If there’s one game with a lot to prove this holiday, it’s Saints Row 2. The original Saints Row was widely accepted as a quality title — even branded by some in its pre-release hype as a “GTA-killer” –- but pop it in your disc drive now, a year or two after the wake of Rockstar’s masterful Grand Theft Auto IV, and you’ll likely perceive sloppy execution.
Saints Row wasn’t particularly pretty, and nor is Saints Row 2. The city of Stillwater feels empty, save for some gangsters and cops (I saw few civilians), in contrast to the celebrated density of Liberty City. The textures aren’t crisp, compared to the beautiful sunsets, environments, cars, and characters of the aforementioned Grand Theft Auto IV; it may seem like an unfair comparison in light of Grand Theft Auto’s ridiculously sky-high budget –- perhaps if Volition had access to the same kind of funds, they too could fabricate a visually breathtaking urban center.
When something doesn’t look pretty, it can still be salvaged by exciting gameplay. I engaged in a firefight escaping a prison block — it’s difficult to believe the aiming that was crowned “an achievement of third person gunplay” two years back now feels so incredibly sloppy and loose.
You still aim manually with a press of the Left Trigger, but to draw more comparisons with Saints Row’s source material, third person aiming felt tight in Grand Theft Auto IV – both manual and locking on. Yes, these are two different games, and manual-only aiming may be an asset for some players, but at least the best of both worlds was implemented in the competition.
There’s still an audience for this game: those who miss the extremities of Grand Theft Auto’s over-the-top-nature, gone with the seriousness of the series’ most recent addition, and those who need another crime sandbox fix to fill the gap until the next Grand Theft Auto.
And while Saints Row 2 isn’t going head-to-head at retail with Grand Theft Auto, people may choose to invest in this fall’s Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable content instead.
September 14th, 2008 at 1:15 am
This seems like a somewhat biased post, given the number of references to Rockstar’s opus and also how starkly it stands in contrast to the previews that came out this week on several other gaming sites praising Saints Row 2. I loved my return to Liberty City but am also looking forward to this game.
I found both aiming techniques in GTA IV to be somewhat sloppy personally, hardly the “best of both worlds,” and far worse than what was in Saints Row (and know a lot of people who agree with me). And the vehicular controls in GTA IV felt more like they belonged in a racing sim.
Also, people frustrated with the lack of variety in GTA IV gameplay is one very large audience subset you also neglected to mention, whereas almost every other preview has called that out as a strength of Volition’s game.
September 14th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I like the colors in the screen shots, I think it makes the game look good.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
at jay: I didn’t have a guided demo or a Taste for mission variety. I played one mission, -”and visually, mechanically, it was not on par with the competition. Now, some may like the over the topness that GTA ditched! Looking back, I am a GTA fan, so it’s possible I drew too many comparisons with the competition that I loved last April.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Ross “I didn’t have a… taste for mission variety” — So you LIKE doing the exact same mission over and over?
September 15th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
well, I didn’t find gta to be that repetitive. Kept me entertained. And what. I meant was I didn’t play saints row 2 long enough to guage mission variety it could be an amazing story that blows gta out of the water. All I know is I did not dig the way it looked or played.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Mission variety is not integral to the story. It’s integral to being entertaining.