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Saint's Row
by Adam, 08.09.06
Aaaaape!!! Our reaction to hands on with Saint's Row.
Published by
THQ
Developed by
Volition Inc.
Adventure
Rated M
Saint's Row hasn't even arrived yet, but it's already garnered one accolade: the most shameless game ever. It does not aspire to be anything more than a GTA clone in the truest sense of the stereotype. The problem here being that it actually manages to stroll on par with the venerable crime franchise, but refuses to correct any longstanding flaws and take itself above the GTA juggernaut.
Should you stroll by your local gaming peddler and reserve this game you will be blessed with a bonus DVD for your trouble. It's a good deal for your five dollars: affording you a demo, documentary, gamer pics, and other 360 nods. However, previews are best when coupled with some hands on playtime, so we'll leave those extra features be.
The game starts right off with a painfully watered down create a character mode (which will be expanded considerably upon release), so I didn't really mess around with it, and then you're thrust directly into the fictional town of Stilwater. After a horribly contrived and stereotypical opening cutscene (see San Andreas review) you're invited to drop by the 3rd Street Saint's Mission (an old, vandalized church as it were, but wait, it gets worse), by Julius, the gang's leader, excellently voiced by Keith David (of Arbiter fame).
Upon arrival you are cursed out for your decidedly un-pimpin disposition by an Asian with hair that will keep the laughs coming from the edgy crowd for years to come. So, to avoid any more ridicule, you opt to be "canonized" into the Saints (oh crap did they really just do that?). This introduces you to the hand-to-hand combat system. It uses the triggers and bumpers, but is ultimately comprised of locked, sluggish animations that are often at odds with the Havok physics system. After that Julius decides that it's time for the one block owning Saints to spread their territory, by having you and a pal clean up the neighborhood of encroaching Vice Kings, a rival gang. 
Once you get a gun in your hands the shooting is blessedly more intuitive than any other sandbox game this side of Mercenaries, opting for a second person control scheme instead of a lock on system. Next you're introduced to driving, which varies from pretty good, to wonky, depending on the type of car you hijack. In other words, this is the same old same old for open world connoisseurs.
It's clear from the relatively short demo that this game is going for GTA by the throat, but in the end it's not doing anything different (except for the targeting system). In an interesting theme, the Saint's color is purple, the same color as the Ballas gang in GTA San Andreas, Carl Johnson's main rivals. However, in some places it's even worse than GTA (seriously, would you patronize a restaurant called Freckle Bitch's?). And it's done little to streamline the rougher parts of the heavily chronicled GTA canon. The graphics are good, but not stunning for a next gen game, and the frame rate often tics in relatively low stress situations, come on Volition, we should be past this now!
I forsee this coming down to a battle of stories, and I think that GTA will win, mainly because it has vocal main characters, while Saints Row is using the silent hero mold. Bad move if you want a compelling narrative. Even then it's going for more urban gang war stories than mobster epics. Who can say at this time? While it does look supremely campy at this point, there's always multiplayer.