Saints Row (Xbox 360)

Animations and AI

I like the animations in Saints Row, they’re at times over the top in some of the cut-scenes but that adds to the experience, they’re exaggerated characters that aren’t based on real people.

The characters are all well animated, running, walking, shooting and various mannerisms are depicted with a flawless sense of style. The driving animations are great, the character moves in and out of the vehicle based on the type it is and also how they

The joy of playing the game for me is just sitting back sometimes and watching the world roll on by, they all have their own animated AI lives and some hilarious situations can happen when someone decides to take the law into their own hands after an off colour comment from one of the residents.

A beautiful example of this would be when I was set upon by a crazy old bag lady, out walking by my first crib; she decided that I needed to die for some reason and she shot over the road to get at me. A purple Saint’s car drove past and the moment she punched me – every Saint in the Row went into alert.

She gave me some dialogue about being a defenceless woman that was going to kick my ass. I didn’t want to hurt her, so I kept blocking. A cop car turned up, the cop got out and went for me, and meanwhile the Saints were homing in on the bag lady.

The cop gets there first and hits me with his nightstick, but then he hits the old lady by accident and she forgets all about me. The bag lady’s wrath transfers wholesale onto the cop and she beats him senseless. Another cop car pulls up and before anyone can react, bag lady goes on a kicking spree, she runs up to the cop car and pulls the officer out.

People panic and there’s complete pandemonium as the street goes mad, people run off and leap walls and fences to get away. Bag lady gets hit by a Saint and the rest of the gang now want her blood. But bag lady isn’t going down without a fight. She gets run over by a pickup and finally we think it’s all over, no, bag lady is still alive and goes after the driver.

In the end to stop the chaos I had to put a bullet in bag lady’s skull, it was the only thing I could do.

The AI in Saints Row ties in with the animation in a perfect way, but it also seems to tie into the various systems such as the audio. I have witnessed the AI go after other AI when they don’t like a piece of dialogue or even drag someone out of their car when they drive past with loud music on.

Gang member AI is a bit ropey, both in terms of enemy and support, they’ll often charge in to impossible situations and get themselves knocked out – this forces you to waste time in reviving them or just forging on ahead without Homies. The enemies will try and use cover and flanking moves, but most often or not they’ll race on in as well.

When they’re driving and you’re in the passenger seat riding shotgun, they’ll often crash when they take a wrong turn or another car rams into them from the neutral AI. You could of course put this down to panic both from the driver and the AI that’s turned out suddenly into a full of drive by fire-fight.

This works for and against the game, the AI often happens to panic when things go wrong. People become aggressive or totally freak out, they’ll attempt to escape from the dangerous situation or find cover. This can be useful when you’re causing the chaos, but when you’re trying to escape the chaos, it can be a pain as every car comes tearing around the corner in a blind panic trying to get away.

It doesn’t bother me of course because it leads to some cool AI moments. If you toss a pipe bomb or grenade, AI will go for dives, cover or attempt to run away. Each character attempts to get away in a slightly different way, some will even trip up and scramble back to their feet.

Physics

Car handling is tied in to this; it’s a bit different if you’re used to GTA and the cars do handle differently, the faster cars have a good sense of speed. They also blow up nicely and react to damage with an increasingly worse handling and so on. Damage doesn’t just cause mechanical defects, panels fall off and the car gets battered, eventually smoke pours out of it and it sets on fire. After that there’s a huge bang and bits of vehicle will sail off in all directions, if you or anyone gets struck by the falling bits of vehicle it will cause damage.

The ragdoll physics add a great sense of over the top Hollywood style action to the game and the explosions are some of the best explosions in a vehicular gang game yet. It’s quite satisfying on some level to see the bodies of enemy gang members flying up into the air and soaring across the street as a big explosion goes off taking with it small debris and lampposts, various objects and even other vehicles.