13th Entry - Saint's Row 2

Saint's Row 2 (Xbox 360)

This has been one of the surprising games this fall. I played Saint's Row one when it came out cause I wanted to play Grand Theft Auto for the 360 but it wasn't out. The first one was a pretty good game with some minor flaws. But everything I didn't like about the first one was fixed in this one, plus some other really cool features. There is tons more customization not only can you change your clothes you can change the way you look, your voice or even your gender (and make some transgender freak if you want [no offense]).

Unlike GTA IV this game realizes it's an arcade game and doesn't try to make real driving physics that just piss you off cause it's almost real but not quite so it's hard to judge whether or not you can make that turn so you just run into the wall instead. In Saint's Row the cars behave like you expect them too. Plus you can also customize them as well, not just painting them you can give them more health make them drive faster and even make the tires stronger. Also you just have one garage that can be accessed from any of your houses making it much more convenient (plus as a reward for completing one of the side missions you can have a guy drive them to you for free, on of the many ridiculous rewards, more on that later).

The general game play doesn't stand out in a good or bad way. The graphics are good, not great. You have standard weapon classes, pistol, shotgun, smg, rifle, rocket launcher, and grenades. They didn't put in armor instead just made you take tons of bullets, plus your health regenerates which because it's an game I think is better, or better then having to find a hot dog stand at lest. Also apparently your guy is jacked cause you can just tear a fire hydrant out of the ground and throw it at somebody a mile away it's great fun.

The bad guys are, while not inventive, well done. The story also has some pretty funny parts. One of your lieutenants has come up with this complex plan to rob a casino goes kind of like this

Johnny Gat: What's with this doll house?
Pierce explains a complex plan.
Johnny Gat: why don't we just kill everybody between us and the money?
You: It would be faster...
Johnny Gat: and more fun.
You: F*ck it let's just do that.
Pierce: Aww guys come on!

You pretty much just give Pierce crap the whole game. There's also a couple of fun missions where they make you really high and force you to do complex things it's pretty funny.

Then there are the side missions. I hate most forced side missions that are there to artificially extend game play, but these are great. Also they give you crazy rewards. You can get what can only be described as rape weapons, and then you get unlimited ammo for them,. Plus I randomly jumped out of a plane and it said press Y to do base jumping. I landed in the center of the target it gave me and now I don't take any falling damage at all, plus there are many others that make you basically invincible, and of course some crappy ones like 75% off at the mechanic from a major pain in the butt mission too.

This game is really more than the sum of its parts. It is a lot of fun to just screw around and any time I got stuck or really mad I just went crazy and destroyed the town and instantly remembered why this game was so fun. This game is easily one of the best to come out this fall. I give it 9 out of 10.