Saints Row 2

Saints Row 2
From THQ

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Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #357 in Video Games
* Brand: THQ
* Model: 752919550304
* Released on: 2008-10-14
* ESRB Rating: Mature
* Platform: Xbox 360
* Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

* Over 40 story missions with additional bonus missions take place in a transformed Stilwater that is over 50% larger than before.
* Limitless Customization ¿ Play as fully customizable characters that are male, female or something in between. Cribs, vehicles and even gangs all have customization options.
* Multiplayer ¿ Co-op full story campaign has seamless integration (for example one player drives while the other shoots).
* Competitive multiplayer pushes the boundaries of immersion in a living Stillwater environment fully populated with police, innocent bystanders and rival gangs.
* Planes, helicopters, motorcycles, boats and cars can be piloted and used as weapons. On the ground new combat options include melee, fine aim, and human shield

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
A worthy successor to Saints Row, the first open-world title on next-generation consoles, Saints Row 2 features all new customization options, including player's: gender, age, voice, crib and gang. In addition, the sandbox just got larger with a totally transformed and expanded city of Stilwater,

offering all new locations to explore with new vehicles, including motorcycles, boats, helicopters and planes. Saints Row 2 will be playable online in 2-player co-op through the entire singleplayer campaign or in the all new open-world competitive multiplayer mode never before seen in the genre.

Backstory
Five years have passed since your former Saints crew betrayed you. As you awake from a coma for the first time since that fateful day, you find the Stilwater you once ruled is in disarray.

Unfamiliar gangs have laid claim to your territory, rival factions have taken over your rackets, and cash-hungry corporations have laid waste to your once proud 3rd Street home. Abandoned and left scarred with an unrecognizable face, you seek out a plastic surgeon to begin your new life on the streets. Yet some things never change in Stilwater.

Respect can only be earned and that requires a lifestyle that reflects your unique personality. Your crib, your crew, and your character define who you are on the streets and how you are perceived. The image you portray is as important as the decisions you make in a city ruled by false bravado and impulsive behavior.

The only constant is the need for an identity that reflects your individuality. But style and image can only take you so far in a world where actions speak louder than words. Sometimes sending a message to your enemies requires heavy lifting, like that of a rival gang member into oncoming traffic.

Respect in Stilwater needs to be taken, and what better way than to grab it from the hands of a gang full of enemies by means of a satchel charge, a flame-thrower or those minigun rounds you've been saving for a special occasion.

Meet Your Homies
But remember that the fight to reclaim Stilwater does not have to be waged alone. The Saints once ruled these streets as a crew of brothers, and their return to the top can help be secured through co-operative alliances.

The time has finally come to seek revenge against your rivals to reestablish your crew as the rightful kings of Stilwater, but the streets are crawling with bangers. Check out the crews you'll run into and remember their faces and their ways:

3rd Street Saints
Once the kings of the city, the Saints have been forced out of their titular home of Saints Row by the Ultor Corporation, a giant conglomerate that gentrified the once poor neighborhood. Now operating out of an abandoned underground hotel, the Saints are looking to reclaim the glory that they lost several years ago.

Ronin
One of the newest gangs instilling fear in Stilwater, the Ronin recruit from both the city's Asian population as well as among the immigrants. Their crimes involve peddling vice through gambling, prostitution, street-racing, and protection rackets, and their power has reached even into the boardroom of corporations like Ultor.

Sons of Samedi
Influenced by Voodoo and a history of military corruption in Haiti, the Sons of Samedi are known for their potent combination of spiritualism and fearlessness. Members are attracted to the gang out of respect for their methods, through coercion or a desire for easy income generated through trade in their designer drug called "Loa Dust."

Brotherhood
Formed from the cast-outs and dredges of Stilwater society, the Brotherhood is a solid force of strength and intimidation intent on revenging itself upon the police and city. Specializing in violent extortion, they forego subtlety and nuance and simply take what they want, all the while flashing their allegiance with piercings and tattoos, bright colors, and gas-guzzling trucks.

Ultor Corporation
A ruthless corporate contender, the Ultor Corporation's gentrification of Saints Row created a new skyline for the city and a headquarters for their corporate office at the expense of the poor and the 3rd Street Saints. Now they're targeting another neighborhood, the Shivington projects, fueling gang wars and waiting for the prime moment to move in and reap the profits.

Key Game Features:

* Freedom to Explore Through Open World Gameplay - Balancing story progression with all the time-wasting mayhem imaginable, Saints Row 2 contains more activities, diversions, races, cribs, city districts, and interiors than ever before.

* Extensive Mission Play - Over 40 story missions with additional bonus missions take place in a transformed Stilwater that is over 50% larger than before.

