First of all, this is article for those over 18 years of age. If you do not have the necessary age or you have problems finding a clitoris with a map, a compass and a GPS, then you should skip to the 'One last thing, m'am' section of this article, that way, you won’t be forced to suffer words that describe images which are more than suggestive. OK. Let’s get the comparison with Grand Theft Auto out of the way now. Yes, it’s an open world game, sandbox, filled with cars and mafia. But Saints Row 2 stands apart from all of that with a new subject and a different approach on how the action takes place. There is no need to make the mistake of comparing them, because if you separate the premise from the game, it’s easy to see that these games are like two parallel lines. To say that Saints Row 2 is a GTA clone would be like saying that if you put a cow into a pool, then it’s a fish.

A long, long time ago

In 2006, the series debuted with the first Saints Row. And of course, it was catalogued as a GTA clone and neglected by the majority. To be honest, the first game had more flaws than the sequel (on the console, but I’ll get back to that later), but still, it brought something more than GTA IV, Mafia or The Godfather to the scene, and that is the vulgar, funny and violent humour . Yes, it was a product that offered plenty of fun: the story was funny, the possibilities in which you could destroy the city were endless, and, something that Saints Row could boast way before GTA: it had multiplayer. Oh the pleasure  of being in a sandbox game, to do whatever crosses your mind, with three other buddies around town, or why not, put a bullet in the back of each others' heads.

On the road!

In the first few moments after clicking the game executable, you realise this is not just any game. The character creation screen offers an astounding number of options of customisation. From the stature, make-up, walk or even accent. Yes, accent. Just imagine how good the Hollywood action movie one-liners sound in a cockney British accent with a Jason Statham feel, rather than your typical New York gangster accent. Anyway, you’re in the game, more exactly the tutorial, which is something that should not be skipped. You’re in a prison infirmary, waking up from a 4-year-long coma. You were once one of the greatest gangsters, leader of the Saints gang, which occupied all the streets of the fictional city of Stilwater. After an accident, you became a vegetable, and got caught by the authorities. But like Murphy observes the laws of the universe, you suddenly wake up from the coma, and with the help of another convict named Carlos, who remembers your long-gone glory, you bust out of prison. And so, in no more than five minutes you see yourself stealing cars and wreaking havoc.

After you reach the shores of the city, your first task is to buy yourself some clothes, and meditate about your future. You find out that the Saints gang was dissolved right after your imprisonment, and the city is now run by three rival gangs, all being manipulated by the fraudulent company, Ulthor, a real mogul of the Stilwater city. From this moment forward, the city is your playground. Now, before I get into details,  I want to talk about the sandbox feature of GTA IV and Saints Row 2. As you know, GTA IV has may hours of gameplay, and the more you advanced in the game the more you earn: more money, better guns, better cars, and it takes a while to get every awesome thing in the game, leaving the real sandbox part somewhere in the end of the game. Well, in Saints Row 2, in only five minutes from the end of the tutorial, you can do secondary missions that throw you right into the action with bazookas and helicopters. Saints Row 2 is an honest game, it knows what it wants.

Sweet Water?

The main missions that make up the story must be unlocked with style points. How do you earn style points? By completing mini-games. And that’s how chaos is made. There are a lot of mini-games scattered around town, which give you an amount of style points depending on the level of the game. I wouldn’t know to tell you about all of them, as I only completed the game with only some of them fully 'upgraded'. And so the game gives you the liberty to build your own adventure in Stilwater, in your own 'style'. For example, mayhem is a simple mini-game: you have guns with infinite ammunition and your sole purpose is to destroy as many cars, buildings and people as you can in a given time. There is also the septic avenger mini-game. Yes, you get to drive around the town in a big car with a tank filled with human faeces, and the point of this game is to spread as much foul faeces on the citizens of Stilwater as you can. I can’t remember the name of the other mini-games, but I can give you some clues. In a setting, I was dressed as a cop, with a camera guy next to me, for a (fake) reality show where I had to show how brutal justice can be. In another scenario, I had to kidnap whores from the streets and take them to a lousy pimp. OK, after that, I had to drive a flaming ATV, and do as much damage as I can to the city. I even got the job to please women, by the normal way of the phallus, or by cunnilingus. What else do you need? Maybe if a sports car turns you on more than the soft labia of a hooker, you can join the local illegal races. Other peaceful ways to gain style points are buying properties, cars, clothes, houses, helicopters, motorcycles …and even boats. And now that our pockets are filled with points, let’s get to the action.

