Just another evening at the local Stillwater club.
The character customization in Saints Row 2 has moved up a notch, allowing you to make a character of pretty much any likeness you want, with plenty of tweaks and options to create your ultimate gangster. Those who were disappointed with not being able to play the game as a female will be happy to know that now you're character can be of the feminine persuasion, and can be edited in just as many ways as a male character. Not only can the characters look however you wish, but you can outfit your crib in plenty of different ways so that it suits your personal style. You can make it ultra-modern with a pool table and a plasma, or perhaps you'd rather something a bit more basic with an old-fashioned stereo and a worn interior. You can even have a stripper pole installed if you wish, complete with a scantily-clad pole dancer for your homies enjoyment. These extra options really make your crib feel like your crib, which is a definite plus for those who like to spend the extra time to make their game experience unique from everybody else.
Obviously to satisfy our journalistic blood-lust, we had access to an infinite amount of ammunition and a variety of weapons from the beginning, so the carnage came quite easily. The new weapon that we easily spent the most amount of time playing around with, and one that we can't wait to experiment some more with when we play the game again, are the satchel charges. Simply throw them and they'll attach themselves to buildings, cars or our personal favourite, civilians. If it lands on a person, they'll run around like a chicken with its head cut off in fear, unable to remove the satchel until you detonate the charge. It's entertaining and twisted in the best possible way, especially after attaching multiple satchels to the one person and then juggling them in the air with explosion after explosion. The satchels are also very effective when attached to the bonnet of the car you're driving, leaving you with a bomb that you can steer into whatever you want to go boom. Sure, it's a little kamikaze, but it's a lot of fun.
Stripper pole is this way, ma'am.
Along with some new weaponry at your disposal, there are also some new vehicles, too. Motorcycles are included this time around which is good to see, and we also had access to a helicopter, which was actually fairly easy to control after a slight learning curve, which makes it feel quite natural to use rather than frustrating. We got to experience a mission where you have to protect a driver from the other vehicles chasing after it by blowing them to smithereens from the copter. All vehicles can be shot from, too, which includes the ability to throw the aforementioned satchel charges out your car window for those who like their destruction to be a little more fast-paced.
Combat has also been given an upgrade of sorts, with combat actually flowing much better this time around. If you hit a chain of melee attacks, you can actually take your opposition down with a clothesline to the throat or even a glorious kick to the groin to add the exclamation point to your beat-downs; trust us when we say that never gets old. When aiming with a gun, the camera is positioned over the shoulder of your character, and people wandering the streets of Stillwater can also be grabbed and used as form of human shield which is handy to say the least. When you're done with them, you can literally throw them away. Or throw them from the top of a building. Or throw them through a shop window. Or into traffic. Or at other people. Any way you choose to throw them, it's hilarious, and the rag-doll physics make it all the more silly and enjoyable.
Now would be a good time to get out of the way.
The most important new feature of Saints Row 2 that we should probably mention is the fact that co-operative gameplay is a possibility. Not just a mission here or a mission there co-op, mind you, but online drop-in drop-out whenever you like co-op. In fact, the entire campaign can be played like this if you wish, which should greatly extend the lifespan of the game if you have some trigger-happy buddies. While other titles focus on a more realistic approach, Saints Row 2 never takes itself too seriously, with a great sense of humour and over-the-top gameplay antics that are unmatched; add in a few months until its August release date, and there is still plenty of time to polish what could certainly be the most entertaining guilty pleasure of 2008.
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