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.
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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.
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:
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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. |
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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. |
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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.” |
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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. |
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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:
- 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.
- Gangsta Brawl: A standard deathmatch mode with the single player with the most kills winning.
- Team Gangsta Brawl: A standard team deathmatch mode with the team with the most kills winning.
- 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.
User Reviews
4 Stars Like GTA except its fun.
Well if you watch TV, read magazines or anything, you probably saw GTA IV raved about. The reality is from most gamers points of view that GTA was a solid game but extremley repetitive and lost its luster after the first 25% of the game.
Saints Row is the opposite. It isnt as hyped of a game but from the moment you play it, it is just fun. The controls are solid, not great but thats not the lure of this game. There are three main gang stories and Ultor missions(The company that has taken over the city) you need to tackle which account for only about half the game. The rest of the things to do include all sorts of acticty rangng from drug traficking, being a cop on a tv show, blowing thigns up for cash and even spraying poop on Ultors property.
All of the mini games are fun and have their own charm. They give you respect which allows you to play missions, as well as give you cash and achievements.
The story isnt as in depth as a GTA game but it is still solid enough to carry the game. You are the character who seemed to be blown to bits at the end of the original and you are motivated to take back whats yours and get revenge against the entire city.
There is no denying that this game has a few flaws and some glitches but at the end of the day, this is a more enjoyable and more rewarding experience than GTA IV.
1 Star Still Items Vanish with no good reason!!!
OK I’ve marked this review down to one star because I want to get my point across. One of the problems with SR1 was that when you drive past a number of gang members and you decide to turn around and fight them, they have disappeared, not because they ran off but because the game wants to delete the part of the world that is not in front of you. I’m really disappointed that they did not fix this problem in SR2, i would never have bought it had i known.
I was chasing down a car, i went past it, turned around and it was gone. No it hadn’t just driven off because I would have seen it off down the road, it just vanished.
If this is fixable please fix…
Im sure there is a lot to be liked here, but this really annoys me and does not happen in GTAIV
5 Stars Better than the first one, and what GTA 4 should have been
I can’t say enough good things about this game. If you played the first one, you know the basic set up. You still battle gangs for control of the city, earning respect and then playing missions when you fill your respect meter up, etc
But the number and type of side missions has been doubled, at least. The cut scenes are better and longer. The story is more involved and you care more about the characters. Way more variety in the amount of stuff you can see and do; you can fly helicopters and planes now, and pilot boats. You can use a sewage truck to hose down people as part of a mini-mission
More clothes, more weapons, more vehicle types than before. You can earn respect now by doing things like driving on the wrong side of the road for an extended time, or jumping your car off of things. Every part of the game just makes more sense and feels more natural than it did the first time around
Plus they made the city bigger! What more could you ask for, seriously? If you liked Crackdown or any of the GTA games, you really should give this a try
5 Stars Beyond Cool
Everything that was cool in the first one is back in this one but with more!!! Helicopters, boats, jetskis, motorcycles, more cars, new weapons, alot of the roads have been fixed so you don’t have to drive completely around a neighborhood to get to a spot you want to. You can customize just about everything in the game too like your clothes you can pick the pattern, the color of the pattern, the logo, your car’s exterior no longer needs to be the same color all over the car. You can customize your crib, your gang, your gangs cars, your tag. Just awesome all over
small glitch I’ve found but when you’re on the kenshin motorcycle (I haven’t tried it with any others yet) if you pop a wheelie and stop and start doing a burnout (with the front wheel still in the air) and keep doing this until the camera tips back and is looking at the sky you then let go and it’ll launch the bike and you like 17 feet up in the air like you just hit a jump, I dunno I thought it was cool. Still funnest game so far.
5 Stars Grand Theft Auto Gets SLAPPED!!!
Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA 4) was gritty, had a good story but decided to make the gameplay more realistic. Realism doesn’t always lead to fun. The mini games really sucked: darts, bowling, watching a caberet. How about being pestered by whiney friends that constantly called you on the phoneasking that you hang out with them or lose their approval rating, was that fun? Realistic? Yes. Fun? No! And now GTA 4, just got slapped right across the mouth, with the release of Saints Row 2 (SR2)! Why would I say such a thing you ask.
Saints Row 2 is arcadey, has a more colorful graphic palette. And the characters look more cartoony. The gameplay is NOT realistic, but this is more of an advantage here. Below is a list of just SOME of the fun you can have and there is so much more to SR2:
Zombie uprising- this is a mini-game about killing waves of zombies, using mele weapons and fire arms. (This is similar to resident evil and even contains blood and gore, scary goodness).
Septic avenger- drive a septic truck, shoot sewage to devalue property, smother cops and laugh ad pedestrains. (Funniest mini game in SR2)
Celebrity- be a bodyguard for celebrities as you try to protect them
against crazy fans, dispose of fanatics any way you wish! (I enjoyed throwing the fanatics into a jet engine and having them chopped up).
Fight club- fight against thugs or even prisoners in a ring to the death.
