Saints Row (Xbox 360)

As you do certain story missions you start to take over Stillwater, you gain gang territory that has to be defended in a Pushback. These can be hellishly hard or ridiculously easy depending on your approach and tactics. As long as the territory is not contested you gain money at your crib. To push back a contested territory you can drive there and start shooting, cap all the gang lieutenants and you’ll win it back.

The crib (you eventually get one) is a place where you can store weapons, change clothes and pick up your money. It also comes with a 160 car garage where you can store vehicles. A nice touch is that if you do blow up one of your many stored cars, you can get it rebuilt for a fee in the garage. You’ll also gain more cribs as you progress through certain aspects of the game’s main story.

If you have enough money and desire a collection of cool looking vehicles, then there’s Rim Jobs car mechanic – they’ll repair your car, they’ll even pimp your car if you have the cash. The car modding side of the game is fun and adds a unique visual look to each vehicle you buy, borrow, steal or unlock from certain activities.

Saints Row has a lot to do and allows you complete freedom of the city in which to do it, you can drive around looking for activities and shops get new clothes and weapons from the many stores around and generally spend as much time as you want in between story missions.

Your character eventually gains enough pull to command other Homies, you can have up to 3 of these and they’ll generally try and help you out as much as they can. They can often be more of a hindrance than a help, but they’re useful when you’re in a big fire-fight and they’re armed with some machine guns or heavy weapons. If they get taken out you can revive them (within 30 seconds) with a quick tap of the Y button over their downed bodies.

If you shoot at a car or person, they’ll follow suit, this can lead to some interesting moments when the police or a rival gang turn up and fire on you. Every allied character in the vicinity (especially in your territory) turns up the heat on the aggressor.

If you’re in trouble and being tailed by an enemy car, the best thing you can do is head right into an area controlled by the Saints and let them do the negotiation for you.

You gain notoriety based on what you do regarding the other gangs, for example if you keep on upsetting the Vice Kings, then your meter will rise and you’ll get more and more Vice Kings turn up to try and take you down. This builds quite a bit of Rep however and is useful for getting weapons, vehicles and cash.

The same happens for the police, if you keep on causing trouble, robbing shops and so on – you’ll get more police until they trigger a full scale manhunt.

Get smoked and die, you'll appear at the hospital and you’ll be charged some amount of your money, you get to keep your weapons though – the same goes with the police, if you’re arrested, you’re released with a full compliment of weapons from the nearest police station.