* Limitless Customization - Saints Row 2 allows you to customize everything connected to what you wear, drive and where you live as well as gives you access to countless character combinations from facial expression, body type, voice, taunts, gender to walking style. In addition, players can customize gangs various and extreme physical looks (some pretty crazy), fighting styles, gang taunts and tags and vehicle preferences.

* Improved Combat Functionality - In addition to the usual run, jump, punch, drive, stab, shoot model of combat, Saints Row 2 allows you to take human shields and exact finishing moves if you choose, but beware. How you commit crimes affects your notoriety, which determines the response of police.

* Expanded Multiplayer options - Along with a compelling singleplayer mode, enjoy a variety of multiplayer play options including:
o Strong Arm: A team-based multiplayer mode batching together prominent activities from the singleplayer campaign into one series of timed events, with the goal to earn the most cash as a team at the end of the events.

o Gangsta Brawl: A standard deathmatch mode with the single player with the most kills winning.

o Team Gangsta Brawl: A standard team deathmatch mode with the team with the most kills winning.

o Co-Op Mode: Full drop in/drop out coop support and ability to play through the full single player campaign with buddies and with the ability to set online co-op games to public, friends-only or invite-only status.

* Lots of Wieldable Weapons - Whether you talking chairs, parking meters, street signs, newspaper dispensers or your neighbor's garden gnome, use whatever is on hand to take out an enemy.

* An Explosive Weapon Arsenal - When a melee weapon just won't do, send a message to your enemies by dipping into an arsenal that includes: rocket launchers, shock-paddles, stun-guns, satchel-charges, mini-guns, uzis, automatic shotguns and flame-throwers; Some of which can be duel wielded.

* A Vehicle for Every Surface - Put the pedal to the metal in a large selection of cars, motorcycles, ATVs, planes, watercraft and helicopters.

* All New Music - Saints Row 2 will feature an entirely new soundtrack of songs and the ability to create a custom in-game radio station, accessible from any vehicle by building a playlist of songs purchased in-game, with in-game money.

The Silwater sprawled before you as you wake in Saints Row 2 is both familiar and strange, but you will find that the explosive conclusion to the original Saints Row not only has left you wounded and betrayed, but also thirsty for revenge. Now it's time to take back the city that has forgotten you and only you will decide how far you'll go to achieve that.

Customer Reviews

Very good, but not great...
I liked the game a lot, still playing it actually. The missions and story are much better than the first title, but not better than GTAiv... They only compliant i have about the game is that the side missions to earn respect aren't as fun as the GTA iv side missions...
Cruise control... How was that never included in these games before?!?!

Far more fun than I thought it would be
I have avoided violent, sandbox games because I don't like the thought of shooting law enforcement (even in games ... yeah, whatever), and I just never understood the desire for people to play "the bad guy". Call it my own moral and ethical compass or something. But I decided to throw caution into the wind and actually buy one of these games. Considering how popular they are, they must be doing something right.

I was amazed at how much fun and expansive "Saints Row 2" is.

When I first started playing it, I walked/drove around for hours just marveling at the attention to detail in the buildings, landscape, and activity that went on around me. Even sidewalks that you would have zero chance of seeing under normal circumstances, hidden behind derelict buildings, can have small details like gang symbols painted on them. The attention to detail in Stilwater is just amazing!

I'm the kind of person who has to play a game to the utter completion when possible. When playing fantasy RPG games like "Neverwinter Nights", I hate leaving side-quests unfinished. I hate having incomplete maps. If I'm playing a game, I want to experience the whole game.

"Saints Row 2" has such a huge amount of side material to play that I anticipate at least 80 hours of gameplay from running around, exploring, and performing side quests, before I consider it to be done to my satisfaction. Getting 80 hours from any kind of game is utterly unheard of! I've already played for over 24 hours, having done a large number of side quests and activities, and I'm only at 20% completion!

What really helped me to overcome the "playing the bad guy" issue is that Volition loaded the game with just utter silliness. They clearly made the smart move in removing some of the realism to add humor and goofy playability.

Whether the humor comes from the outrageous commercials on the radio or the sheer toilet humor (pun intended) in spraying sewage all over the place, there is a ton of off-the-wall humor and irreverent activities in this game. Even being able to just wave "hello" to passers by and have them respond adds another bit of over-the-top silliness.

Here you are trying to take over the city, having just ruthlessly killed rival gang members, but wave "Hi" to a person walking down the street and they respond like you're the friendliest person on each. It's one of those stupid, subtle bits of humor that had me chuckling not because it was genuinely funny but because of its absurdity.

I share the frustration with other reviewers that cars, people, or objects have a tendency to disappear once they are out of your view. There have been many times where a car that is wanted at the chop shop would pass me, and by the time I turn around to try to carjack it it's gone.

