Of course, before I could set out to wage war against The Ronin I had to reestablish The Saints as a legit gang. To do that, I needed to break Johnny Gat out of his trial where he was up for over 350 counts of first-degree murder -- a charge he wanted to dropped to 250 due to the statute of limitations

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AgentOtaku said:

Whats gonna be sad is that this game is probably going to esclipse GTAIV is just about every imaginable way and it's still going to get 8.5s all around

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Blimblim said:

In case you want to see it in HD without insiderz:
http://www.gamersyde.com/news_7091_en.html

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ZombieSupaStar said:

man its such a coincidence that the created player they are using in all the adverts reminds me of CJ.......

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Honestly, we were pleasantly surprised by its performance, running much smoother than we'd seen just a week before at PAX. With Saints Row 2 at about 99% completion, the amount of content contained within this sandbox-style shooter is staggering and we found our mere six hours inadequate to fully sample all of the activities and diversions.

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The first Saints Row greeted players ready to embark on their journey into gang life with one of the more elaborate character creation systems seen at the time. Saints Row 2 takes that system and beefs it up considerably, giving you the option to customize a truly ridiculous number of attributes. Using sliders adjusting everything from your overbite to your septum width, you can craft an avatar of either gender that looks anywhere between "perfectly normal" and "abomination of nature." Once your base physical attributes are set, you can set the mood of your face with a number of fixed facial expressions to make yourself look confused, joyous, or just plain evil. From there, you have three voice options for each gender (including a wonderfully out-of-place English accent for the gents) and the ability to choose your taunts and walking style.

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Also competing for your attention is the ability to put your own personal touch on what you wear, what you drive, and where you live. Clothing can be customized to the same ridiculous degree as your initial character designs. You can adjust the pattern, colors, and fit on nearly every last piece of clothing, while layering several different articles on top of one another. One stripe or three on those socks? Did you want that track jacket zipped or unzipped? Hat backward or at a 5/8 turn? You get the idea.

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Cars can also be tweaked to meet your discerning standards. Just bring a vehicle into your personal garage, then head to a mechanic and fiddle with new body mods, paint schemes, rims, window tints, and NOS boosts. You can even create a custom radio station available to listen to in any car you find. To do this, you go to a record shop and buy individual tracks (using in-game currency) at $20 a pop. If you're up to the task, you can pool wildly differing songs from all the game's stations into one huge pirate radio station. For example, you can borrow A-Ha's "Take On Me" from the '80s station, Minus the Bear's "Knights" from the indie station, Run DMC's "Sucker MCs" from the rap station, LCD Soundsystem's "North American Scum" from the electronic station, and Mastadon's "Colony of Birchmen" from the metal station and use them all to create one great, big radio station thoroughly customized to your liking. (And maybe even throw Europe's "The Final Countdown" in there somewhere, if that's your thing.)

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Finally, because even the most violent criminal needs a home to call his own, you can also customize your crib. There's the option to simply upgrade your crib's overall theme from something cheap and run down to something much classier, or upgrade your furniture piece by piece. However, even the cheapest of entertainment centers gives you the ability to play one of Saints Row 2's hidden gems: a video game within the game called "Zombie Uprising." Rather than a retro arcade game, this is actually a fully 3D zombie game that applies the look and feel of the regular game to a darker, more zombie-filled setting. In it you need to survive wave after wave of undead with a limited number of weapons and fellow survivors. It may be a poor man's Left 4 Dead, but it's still a very cool throw-in that's indicative of just how much there is to do in Saints Row 2 if you go around looking.

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And thankfully, there's no tether system to be found; you and your friend can exist on completely opposite ends of Stilwater if you so choose.

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When one player goes down, the other player has 30 second to get to the downed player and revive him. It’s a feature that’s appearing a lot in lately seen in a recent title like Castle Crashers and of course Gears of War.

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As far as size goes, you can expect it to be bigger than the original giving you more room to explore. Right from the beginning, you can go anywhere on the map. You won’t be limited so if you want to travel all the way to the opposite side of Stilwater, go right ahead. No there won’t be random road blocks or police chasing after you should you decide to explore certain parts of Stilwater and having the ability to wander around uninhibited is a great touch. The city is pretty much opened to you and all the locations are marked but with question marks until you drive by them. Unlike Grand That Auto IV, there is a great deal of locations to visit in Saint’s Row 2 giving the player a nice variety of things to do in every area of the game.

