The UrbanWire

She hijacks a septic tanker, spews excrement onto public buildings, hurls herself into the path of oncoming traffic to claim insurance and streaks in a mall while assaulting random shoppers.

‘Crazy’ just doesn’t even begin to describe what this gangsta does for her daily kicks. The second in its series, Saints Row 2 was officially unveiled today at the Cruising With The Saints Launch Party onboard a luxury yacht. The gangster fantasy Xbox360 game title swaggered, taunted and guned its way through the night with hilarious side-missions, wacky get-ups and story-critical gang missions.

Starting off where you left off from the very end of the first game, where it’s not clear whether your character lived or died, you end up in a prison after going through massive reconstructive surgery. The perfect set-up for you to create an character that’s entirely new, and yes, you can choose to be a girl this time round if you wish, so that’s one for the girls (the original character in the prequel was male. Ah, the wonders of modern day technology and aesthetic surgery).

After breaking out from prison and hitting the streets, you hook it up with your old buddies - the 3rd Street Saints. Together, you try and reclaim the once iron-fisted control of the ‘hood and street by completing a host of gang missions for your faction. Pitted against you are your rivals, the Brotherhood, , Ronin, and the Sons of Samedi. To complete missions for the gang, however, you have to accumulate ‘respect’ - an expendable resource in the game that you spend to do gang missions to advance the game story.

This is earned through a series of side-missions which progress in difficulty level as you successfully complete each level You can also gain ‘style’ points by completing side missions. These points give a bonus to the amount of respect you can earn so the more ‘style’ you get, the more respect you will earn when you successfully complete a side mission.

Mischief And Mayhem

Apparently, gangstas impress and gain the ‘respect’ of their homies by doing the most insane acts known to mankind. These acts, include the aforementioned septic tanker missions where you are placed in the driver’s seat of one of these 4 wheeled bio-hazards and proceed to spray excrement on a mansion, a pool party, a construction site and various other edifices crammed together on the landscape. As you spray your odoriferous cargo over the buildings, you rack up a tab of state property damage. Hit the limit for that level and you successfully complete that difficulty level of the side question, earning you cash, style points and respect.

Other insane stunts that earn you respect are free-fall jumping where you leap off from a high altitude without a parachute and the UrbanWire’s favourite side-mission, Insurance Fraud. In Insurance Fraud, you throw yourself into the path of oncoming traffic and get slammed around to rack up insurance claims money, after hitting a certain number of cars, you get adrenalin which will allow you to fly around hitting more cars and crank up the moolah meter even faster. If you are playing in the co-op mode, you could have the buddy hurl you into the traffic. Genius.

Not Another GTA Rip-Off

“Our underlying design principle was, ‘if its fun, we’re going to put it in the game,’” says Jim Torbit, Associate Producer of Volition, Inc. on Saints Row 2, “we saw all these conventions and rules and people fooling around in the office on the game with things like jumping off from the highest cliff. And we said ‘hey let’s use it’. Its like a sandbox where you try stuff.”

Saints Row 2 will have to contend with the question that looms over the heads of gamers, ‘is this title going to be another Grand Theft Auto (GTA) spin-off?’

GTA is a great game, explains Jim, but over the years, these two titles (Saints Row and GTA) have gone their separate paths. GTA is gritty realism and unlike following the life story of Niko Bellic (the protagonist of the GTA IV game), where you watched someone else’s life unfold, Saints Row 2 allows you to play out your own life story.

Although completing side missions allows you to unlock more powerful, swankier vehicles, weapons and upgrades like unlimited ammo for certain weapons and a toughness upgrade for your character could sound very much like GTA to fans for the genre, keeping it personal and customisable is key.

”We’ve made customisation a huge feature of Saints Row 2”, says Jim, you could modify your crib, change your clothes, get new vehicles. Unlike the first Saints Row where you had to play through all the side missions, you won’t have to play through all the side missions in Saints Row 2 if you don’t want to or don’t like some side missions.

Saints Row 2 releases today for the Xbox360 and retails at S$89.90 for the Collectors Edition and
S$71.90 for the Standard Edition from Replay Interactive.

Screenshots taken from Saints Row 2 website.