Being a copy cat means you shouldn't buy it? I say thats rubbish!

User Rating: 8.9 | Saints Row X360
By jfreshmatrix | Review Date:
First off, let me say ive played through the entire GTA series starting at 3, ive loved every single one, Saints Row, even know its an exact copy, does have its own style believe it or not, obviously its more "fake" than the GTA series, but it does it, in my opinion, in a very light hearted way and at times, makes fun of itself. Moving on to playing the actual game, gameplay IS the most important aspect of a game, this is were Saints Row excels the most, yes for a open world game the visuals are impressive, but gameplay is were its at in SR. The physics alone make this game worth while, shooting/running over/blowing up people never gets old with this game, ragdoll is defintely one of the main focuses of the game. Another thing that obviously stands out thats not currently in the GTA series, is fully customizable characters, every single thing on your chracter is just about customizable, I probably spent almost 45 min just on this alone. Though it might just be me, I would of liked to see a better selection of clothing, granted they have all styles, there just wasnt enough of each style, just something small. The actual missions are sometimes repetitive, but there fun, thats what matters, its taken me around 28 hours to compelete the main storylines, this is also counting activities I had to do to progress and unlock, theres a lot of gaming to be done, ill just leave it at that.
Graphics, yes were all graphic whores at some point in our life, Saints Row is definitely not one of the best looking games, but for what it is, being a huge open world game, its damn good. It has a very clean, realistic look, but the art style is more on the cartoonish side, if that makes any sense. Textures overall are good to great, some better than others, but lots of variety, something else that really impressed me was the weather, it does a very convincing overcast/stormy day, theres also different levels of intensity. Moving onto character models, there quite decent for the art style it went for, I think it did a good job, although if you make a crappy looking character, don't blame it on the game having crappy models! Overall, minus some pop in and wierd graphical glitches, the visuals are great.

Sound is a important aspect as well, the track selection isn't as elite as say the GTA series, but its definitely a good B + soundtrack, some stuff you'll reconize, most you won't, that doesn't mean you won't come away with a new favorite song though. Ambient sounds are decent as well, hearing a blasting system coming down the street is surprisingly realistic sounding, also with changing frequencys as you enter and get out of your car is very convincing. The most improved sound related issue when it came to GTA's cap gun sounding guns, is definitely more than improved in Saints Row, guns all sound good and make them all the more fun to shoot, with each having its own unique sound. Overall the sound is good, not the best sounding ever in a game but its not bad at all.

Multi-player, I got the game kind of early you might say, so there wasn't a good amount of people on to play against, but from what I can tell its solid, nothing revolutionary but good none the less. One cool thing is being able to customize your character online as well, you earn money from playing games to upgrade your character wich makes it a little addicting to keep playing. When I play this, even though its a completely different setting, I get the Socom vibe in a weird way, maybe its just the third person view that does it, I don't know. Theres also co-op wich I have yet to experience, but it is there. If your buying this game for the multiplayer alone, I would rent it first, not because it sucks, but because it might not be everybodys style.

Overall this is a better than average game, its great! There are so many improvements it makes on the genre, that hopefully, more dev's in this genre will look at, and even improve more on. Now there are some things that it could of used like motorcycles! No airplanes ok, ill cut them a break, motorcycles were one of the best things about GTA VC and SA, they left them out *sigh* I guess that will be on my wishlist for SR 2!

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