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Driving around Stilwater, Volition has done a great job at offering up great graphics with little or no pop-in. Every transition of environments and incoming objects were smooth and didn’t suffer from the sudden appearance that’s evident in Grand Theft Auto IV. I did see an occasional texture pop but it was pretty rare. Stilwater does look pretty nice and Volition’s attention to detail in the open world can be seen when driving around. The building’s architecture differs in various areas with some great sites like the University and Arena. The textures are also very detailed as well adding to the creation of a visually appealing city.

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The car models offer some good distinct looks and different driving abilities. I found the cars to be easier to drive than those of Grand Theft Auto IV for the most part. Even the motorcycles felt a little easier to control. I was able to pick up the game quickly and drive without any paroblems, even power sliding with precision in certain cars. One vehicle that really shows off the different handling ability is the tow truck. Without anything behind it’s not too bad but once you’re dragging another car it becomes a very touchy vehicle to turn in jackknifing at the drop of a hat. While the one mission I used the truck had me towing a car away, I was surprised that I was able to drop the tow and pick up another car instead. In my case, it was a cop car following me that unlucky got hitched to my hook. I bet that was a big surprise to him when I started to drag him around.

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One feature that I liked was the ability to use people as human shields. I had fun picking up people and walking around with their bodies protecting mine. You do move slower though and the enemies can quickly get to your side if you are close to them. When you’re done you can either throw them or execute them. In fact, one mission had me destroying some shanties by grabbing bums and throwing them into the structures. It was quite fun and seeing them fly into the shanties as they crumbled to the ground was good for a few laughs.

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The missions are structured in a nice variety and some had multiple checkpoints. There were only one or two where I got really frustrated but for the most part all the missions for the main story that I experienced were fun and different. One really great thing about Saint’s Row is that if you do fail a mission at a certain point you can restart at a checkpoint rather than all the way from the beginning. I can’t tell you how much less frustrating this is compared to the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV where I would spend a good ten to fifteen minutes on a mission only to die and have to restart from the beginning. With Saint’s Row 2 just pick up from the last checkpoint in the mission and you’re good to go.

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Since Saint’s Row 2 is about gangs, you’ll be able to call upon some gang members to help back you up during some missions. I did find them to be quite stupid though in certain situations and they seem to be caught as human shields a lot but it’s always nice to have some backup even if they aren’t the most intelligent folks around. What I liked was I was able to find some of the gang members just wandering the city and I was able to recruit them into my gang without having to go to a specific location to do it.

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Saints Row 2 is almost whimsical about bloodletting, providing you with a large arsenal of murderous methods. The new fine-aim mode makes it easier to draw a bead on people and pop off headshots with alarming frequency.

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Even though I played the game from 10:00 AM until 7:00 PM, I only got to 13% completion. So there’s one thing we know right now; Saints Row 2 is gonna be looooong.

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After dying one time, I walked out the front door of the hospital and started looking around for a ride. There were two conservatively dressed women standing in front of the building. A couple of admins from administration having a smoke break no doubt. I accidentally bumped into them and they both got mad and started throwin’ ‘bows. I started backing out since I didn’t have any ammo and it was a misunderstanding. One of them swung at me and missed, but connected with the shorter one. Now Kathy and Cathy are brawling in the parking lot and what’s that… oh snap! One of them just pulled out a knife! Somebody gonna get cut!

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raYne said:

quotes

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raYne said:

Grabbed some quotes from the various recent hands-ons:!

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However, even the cheapest of entertainment centers gives you the ability to play one of Saints Row 2's hidden gems: a video game within the game called "Zombie Uprising." Rather than a retro arcade game, this is actually a fully 3D zombie game that applies the look and feel of the regular game to a darker, more zombie-filled setting. In it you need to survive wave after wave of undead with a limited number of weapons and fellow survivors. It may be a poor man's Left 4 Dead, but it's still a very cool throw-in that's indicative of just how much there is to do in Saints Row 2 if you go around looking.

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newsguy said:

Anyone esle think this is awesome? I'm bored of the halfass atari games you get when you customize things in your home. This sounds like something I might actually play more than once.

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In fact, one mission had me destroying some shanties by grabbing bums and throwing them into the structures. It was quite fun and seeing them fly into the shanties as they crumbled to the ground was good for a few laughs.

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raYne said:

QUOTES!

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dejay said:

I wonder how they're going to handle aircraft. Will you have access to them straight away or will you need a licence like you did in San Andreas?

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dejay said:

Sounds like they've fixed the streaming issues a lot - a lot less pop-up and running smoother than just a month ago. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a significantly higher frame rate.

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Great list raYne, but you didn't bold that bit of the quote above. Not to fear, I remedied that for you.

