Well, it hit today. The demo for Saint's Row on Marketplace. I was totally stoked about the demo. Like most great hypes, I was... well, get ready to hate me.

The game itself is pretty cool. I mean, it takes what Grand Theft Auto has done and improved it in some areas by 27% (the calculations were scientifically proven, don't blame me). The physics are fun to play with. The graphics look great. You can even 'pimp your ride'. There's a good amount of weapons and, from the looks of the map, the game is going to be big. But what's stopping it from getting a great review from me? Well, hopefully these will be worked out in the final production, but the game has a ton (and I do mean a ton) of flaws. The physics are really flawed. I was driving in an Ant (aka VW Beetle) and crashed into a wooden fence lying on the ground. The fence somehow glitched and flipped my car, blowing it up with my poor red-headed dude inside. Among other things, the game has a pretty bad detection system. For instance, I run through traffic, a guy hits me. As long as he's not going too fast, my character will stand in place while be dragged by the car. This car dragging feature can happen for up to ... well, I lasted like that for almost around the whole city. There's a few other things. Like when you punch people, sometimes you'll obviously be putting your fist right through their heads but it clips and the guy just ends up running away.

For being a 'violent' game, there's really no blood or anything. Maybe because it was a demo? I won't know until the game comes out. I mean, point blank, I shoot a fat old lady in the jaw and she just falls over. Not even flies back. She just falls down and lays there, as if this game were meant to be rated Teen. *<-- LiK pointed out this is realistic... but I want Hollywood action!!1!*  No, when I see a mature rated game like this, I expect to see people suffering, bleeding, and such. A knife wound should always leave a mark. Please, oh for the love of gaming, please let there be some freakin' gore! I hate toned down games like these. Another violent thing that bugged me is what everyone loves in the game: the fire. When cars blow up or molotov cocktails explode, you can actually watch people run around on fire. Cool, but when you look at the big picture, not so cool. I've seen this done in games where I've actually wanted to puke (ie: Postal 2 allows you to dump gasoline on people and throw a match on them. What's left is human burnt flesh. It's disturbing and I love it!). In Saint's Row, the game tends to have someone burn for around 3 seconds and then they extinguish themselves with no mark or scar letting you know that foo' has been burnt. Instead, after the 3 seconds (if that long), the people disappear after a while like this is an old Nintendo 64 system and they can't display more than 10 bodies.

Something I actually am annoyed with in games like this is the car ghost trick. You've all seen it. In GTA 3, a cop would be driving by, you'd turn the camera away from it, look back down the same road, and there's no cop but now there's a Benz or something strolling down the street. This game relies heavily on that! And I was shocked because San Andreas actually rid me of this flaw. Saint's Row should be able to handle caching cars into the memory to remember which one you saw scrolling down the street. Reason I'm complaining about this so much is because I was looking for a Jetta type car to take to the demo's garage. I saw one that turned down a street. I was probably 20 feet away so I ran down the street I was on, took a right, but low and behold, no Jetta-look-a-like car was driving down the road. Instead, there was nothing. Unless that car had nitro and took off in a couple of seconds, I'm not sure how it just went away. Come on, THQ. No blood & gore, glitched physics, no burnt corpses, no motorcycles?! This is Next-Gen gaming with a Next-Gen price. Get with the program!

Now, I'm not all hate on the game. I actually found it pretty neat how you could kick tires at people, go into stores without loading, and there was a decent create a character feature. I think the game will still be worth buying (mainly for the online play) but they really need to work on getting their games less glitchy. There's tons of other flaws in the game but I don't want to ruin the fun of you discovering them. I will give you one last one before I close this out. It is possible to jump on top of a car and have someone drive you around town. You won't even budge when he hits another car. Fan-tabulous!

*Other Reviews Today: Look Below*
Galaga (360)