Saints Row (Xbox 360)

Sound

There’s a lot going on in the audio department of Saints Row and it hasn’t been neglected, there are audio cues for all times of day and night, people muttering to themselves and car horns, stereos, sounds and general spot effects. The game is packed with them and they bring Stillwater to life.

Music

There are plenty of radio stations to listen to, a thumping mix of various cool tracks from a variety of sources. You can unlock/download new tracks/content from Xbox Live although there’s nothing there yet. Even radio station adverts inform you of sales where a special song is available. A custom playlist available in game lets you to listen to songs you buy from a music store or make your own music playlist from your own tracks via the dashboard.

The music itself varies from rock through to hip hop and even classical.

Voice

With a game as high profile as Saints Row, you need a high profile cast list and the voice talent for the game comes from the likes of Michael Clarke Duncan (Green Mile and Sin City), David Carradine (Kill Bill), Tia Carrere (Relic Hunters), Keith David (Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick movies) and many more. The voice work is top notch from everyone involved, and there are many funny lines of street based dialogue – when you’re out and about just moving from place to place, a lot of it will be lost unless you stop and listen in to a few conversations.

I have absolutely no complaints here at all.

Multiplayer

There’s something that the GTA genre needed and that was MP. People have been crying out for that since the days of GTA 3. Saints Row attempts to fill that gap and on the whole does a pretty good job with the MP side over Xbox Live.

You can use the quick matchmaking system to get a few games, make a gang and invite your buddies to play or match up against other gangs.

There are a variety of game-types from the standard deathmatches to the amusing protect the pimp, where you have to escort a pimp through the level and stop him from getting smoked by the rival gang.

There are a few coop missions where you and a buddy can team up over Live and try to escape from an airport or gang territory. You have a set number of lives, lose them all and it’s game over.

Bling up your ride sees you trying to pimp a car and get it to the finish line before the other players. Kill enemies to get bling and then use that to buy a certain number of mods, get the whole set and race to the finish – be warned though, if your ride is totalled you need to start again.

These are just a few of the MP options available in Saints Row.

The MP experience itself is a bit ropey at the moment, lag is a problem and there are frequent disconnects from certain games. Volition should be working on it and if these errors are sorted it could be a solid MP game that people will come back to time and time again. I would have personally liked to see a split-screen offline option for players, as well as a cooperative MP experience for the single player game where one person plays the main character and the other could be a Homie.

Before I wind up I have to mention the game lobby, where you can set up games and matchmaking. It’s not a static menu, there’s actually a lobby where you can run around and shoot the other players while you’re waiting for a game, this adds a nice little bit of interactivity to the game and is a lot of fun – it gets you in the mood for some MP action.

You can also earn MP cash to buy a new look for your character and that level of customisation is great.

Canonised?

Saints Row doesn’t desperately try to be GTA or a GTA clone; it unfortunately can’t escape these comparisons or accusations. It is a game that stands shoulder to shoulder with GTA and in some ways it actually does a few things better, there’s a lot more thought gone into the side missions and the level of humour isn’t quite a good as GTA’s, but it’s funny non-the-less. It’s a good game and it certainly offers a lot of replay value as you try and unlock everything, pimp out your rides and play with the slightly bugged MP aspect.

Being able to customise your character right from the start with a unique look means that you feel drawn deeper into the story, since it is your character that you’re playing and not the made up developers hero. Of course you can get some pretty outlandish characters for the game if you want and that’s another bonus, being able to push the boundaries of the generator to create a quirky and unique persona is always good.

If they had of fixed the obvious glaring and jarring graphical issues we’d have scored this one much higher, but as it stands the graphics problems do let it down.

If you like GTA-style games and can’t wait for the next, then Saints Row is a perfect game to tide you over.