(edit) Oh, and reading about tow trucks just gave this game and extra 0.5 in my mind.

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BobJustBob said:

Obligatory "and I still have this tag."

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raYne said:

The only thing is you won't be able to keep them (I wonder if you can customize them? :lol) until you gain acess to a hangar of your own.

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The setup is nice; while GTA4 has co-op-specific missions and Mercenaries 2 has a limited form of co-op in the main game (don't tread too far from your buddy), Saints Row 2's setup is wide open -- think Crackdown. A second player can pretty much jump into the game at any time -- complete with any unlockables and customizations in tow -- joining the host's game at whatever state of progress and difficulty is set. The joining player can't immediately jump into a specific mission in progress, but the beauty is that once in, you can do whatever you want: jack some cars, get a unit of angry army dudes chasing you, or just futz around town.

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You are simply playing the missions with a bud, and when you leave the game, all the progress carries over. In fact, if you complete a few later-in-the-story missions with a friend in co-op, you have the ability to skip those missions when you reach them in your own single-player game.

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The other big portion of the whole co-op thing is developer Volition's acknowledgment that two players loaded up with weapons can't help but devolve into friend-on-friend shootouts. The twist here is that if you kill the other player, they have the option to respawn into one of two side games: Death Tag or Cat & Mouse. Death Tag is what you'd imagine: a time-limited showdown in which you try to get the most kills on the other player. You spawn relatively close to each other but have free run of the city and any vehicle that you can jack at your disposal. Cat & Mouse, meanwhile, puts one player in an attack chopper and the other in a sports car. The chopper pilot, as you guess, just has to take out the car driver. The car driver's goal is to get through as many checkpoints as possible before getting shot up to all holy hell, and once that round is done, the roles reverse, with the player who racks up the highest score winning the contest.

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Volition's goal here is to let nothing get in the way of fun, and from what we've seen the developer's succeeding. It's not just a matter of making the whole world enormously over the top - although that helps. It's also a question of tweaking every part of the experience to prevent players from being frustrated by bad design. Gone, for example, are missions where you have to drive the whole way across the city only to die at your destination and restart back on the other side of the city once more. In-mission checkpoints now allow you to restart after the last objective you completed.

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Having been a GTA clone last time, Saints Row 2 is now shaping up to be the anti-GTA - or at least, the anti-GTA IV. This is an openworld crime game about neon lights, huge explosions, fast cars, massive body counts and crazy rival gangs like the Ronin, a Japanese band of cyber-punk samurai, and the Sons of Samedi, a voodoo obsessed Caribbean drug cartel. Our expectations weren't particularly high when we went to see it, but having played the game for several hours, those same expectations have skyrocketed. For those left cold by GTA IV, this is shaping up to be the openworld game you've been waiting for, and even for those who were charmed by Niko's Liberty City adventure, Saints Row 2 is a welcome blast of mayhem and bright lights.

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Breaking into prison introduced us to a few new options, including stealing a boat to make it back to the island, then stealing a helicopter to get off the island, and getting the drug-dealing soccer mom back home to idyllic suburbia. Both vehicles controlled well, while at the same time giving a distinct sense of handling.

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Flying through the air in the chopper was a great way for the game to show off the new weather effects. Wind and rain have a direct effect on your vehicle and aren't just there for show. Flying through clear skies is noticeably easier than making your way through a storm.

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Of course, it wouldn’t be a whole new Saints Row without new features. There’s nothing quite like the introduction of GPS in the first game, but Saints Row 2 does introduce “Cruise Control.” If you enable this, you don’t have to hold down the accelerate button allowing you to concentrate on steering and shooting while you’re in a car, which makes car combat considerably more intuitive. Of course, the ability to drive boats, helicopters and full-on planes is also now found in the game.

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Graphically, Saints Row 2 is a notable improvement over the first game. The lighting is greatly improved and the character models are comparable to other recent Xbox 360 games. The overall production values—including the direction of the cutscenes—are not as high as those in Grand Theft Auto IV but the game looks great. In terms of audio, the characters deliver their lines well and don’t take themselves too seriously. The game is definitely light-hearted in nature and the presentation matches that well.

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Overall, I came away extremely impressed by Saints Row 2 from my time with the game. I was able to complete most of the Ronin missions and sample the missions from the Brotherhood and Samedi. Compared to Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row 2 doesn’t attempt to have an Oscar-winning plot or blockbuster movie quality production values. But it is incredibly over the top and fun and ultimately feels more like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on steroids than an attempt to out-GTA IV GTA IV

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One of the more notable Sons of Samedi missions, however, was the one in which we were involuntarily dosed with Loa Dust and had to complete the mission while high. Reaction time was slowed down, visuals were blurred and audio was slightly distorted. Every movement overcompensated just enough to give the illusion of being out of control. Overall, this mission was relatively short, but it stood out for its creativity as well as the fact that it highlighted the negative effects of taking a hit.

