Saints Row 2 Final Campaign Impressions

Eight carnage-filled hours spent with the campaign mode. Co-op shenanigans included.
by Nate Ahearn
September 10, 2008 - Sitting in a cramped hotel room for six hours, playing the same videogame with only the sunny Las Vegas skyline acting as a visual distraction can be a bit of a downer. Admittedly I wasn't exactly looking forward to running through Saints Row 2 for that long of a time period. It takes a lot to hold my attention for such a long period of time and frankly, I didn't think SR2 could do it.

Thankfully the temptations of Vegas rarely entered my head as thoughts of Ultor, The Ronin and Sons of Samedi had me happily wrapped up in the world of Stilwater.

More surprising still was my willingness to go play cooperatively with the rest of the press core at day's end. But I'll save those accounts for later in the article. For now, let's talk solo action.




The game begins with your created character waking up after years in a coma. The options for your wannabe gangster are extensive to say the least. It would take pages to list out all of the combinations so I'll just say that there are three male and three female accents to strap onto your character. That means that every line of spoken dialogue -- and there are a lot -- had to be recorded six times. Also, if you throw one of the crazier costumes on your character (ninja gi anyone?) then that's exactly what you'll see in the cutscenes. No matter how dramatic. Lots of options, both serious and off the wall, allow you to have a slightly different experience throughout the game, as long as you take advantage of what's afforded.

One of the coolest parts of Saints Row 2, and this goes for most well done open world games, is the different ways the game can be played. I spoke with six or seven different press outlets once our day of playing was done. Some had focused on discovering the wider array of activities than what is available in the first Saints while others focused on one of the four initial gangs. Each of those gangs provides a nice, long story arc and they're all tied together by the overarching mega corporation known as Ultor.

I, being the story-driven bloke that I am, decided to put my blond-haired Cockney speaking gangster through as many story missions as possible. My target gang? The Ninja-influenced Japanese gang known as The Ronin.


Of course, before I could set out to wage war against The Ronin I had to reestablish The Saints as a legit gang. To do that, I needed to break Johnny Gat out of his trial where he was up for over 350 counts of first-degree murder -- a charge he wanted to dropped to 250 due to the statute of limitations. Gat and the judge argued, a discussion that featured plenty of f-bombs and good one-liners from Johnny and before I knew it I was cocking my shotgun in the face of an elderly female judge before pulling the trigger.

Next, I had to reclaim the old Saints hideout and rally a trio of lieutenants to tend the sheep while my character dealt with his business. Running through these introductory missions felt more meaningful than the standard tutorial of, "go pick up my girlfriend and bring her here, then bring her dog back to her house."

The Ronin missions, as you'd expect, begin simply enough with me taking down minor crime syndicates attached to the gang. One mission in particular sticks out in my mind. "Bleeding Out" features one of the best cutscenes I've seen from the series and the death of one of the featured characters in the game. I won't spoil who, but it sends a shockwave through the gang and it's delivered in a highly stylized way.

While the production values of the cutscenes that drive the action forward aren't quite as high as they were in GTA4 I still found myself enthralled with what was going on. The characters deliver their lines believably and the writing is witty enough that I found myself laughing both at their dialogue and at the newspaper clippings that come after each successful mission. "Gat Found Guilty. Still Goes Free" comes to mind.

Much of this has to do with the voice acting talent that has been tapped to bring life to the characters. Keith David, Michael Rappaport and Daniel Dae Kim are back from the first game and are joined by the likes of Eliza Dushku and Neil Patrick Harris (NPH!) as a drug dealing disc jockey.




Much to my surprise I was able to work my way through the entire Ronin campaign during my play session. As in the first Saints Row, you are required to build respect in between missions by completing activities, but even still, the six hours of time was just enough to finish off the Japanese band of hooligans with the grand finale being the last of many rather disappointing katana battles.