(If you ever watched Ultimate Fighting on t.v. you’ll like this one).
Cat and mouse- simple deathmatch game between you and your co-op partner, one of you pilots an attack copter while the other tries to escape in a race car. (I thoght this was a nice twist on killing your friend).
Fuzz- ever watch the t.v. show cops? You are playing as a cop busting criminals for fame and cash. (I always wanted to be a bad cop and abuse people, this fulfills my fantasy).
Trail Blazing- you wear a fire-proof suit and drive around on an ATV setting pedestrians and vehicles on fire to gain extra time on the clock. (The most chaotic and difficult race, because the explosions can disorient your direction, but oodles of fun.)
Ambulance Emt- you are paramedic and must revive injured victims before they die. (I liked helping the injured by using the analog sticks to electrically charge the shock paddles was fun).
Fire Truck- you are fireman, douse fires with a fire extinguisher. (driving the truck was difficult, but felt satisfying putting out those flames on burning objects and people caught in flames).
Taxi driver- pick up customers and drop them off at their desired destination, to earn time, money and a bonus. (fun and easy way to earn some extra cash, it becomes more challanging in later levels).
Tow Truck- Drive your tow truck and take away vehicles from their deadbeat owners for earn cash, time and bonus. (I enjoyed towing vehicles and having the owner come after me with a baseball bat, I shot him dead).
Ho-ing- have sex with prostitutes and help them achieve orgasms for the next level. (The weakest and stupidest of all the mini games, you use the analog stick in certain directions to pleasure her, the graphics only show the analog stick on screen followed with sound effects).
Base jumping- go the top of a tall building and then jump off, deploy a parchute and land on the designated area. (I always like jumping off stuff anyways, its also funny when you committing suicide because of the ragdoll physics).
Tagging- mark your gang territory by spray painting walls and earn respect points. (I enjoyed putting up my gang’s graphics and enraging rival gang members and even the police).
Barnstorming- use and aircraft and fly through tricky areas without crashing (Very challanging and requires a skillful pilot).
Drive-by- earn money, points and respect for doing drive by shootings while cruising with your car, against rival gangs. (Saints Row was made for drive by shootings especially since your car now has cruise control).
Streaking- take off all of your clothes and run through the streets naked while trying to shock as many people as possible with your nudity. (I liked that the reactions of pedestrians varied when you ran past them, some: got mad or violent, others laughed, others were grossed out).
Store hold-up- rob stores at gun point and steal their cash, but get ready to shake off the cops. (Another good way to make some extra cash and becomes easier if you have homies help you rob the stores).
Hostage- carjack any innocent driver and the passanger will be held as a hostage, until they pay you the ransome money, trying to avoid cops at the same time. (Earn more money and laughs when the cars have multiple passangers).
Poker- go to a casino or video game machine and play the game of poker, with the cash you wager. (I don’t know how to play poker, but to those of you whom do, you will like this).
Racing- you can race, with cars, motorcycles or even boats, trying to beat your best time. (And with the beautifully designed map, it makes it even more enjoyable).
Flashing- all you wear is a trench coat, but unsuspecting bystanders get shocked when you flash them your nude body. (Similar to streaking and just as funny).
Blackjack- go to a casino or video game machine to play the game of blackjack with the money you wager. (The game is fair and balanced, it doesn’t seem to cheat you out of your cash).
Heli assualt- provide air support and pilot an attack copter, armed with a mini gun and homing rockets to protect your gangs against attackers. (Good action shooter, your partner can be the gunner).
And these are just some of the diversions you do for Saints Row 2. when you are bored or want a break from the campaign. Most of them can be played co-op with a partner optionally. You still have the campaign missions, which sets you against four rival gangs, destroy their strongholds, buy real estate, do any of the various activites, buy weapons, steal any vehicle. Unlock perks and special bonuses And enjoy a excellently designed city that is huge and fun to explore. Gain power, respect, money and destroy your rivals!
Customize, the look of your character by choosing its gender, age, race and then create his/her facial features. Buy different styles of clothing in shops, dress ghetto, classy or sporty or wear outlandish costumes! Customize your vehicles by adding nitrous, or hydrolics, rims, spinners, spoilers, decals, change their colors and more! You’ll spend hours exploring the customization features alone; it is very robust and easy to use.
Still not enough for you? Saint Row 2 also features online multiplayer modes such as: deathmatch, team deathmatch and strong arm modes! Saints Row 2 is the game that GTA should have been! If you like open world games, you should not hesitate to buy it! Don’t expect “realism”, just expect fun!
Pros:
+open world
+tons of side missions
+great campaign
+bloody and brutal
+duel wield weapons
+human shields
+intense action
+great vehicles
+excellent map design
+excellent story
+excellent multiplayer online
+excellent weapons
+excellent sound effects
+excellent music
+excellent voice-acting
+excellent controls
+unlock perks and bonuses
+tons of customizations
+play campaign co-op
+ragdoll physics
Cons:
-rare instances of game crashing
-minor collision detection problems
-minor graphical glitches