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In addition to the gameplay upgrades, the world of Stilwater has also been given a lot more depth. There are more stores, more vehicles, more pedestrians, more buildings — more of just about everything.

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Hidden tidbits are packed throughout Stilwater, so it is to your benefit to explore. For example, on one of our Sons of Samedi missions, we had to infiltrate the Stilwater Police Department. We could have just completed the mission and left, but our prying eyes spotted an open door to the detective area. Here, we discovered evidence that Julius had betrayed us in the original game, while learning that both Dex and Troy had their own motivations for getting out of the Saints. While we didn't have time to explore it in detail, simply checking out this room appeared to open up an entirely new story tree on the mission map.

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All in all, our day spent with Saints Row 2 felt incredibly short, and we certainly left wanting more. There will no doubt be comparisons to GTA4, but it's important to note that Saints Row 2 isn't GTA4, nor is it trying to be. GTA4 is akin to a dramatic gangster movie, whereas Saints Row 2 is more like an action movie with gangs.

We'll have more details on the competitive multiplayer mode within Saints Row 2 at the end of the month, and our full review will be available in early October. Based on our eight hours with the game thus far, it's certainly looking like a must-have. We can't wait to see more.

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Since hanging out in a church is so passé, and since Aiyesha made it clear that we won't be having our little 'meetings' at her apartment, we decide to take over an abandoned warehouse that was built on top of a collapsed hotel, giving us plenty of room for future expansion. (You have to think smart in real estate) It isn't all real estate speculation in Stilwater though, you can also engage in a great deal of what are called 'diversions'. These diversions include 35 'barnstorming' missions, 50 CDs to buy from music stores, 32 secret areas within the city to find, 80 stunt jumps, and 50 areas that you can tag up with paint cans. You can also drive an ambulance to save victims, put out fires as a fireman, pimp yourself out as a whore, tow vehicles for cash, and drive a taxicab. Not content to stop there, you can also perform drive-bys, flash people (trench coat and all), robbery, mugging, poker, racing, streaking, and even play a game called "Zombie Uprising" on your game console in your safe house.

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If entrepreneurial pursuits are more your speed, there are 90 stores within the city that you can 'buy into'. By owning a share of the business you'll get a small daily payout, your Saints will protect it, and you'll even get a discount on goods. You can also drop into a music store and queue up a playlist of your own music from the diverse collection of hip-hop, classical, easy listening, electronica, metal, reggae, rock, and funk. One of the primary complaints on the previous titles was the hip-hop heavy soundtrack, but this time we get everything from Night Ranger, Duran Duran, and Paramore, to Lamb of God, Buju Banton, Ninja Man, and more.

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As you slowly liberate the city from your rivals, you'll also pick up cash for each area that you reclaim for the Saints. You'll get roughly 500 bucks per day for each of the 45 areas that you can capture. Each day you can pick up a paycheck at your various cribs to spend on all this customization. Know what is beautiful? We've talked at length about all of the incredible things you can do in this game, and we haven't even talked about single player and co-op!

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Since the comparisons to Grand Theft Auto IV are inevitable, let's not bother dodging them. You'll have a cell phone in your pocket in Saints Row 2, but it won't be the central point of your existence. Friends will be able to get in touch with you, and you'll be able to use it to get in touch with them as well, calling in reinforcements when needed. But unlike Grand Theft, Saints Row 2 looks to the less realistic but more fun side of things. When you are inevitably betrayed by one of your friends and you confront them on their treachery, there is a certain tone set. When you do that scene dressed in a giant hot dog suit, complete with bun, the whole mood changes. Many times during my play through I found myself laughing out loud, something I couldn't often say for the oft-too-serious Grand Theft Auto IV.

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The combat in Saints Row 2 is very similar to that of the original Saints Row. You'll use the shoulder buttons to fire off your left and right hand to engage in hand-to-hand fisticuffs. Stringing together three melee attacks gives you a pre-made 'finisher' move that usually involves somebody catching a boot to the crotch or being shot in the face. As you play through the game you'll also unlock various other fighting styles, giving you access to more hearty roundhouse kicks and knees to tear up your opponents. Regardless of the style though, you'll be able to grab anyone and take them as a human shield. By anyone I do mean friend or foe alike - when you need a meat-puppet to act as a good bullet sponge, just grab the nearest body.

