Saints Row Review - Xbox 360

8

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 7
Audio: 8
Innovation: 6

Saints Row is a game set in Stilwater – a gang controlled city where the only safety is behind a gun, and the only justice is power. You begin the game as a random person getting caught up in the mayhem of some gang warfare. After joining the Saints Row crew, you work your way up through their ranks by completing their missions, gaining reputation, and practically becoming their leader as the Saints conquer the city, defeating rival gangs and wiping them completely off the map. Is Saints Row just another GTA clone, or does it offer enough unique features to stand alone in an already clustered genre of open-world gangster games?

Gameplay

If you like to take control of a city, Saints Row might be for you. Unlike GTA or Crackdown or Mafia or any other free-roaming game, Saints Row works in zones. As you gain reputation, complete missions and access more of the city, enemy strongholds will become unlocked. When you defeat an enemy stronghold, you usually get control of the zone that the stronghold is in. There are 36 zones in the city, all of which you must control if you want to beat the game. Occasionally after you take control of a zone, the gang you wiped out will try to take it back, and you’re forced to backtrack to the zone to kill the key figures conducting the assault. This offers a fair bit of extra gameplay time, and adds to the uniqueness of Saints Row.

The controls are fairly standard. You can jump, sprint, punch, kick, and hijack vehicles. Once in a vehicle, you can use some of your weapons to shoot at targets, but what’s most impressive is that you can recruit as many as (unlockable) three “homies” which will get in a car with you, provided there’s enough room, and shoot at targets that are either shooting at you, or targets that you have fired at. This is great help for missions and some activities, as you’ve got some serious backup that you can revive with the touch of a button if they go down. You can also recruit homies when you’re just walking around, a vehicle is not necessary.

When you begin the game, you own a crappy Saints Row loft for a house, with stains on the walls and a general filth feel to the place, but it does give you a place to store your clothes, weapons, money and vehicles. You can store as many cars in your garage as you like, in fact there’s an Xbox 360 achievement for storing quite a lot of cars in your garage. As you defeat gangs though, you get better houses.

As well as missions, there are loads of activities to do. Activities are (continued next page)