His purpose…is pain!

Now that we have plenty of style points, let’s get on with the story missions. But not in any way, in a smart way. Now that you own a street and a base, you can start gaining some respect. This hide-out is like reading the perverted thoughts of Will Wright. Really, it’s The Sims all the way. You can change clothes here, jewellery, spray cars or even change the way your followers dress or act. But enough about this. The city is divided into three zones, each one under  the protection of a rival gang. The first one is Sons Of Samedi, the main source of cocaine in town. The second gang, Ronin, is a group of Asians specialising in blackmail, and last, The Brotherhood. These guys are more like animals than people, with bodies covered in tattoos and huge cars to compensate their small genitalia. They act like primates that urinate testosterone. Anyway. Every completed main mission will earn you a neighbourhood, out of a total of 45, that will make money every day for you and unlock special abilities for your character. The missions are mostly diverse, sometimes exceedingly so. For example you can drive Jeeps into malls and run down people, blow up boats, planes and cars, purify an entire cultivation of marijuana and coca-leaf from a helicopter, or place bombs in hotels, from where you can get out alive by jumping from the roof with a parachute. I hope this convinced you…

My name is Chuck Norris?

The gameplay of Saints Row 2 isn’t very different from any other sandbox game, third person shooters or driving games. The car controls may seem hasty at first. I finally figured out where this type of driving can be found: there is a striking resemblance between the controls in SR2 and Midnight Club. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but playing an arcade-racing PC game might be weird at first. When walking around, we have the normal third person controls. I would like to point out that the players health regenerates way too fast, making the combat a walk in the park, the level of difficulty being too low. Maybe I shouldn’t complain too much about the next thing, but, an experienced player of action games, can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous accuracy of the character. You can easily head shot people from miles away. Still, it may be casual, but everything has a limit.

And so I fell in hell

Probably until this point the review seemed positive and friendly towards the product. Well, I hadn’t had the chance to stab it with Excalibur-dildos. Saints Row 2’s problems are technical ones. Of course, many comment on the fact that it’s a bloody and violent game. Or that there are too many udders and not enough bras, but hey, "de gustibus" as the latins said. As a critic, distancing myself from personal preferences, I realise that the game wants to be crass and callous, stepping on standards, political correctness and false democracy. Unfortunately I have to dismiss the game for being a bad PC-port. Firsly, the initial game, without a patch, had a fixed framerate, no matter how good your computer was. And so, in highly populated missions you’d be sure the framerate will drop below what you can call smooth. And then comes the false impression of the sandbox concept. And why do I say false? Such a game shouldn’t have a single loading time besides the initial one. Right? Right! If it is so, then why is it that when I pass from one zone to another, from a neighbourhood to another, while I'm driving fast, the frames per second suddenly drop? ...because of the background loading maybe? Shame on you Volition, shame!

Since we’re already swimming in the pool of shit, let’s talk about the shallow graphics. I can’t understand how the PC version can look so bad compared to the console one. And finally, let’s get to the more erotic part of this paragraph, the bugs. It’s like a termite invasion here! The visual bugs are more annoying than repeated kicks in the stomach. The game doesn’t even support high resolutions. I’m not joking, having a monitor big and flat like the Chinese wall will not help you at all. Want to change graphical settings? Wishful thinking. Only a few months after launch, Volition gave us a patch that somewhat fixed the resolutions, but not the widescreen problems. They fixed some bugs with the patches and they made the game quite playable, but I must say that Saints Row 2 must be one of the worst PC-ports in the last year.

The End

While finishing this tiresome test, I realise that I don’t know if I should recommend the game or not. Without being a fanboy I can sincerely say that the console versions of Saints Row 2 are worth over 90 points out of 100. You can give or take a couple of points, depending on the guy that's reviewing it. But the PC version, I can’t honestly recommend it to anyone. You still have a chance of enjoying the PC port, that is, if your computer is used to being abused by games like Gothic 3 and the like. Those who have the patience can try it with pleasure, and if they trust just a little in my personal opinion, they'd buy it in a second. It’s crass, brutal, vulgar and idiotic. But it’s fun, because it doesn’t take itself seriously.

One last thing m'am

It is hard to recommend this game. No doubt, it can offer endless hours of fun, but these hours come at a great price. The horrible port of the game can bring the calmest Zen masters to the pits of despair. Saints Row 2 does have its excellent parts, but you’d be better to try the PS3 or Xbox360 versions of the game. The PC version is just... crap.