Sandbox games are quite common nowadays but it is rare that one jumps out at you as being a great game. Some of them, like The Godfather, are pretty mediocre and have you driving from place to place doing the same routine and have nothing special to offer. The most famous sandbox series of course is the Grand Theft Auto series and every sandbox game after that gets compared to the last GTA offered. In this case it is the most recent GTA 5. GTA5 looks so much better than Saints Row 2 graphically, but in many respects Saints Row 2 is the better game because it is much more fun with a lot more to do on the side.
Now that is where my GTA comparison will end because I feel that Saints Row 2 is a game that deserves to stand on it’s own merit. The game is chock full of things to do on the side. Not just your drug courier missions or car collecting for garages but the developer has looked past these tired old missions and given us some great fun things to do. One of the side missions was to drive a truck full of poo and to spray it all over the buildings indicated to cause damage to the buildings. You have to reach a certain amount of damage caused for that level to pass. Another side was racing a mini vehicle dressed in a flameproof suit. You have to get to the checkpoints and at the same time riding over bombs to explode them and cause damage to cars and people around. But my favourite has to be “FUZZ”. You dress as a policeman and drive around attending crimes to stop the criminals – you have a cameraman in tow to collect footage for the reality show “FUZZ”. There is a footage bar to complete and the more crimes you clean up you increase the bar to its fullest. Each level is a little harder and you are requested on different occasions to use certain weapons like an RPG or flamethrower to create the maximum footage. The police are on your side as homies during these fuzz missions so if there is one nearby they will jump in your car and help you out.
The main missions themselves are quite varied and my only gripe with them was that I had to fill up my respect level to play the main missions. This involved doing side missions. Sometimes this involved a long drive to the nearest activity to play the activity and the drive all the way back to the mission point. Now whilst the side missions were fun, they sometimes got int he way of what I wanted to do. Some days I just wanted to drive through the main storyline to get to the end and do the activities when I wanted, but they were forced upon me.
Back from the original game are the strongholds. You takle over a stronghold by beating the goons and then that area of the map becomes yours. There are 45 areas to beat. Your strongholds can be attacked at any time though. In the last game the attacks were very frequent and quite disruptive to the flow of the game, but this time around it was pleasant to have only a few attacks to deal with. I think I had 3 through the entire game from start to finish.
Visually the game is not a stunner like some other recent games but it does look quite good. I had a few framerate issues on a couple of occasions but nothing major. One thing to note, this game is buggy. I had crashing of the console, bugs and glitches people getting stuck, homies not following me, and stupid AI who would stand there and do nothing. But despite all these flaws I kept coming back for more. If this game had not been as much fun as it was then it would have been binned days ago.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the openness of sandbox games.
GREAT/10 – A buggy game but such a lot of fun.
