If not taken too seriously, this perhaps one of the most entertaining games for the Xbox 360.
Once you're dropped in Stilwater, your city for conquering, you'll get to run around right away, nothing is blocked off. It didn't take much roaming to realize that the given control schemes aren't all that spectacular. Even after playing for many hours the controls still seem to require too many buttons and setting up camera angles, especially while driving can be a pain. On a good note, the buttons and analog stick are fairly responsive and as long as you don't mess up your button juggling, the action you requested performs properly. For the most part, the controls work and it is not too often you fail due to controller frustrations. There is one story arc with three sub-arcs that relate to each of the rival gangs. All of the stories are well done and don't leave too much hanging at the end. Although, you may want to play through again to find many subtle hints that help fill in the story and sub-plots. As a testament to the quality of the stories, my drive to play through the last two sub-arcs was simply the story itself and not to be a completionist. The missions involved in each arc are fun, varied and fairly relevant to the story. The reputation system that has you doing activities (see next paragraph) in order to do more story missions, paces the speed of the game nicely.
Dotted throughout the city are many side quests, called activities. With a few exceptions, they blend seamlessly into the game. They start with a humorous intro and then the task begins. Some of them are short term activities, like drug dealing, while others are long term tasks that you complete throughout your play time, like Hitman or Chop Shop activities. While you will have to do some to help advance the story thanks to the reputation system, at least they are all fun. Well, except the insurance fraud one, which seemed like a cheap gimmick to demonstrate the physics engine. The activities are fun and offer a good balance of challenging and easy missions.
Right from the intro clip, you'll notice the artists made good use of colour and don't abuse any graphic effects (*cough*bloom*cough*). The models for vehicles, characters and buildings are all stylish but nothing truly spectacular graphics wise. The customization for vehicles and your character are pretty amazing, but with the amount of options for your character, it would be nice if your homies could vary a bit more. The real beauty of the engine is how much stuff can be on screen and how far you can see without so much as a hitch on the frame-rate. Throughout the game you will constantly see beautiful panoramic views of the city and giant piles of exploding cars and people that will bring a tear to your eye. There are an adequate amount of character animations, and they're all fairly smooth. The graphics may not be breakthrough, but they serve their purpose more than adequately.
The dialogue in this game cannot be taken seriously. Once you get over that, this game has some of the most entertaining voicing of any game. All the voice acting is well done, from the quips on the street to the conversations in the cut scenes.
While the dialogue was stellar, the music and sound effects only felt sub par. The music is all original, but none of the songs really stuck out, and a few of them just sounded obnoxious. Granted, I didn't bother collecting too many of the hidden CDs for the un-lockable tracks. Gunshots, car collisions, engine noises and explosions never sounded truly satisfying. They just didn't portray the feeling of impact. Other than hearing bare rims on the road, the sound was just a cosmetic layer and didn't add much to game play.
Between the main stories, activities, exploring, stylizing yourself and simple rampaging Saints Row offers a lot of content for the single player experience. If you get bored of doing one type of thing you can easily find something else to entertain you for a couple of hours.
As for multi player, the game types are well done and a couple of them are pretty original. For accomplishing certain things you are awarded cash and can upgrade your on-line player's looks. Everything plays out at a decent pace, but getting into a game can take almost as long as the match itself. A slightly greater variety in maps would have been nice too. The use of physics and ability to drive cars in multiplayer is pretty awesome, but lag and warping after collisions is a pretty common problem. The multiplayer system is layed out well overall, but a bit of polish on the technical side could have been done.
My first online experience was amazing. People (despite sounding like wannabe thugs) were effectively communicating, working as a team and overall having a good time. I have yet to duplicate that experience. For every team oriented player you find, you will find two teamkillers and a guy that just wants to drive the 'purdry carz'. The terrible community for Saints Row undermines the fun and original multiplayer modes. For the single player alone, Saints Row is worth picking up for any mature Xbox owner. Throw in the multiplayer and you have a purchase you won't regret, even if you aren't the most hardcore thug or rap lover (which I'm not much of either).