If you do the math that equates to roughly 24 hours for the full campaign, but that's assuming that Ultor doesn't emerge as the hidden fifth gang that you'll need to take down at game's end (which I'm betting they do). Also keep in mind that I didn't engage in any extra diversions (if you steal a car with a passenger you can do a kidnapping diversion and cabs have taxi diversions, among other types) or activities other than what was needed to progress. All told I wouldn't be surprised if Saints Row 2 packs well over 30 hours of content.


There is some added incentive to completing the various activities in SR2. I got to try out new entries such as Fuzz, where my character had to dress as a cop and commit despicable acts while a news crew filmed it all, Heli Assault, where I had to guard drug runners from my lofty perch, and my personal favorite, Septic Avenger, which tasked my guy with flinging fecal matter on numerous pieces of property and characters. There was also another activity that had my character protecting a famous person from rabid fans. All that I played were pretty fun and I was thankfully able to steer clear of the more mundane activities like Escort (and yes, Insurance Fraud is back).

The incentives that I mentioned come in the form of bonuses that are handed out once you take down some of the later, more difficult levels of the activities. I got things like reduced bullet damage by 5%, reduced cost on certain items and the ability to hire bodyguards. Of course, you'll also get the requisite respect boost which then unlocks missions, but you'll be able to complete tasks like dressing in hot duds, making long powerslides in a car, completing head (and nut) shots on baddies, and stringing together kills on gang members and their vehicles.

Saints Row 2 does admittedly feel very similar to what Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 4 brought to the table earlier this year, but once you spend some time with the game you can see that it's a bit of a different beast. The action is more over the top and zany and there's a humor that was missing from the Scorsese-esque GTA4 storyline. There are also little touches like being able to fly an assortment of planes (an awesome feeling when you have a four-star wanted level breathing down your neck) and being able to press a face button when you're in the water and warp to the nearest shoreline or set cruise control when you're in your car, thus making drive-bys and chases much easier.

Of course with all the new, cool stuff that you'll see in Saints Row 2, the pre-release version that I played still had many of the technical deficiencies (and a few new ones) that I saw from the first. Cars occasionally got stuck in other objects and sometimes environmental pieces would behave very strangely. There's still draw-in and pop-in when driving around the streets at a quick clip. The framerate gets bogged down the action gets really frenetic and screen tearing was evident during cutscenes. Speaking of cutscenes, the characters' hair had some real aliasing problems. Here's hoping that a couple of these issues can be ironed out before October 14.




After my six-hour run of destroying The Ronin (which earned me their fighting style and ninja costume) was done, it was time to take to the co-op gauntlet. Essentially co-op -- which is only available over Xbox Live or system link -- is exactly what you'd expect. You can play through the entire game with cutscenes where you'll see your own character and all. If you complete a late mission in co-op mode and haven't beaten it in your single-player game, you'll be asked if you want to play it again or skip it when you get to that point. Another cool feature is that AI scales to adapt to the fact that there are two players. That means more foes on-screen and different AI patterns. In other words, it's a little more fun and a little more frenetic.

There are also two modes within the co-op mode for you to enjoy. One, my favorite of the two, is called Cat and Mouse. One player is in an assault copter above the city while another is in a stylish sports car racing through the city, trying to hit check points and stay alive for as long as possible. A score counter keeps track of the action and things can get understandably heated during some of the Die Hard-esque chases. The other mode is a standard Deathmatch offering Death Tag. Kill the other dude or dudette before they kill you.


Saints Row 2 is fun. There's no denying that. Anyone who enjoyed Grand Theft Auto 4 should be able to find something to latch onto here. The production values and technical merit may not be up to the same level and the world may not have the same visual flair (though it tries) but from what I've seen of Saints Row 2's over-the top-gameplay, some are really going to dig this little degenerate when it release on October 14.

Keep an eye on IGN.com for our thoughts on the competitive multiplayer, coming in the next several weeks.