Saints Row

I’ve been playing Saint’s Row the past few days. I’m having a great time with this GTA style game. The learning curve for this game was pretty large for me, there are so many goals, subgoals, enemies, etc. it has taken me awhile to get my head around what I am supposed to accomplish. Basically, you are a member of a gang with 3 other rival gangs fighting over territory in the city of Stilwater. By accomplishing missions, you can take over new territory. Sounds simple at first, but you are also trying to get cash to buy bling to deck out your character to increase your respect bonus and earn respect by completing various activities like jacking cars, wreaking havoc, insurance fraud, hits, etc. It’s a total blast to work through some of these activities, and some of the most fun happens when you least expect it. When fighting a gang war with a rival gang, I stole a police car. After wrecking into another car, my car flipped in the air, 360 degrees!!, and landed on the roof of the building next to where the gang war was taking place, allowing me to pop off all the leaders and save the day from the safety of the rooftop. Good stuff.

I’ve got a set of about 12 people on a hit list and I’m having a heck of a time trying to find them in their areas. No markers or anything, you just drive around hoping you find bump into them. So far I’ve only found one of them. Also, it seems you can rack up respect fairly quickly with the drug runs, they seem to be the easier of the various activities. Decking out your character in various clothing, which increases respect multipliers, is also a hoot to do. I wish on MS Live I could show an image of my character so other playa’s could see all my bling!

Overall, I’m having an awesome time playing this game, it’s a very rich, full neighborhood with lots of fun interaction, good game balance to keep it interesting, without the frustratingly outdated look of the game engine of the GTA series when Vice City was released. Also, despite about 10 hours on the game, I’m still not sure about a few things related to getting respect and motiviation. For example, why should I buy cars? I’m not sure what this does, perhaps I’ll figure it out in the next few days.

So yes, mom, I spent my Christmas jacking cars, dealing drugs, robbing stores, and blowing up various gang members. Good times!