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October is just around the corner, and Saints Row 2 is essentially completed. Only the last few bugs remain to be ironed out in the next month before release, and the game looks and plays very well. The addition of mid-mission saves, the incredible host of customization options, the graphical overhaul, and the vastly improved multiplayer options make for a fantastic follow-up..

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Saints Row 2 doesn’t waste any time—it drops you right into action as soon as you start the game. Without giving too much away, within the first hour (if you choose to play the first mission / tutorial), you’ll be introduced to brawling and gun combat, drive away in a boat, break the Saints’ leader from jail and shoot an insane amount of enemies. Compared to the somewhat slow introduction of last year’s big open-ended game, Saints Row 2 definitely starts off with a much louder bang. In the time that follows, you’ll mow down bikes with automatics, destroy cars with rocket launchers, detonate trucks and escape from an underground cave. The missions are structured with plenty to do and plenty of checkpoints, which makes the game that much more fun.

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There are an incredible amount of items that you can modify. You can adjust the body shape, masculinity, fatness, age, and skin tone in the 'body' tab, adjust your crown, forehead, brow, eyes, eye color, ears, cheekbones, nose, moth, chin, jaw, and far more in the 'face' tab. The hair options are legion with options including your hair's primary and secondary color, facial hair and color, head (long and wavy, 3 styles of dreads, medium length parted in the middle, messy, pigtail braids, pixie, ponytail, afro, clipped, comb over, combed back or forward, beehive, corporate parted left, curly short, draped over the shoulder, flat top, mohawk, shaved, shaved sides with spiky top, shaved with spiky bangs, skater cut, small afro, spiky dreads, punk, trival curls), and many, MANY more options than I've listed here. Not enough hair options? Let's talk about facial hair (and yes, you can put these on the women too - I confirmed this, of course) - bushy mustaches, a fu man chu, a khan, a tight goatee, a thick or thin beard, stubble, soul patch, mutton chops, pointy sideburns, and everything in between. Still not enough of the hirsute madness? How about angry, bushy, arched, angry, caveman, Evil Scientist, full, neutral, pencil thin, pointed, shaped, soft, straight, tapered and many more eyebrow styles. Further defining your character you can drop six types of eye makeup on your character in 35 colors, including Goth Crow, Hooker Eyeshadow, and Egyptian Eye. You can drop freckles, smears of cheek makeup, or a gentle blush on your cheeks to go with your clown, oversized, smeared, or glossy lipstick options. What amazes me is that all of this is simply customizing your character's face. Once you manage all of these items, you can also tackle a similar host of options to modify your character's body.

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Additionally you can pick your 'usual' facial expression including happy, sad, inebriated, surprised, and more. You'll also chose a movement style including lady thug, pimp, bounce, sway, swing, and 10 varieties of 'thug' styles; you know, the 'busted-hip/limp/leg dragging' nonsense. Rounding out the incredible list of customizations, you'll pick out your signature taunt move from a list including the chest bump, a hiked-leg dog pee move, the flex, ride the donkey, smooth criminal moon walk, and my usual - flipping the bird and simply saying "fuck off". Yea, Saints Row 2 is rated M straight out of the gate.

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Keeping with the theme of customization, you can also spend your hard earned coin on customizing your gang, vehicles, and buildings. You can pimp out your crib with widescreen plasma TVs, bars, furniture, pool tables, and other items to make it your own. Similarly, you can change the style of your gang. From 80's gangster style, sports clothing, pimps and hos, and more, you'll change the way every Saint walking the street looks. When they are rollin' you can customize their rides, giving them up to three specific vehicles to show their support for their 3rd Street homies.

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The devil's in the detail. If you bulk up your character, he doesn't just get bigger - his muscle tone becomes more pronounced. Making him fatter doesn't just swell the model - fat is distributed realistically, with flesh bulging and folding as it would on a real person. The age slider is arguably the most impressive - you don't just develop wrinkles on your facial textures, skin actually sags and discolours as you age.

The effort Volition has put into the customisation is evident from the outset. There are six voices to choose from (three male, three female), each with a radically different accent, and every single one of those voices is fully voice-acted in each of the game's cut-scenes.

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raYne said:

The only thing is you won't be able to keep them (I wonder if you can customize them? :lol) until you gain acess to a hangar of your own.

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BobJustBob said:

Obligatory "and I still have this tag."

But wow, this sounds like it is exceeding even my expectations.

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