Other times I'm just so frustrated with running that I turn around to steal the car in the parking lot that I just ran past. The car's not there any more. This happens often and can be incredibly annoying. This game should be fixed so that there is a certain radius around your character where all items or people stay where they are until they are completely out of that radius.

The only real WTF moment was when I saw that the "streaking" game utilized censorship over the character's nether-regions. Once again, the American need to act Puritanical shows itself.

Blood, violence, swearing, running over people with the car, mowing them down with a machine gun, killing law enforcement -- hey, no problem! But show a certain part of the body and suddenly it's "NO, NO, NO!! We can't show that! Blowing people's heads off is fantastic! Go for it! But don't expect us to show a nipple!

We have to censor that!" { face palm } Volition, either we're mature enough to handle the whole package or we're not! Pick one! Don't treat us like adults and use the "M" rating for cover when it comes to violence, then hide in cowardice and treat us like children who need to be shielded when it comes to nudity!

Regardless, I was shocked at how much fun this game is. The violence is cartoonish more than anything else; the gameplay can be fast and furious; hidden items and quests abound; there are lots of absurd humorous bits; and the number of side quests and activities can keep you occupied for dozens and dozen of hours.

Buy it. Once the absurdity of the gameplay and the scope of what you can do in Stilwater kick in, the fun factor takes over and you could end up spending a lot more time with it than you thought.

Saint's Row > GTA IV; GTA IV > Saint's Row 2
I bought the CE of this game at launch (Major waste of money, very cheap extras) and lost interest within a few days of playing for reasons I will note below. I'm writing this "review" now as I'm 'bout to start playing it again to just get through the game and feel I must get off my chest the problems. Not a review so much as a rant as I'm sure everyone has a fair idea of what this game is.

For starters, GTA IV lacks in comparison to GTA:SA. IV was a major step backwards in comparison to SA. Saint's Row I was a huge fan of as it was the same concept of GTA but taken to a higher level in terms of customization.

Of course much of the praise for SR could be attributed to the fact the last GTA wasn't on a current-gen system but considering how GTA IV was a major setback, not valid. After the release of GTA IV, as hyped as I was for it, I was really looking forward to SR2 even more which sadly was a greater let down than GTA IV.

SR2 is the exact same game as SR. From the start I knew it was going to be set in the same city some years later. Very nice idea as opposed to GTA that goes from city to city, especially the larger map size and claimed underground areas. The game itself failed to deliver on this.

At the start of the game I was wondering what changes were made to the city as it felt and looked exactly the same until I seen the new college area. Okay, and there are a few other new areas but for the most part the entire city is pretty much the same thing and it doesn't feel too much larger at all. The underground areas are very limited and nothing as it was said to be in interviews before the release.

So basically this is the same game from controls to graphics to location to everything as the first. The only difference I noticed was the music wasn't as good as there is absolutely no Chat Radio. Since GTA 3, a staple of this "genre" of game has been the chat radio station as it really bring the city to life and immerses the player into the virtual world. In SR2 there is no chat radio.

In fact, out of the few stations there are I really don't care for a single. Upon this revelation of there being no chat radio station was when I stopped playing the game as I just couldn't tolerate this overpriced, lesser repeat of SR. (Yes, it took me a good number missions before I realized the lack of a chat station as I just couldn't believe it)

Another issue is how short the game is. My brother played through the game in a few days and was done, another reason I didn't care to finish. Was really disappointing.

Overall this game is an immensely disappointing sequel. As I said, SR in comparison to GTA had so much more going on especially in comparison to IV but SR2 totally dropped the ball. This game could've probably been released a week after the first SR considering the very, very little things done to it.

The only really noticeable change is the character customization at the start which is far more robust but it feels that is the only improvement other than the numerous de-provements. On that, I don't care for the voice overs either.

You have three voices to choose from and for the male character you have one that sounds black, one that sounds Hispanic, and one that sounds British. The Hispanic voice is the most annoying as it sounds totally "white" except for certain phrases that suddenly sound Hispanic. Very, very poor job from the "white" guy feigning a Hispanic gangster.

Overall I must urge you to rent this. Obviously I regret buying the CE due to the extreme cheapness of the extras made in China but even the standard edition, with what I knew moments after playing it I wouldn't have bought this title whatsoever.

You may find this a fun game, which it is, but do yourself a favor and save the money. You can easily run through this within a week. As for me, I didn't find this game fun at all as I was looking forward to the sequel and this just totally takes the cake at worse, least-done, cheapest sequel.

Another thing, aside from the lack of a chat station the radio advertisements are nearly non-existent. Aside from the chat station it is fun to listen to the ads inbetween songs and the DJs chatter (True in both GTA AND SR), in SR2 you have no chat station and you have barely any commercials and almost no DJ chatter.

Very, very weak sequel.

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