down badly here. With three uninspired and ludicrously short missions forming the meat of the package, it's a huge let-down. The other elements are only worth it if you haven't already played the game extensively.
It's hard to think of a reason why you'd part with good money for the limited extra entertainment offered by this DLC. There are two more downloadable packs on the way for Saints Row 2, but Volition has much to do to convince players to part with their cash next time.
5 / 10
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Comments (40) Latest comment 3 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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I doubt I would last even that long -start to finish- with Tera Patrick
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Like all sandbox games though, it proved to be addictive in the short-term and some of the mini-games are silly and fun but overall the game is more miss than hit and ultimately it's totally forgettable. I thought Saints Row was a better game personally and one I enjoyed more at the time but then it didn't really have any direct competition so it felt relatively fresh on the 360.
GTA IV is still the king in my book, nothing else comes remotely close.
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The DLC is a bit disappointing, though the EDF tank thing is great fun. Hopefully the next packs will be better.
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At times it feels like an advert for Red Faction Guerilla except you've paid 800 points/8 quid for it and it in no way justifies that. 400 points would have been pushing it.
Oh and if I was Tera Patrick I'd be rather less than impressed with the model made of me too, it's horrendous! As are the practically non-animated cutscenes.
Saints Row 2 itself is a very enjoyable game, this DLC appears to have been knocked up in Volition's lunch hour. Scratch that, it was probably done in about half of a lunch hour, 5/10 is pretty bloody generous!
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So... 700 points for the t*ts, 100 points for the game.
Doesn't exactly bode well for Red Faction does it.
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I suspect she already does.
/insert jokes here about gangbang and team gangbang modes.
My most disappointing, and bizarrely unexplained, moment in SR2 was finding that after the final showdown I DIDN'T end up getting the enormous skyscraper as a crib. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
You could even get inside the bugger if you were handy with jumping out of a helicopter, so its not like they didn't build out the inside. I know it didn't matter really, but it would have made a nice little end reward.
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Saying that, the DLC is a complete rip off
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I can't disagree with the rest of the review, but I have to take umbrage with your sneering attitude towards porn-stars. If my smut-addled memory serves me right, Tera Patrick IS in fact a trained microbiologist, as well as a member of Mensa - she just found porn to be an easier life.
So she's actually the natural, some might say only, choice to play a smoking hot ex-microbiologist with a penchant for short skirts and cock. Considering the legal grey-zone most pornpeddlers operate in, she is in fact, in real-life, an ex-microbiologist working for low-life gangsters.Horses for courses, and all that.
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Originally when details were announced (on thq-hq.com) at the end of march the news article mentioned achievements/trophies for 360 and ps3 respectively... when the DLC was released the article relating to that just mentioned achievements (and their value).
I went back to check the original DLC announcement story and lo and behold it had been changed removing any mention of the trophies and having the exact same details about achievements and their values...
Fuck you THQ... fuck you in the ass!
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isn't that why they got Tera Patrick onboard? LOL!
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Still, 3 missions does sound like a bit of a cop out.
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T'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEF!! T'eeeef dem ah dyam t'eeeeeef!
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Whereas I'm happily going through GTA4 again for them.
I'm anti-fun.
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After all, the EXACT same complaints levelled against this, could be levelled against gta... but yet reviewers seem to love that and hate this..
weird.
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+1
But yet reviewers LOVE it and completely ignore ALL it's faults.. And then a game comes along like this, and all of a sudden those faults are the "worst thing ever", and the game gets slated for them!
WTF Is going on with that? One has to wonder about backhanders...
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smernicki: "Sunny Lane- going by her picture on wikipedia she looks pretty rough"
Yes, she's gone downhill a lot in the last few years. But if you're so inclined, she used to look absolutely drop dead gorgeous in a ex ice-skater-next-door kind of way.
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GTA IV's story and writing was poor, but Saint's Row 2's was poorer because their humour isn't very sophisticated at all.
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I loled.
Broken combat, rubbish gameplay and a plot that takes itself too seriously is win for you then?"
You really don't grasp the concept of a "personal opinion" do you?
All of those things you list are things *YOU* don't like about GTA IV but I obviously disagree with all of them. The combat was excellent (I never had any problem with it at all), the gameplay was excellent throughout, polished and above all bug-free for the entire 80+ hours I've played it thus far and the story and cutscenes are excellent with superb acting and dialogue. It's certainly a more cinematic and immersive experience than Saints Row 2 IMO. (Note, IMO = In *MY* Opinion).
I LOLed at your response but only because it's yet another post from you declaring not one but two game as "shit" to join the ever-expanding list of other games you deem "shit/poor", which includes Oblivion, Resident Evil 5, Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and many other popular, critically accalimed games. Sometimes I wonder if you even *like* games!
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