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Saint’s Row
THQ
Rating: M
By Quibian Salazar-Moreno
Storyline: Saint’s Row for the Xbox 360 was announced over a year ago and was said to take the Grand Theft Auto-type
video game to the next level. After a few delays, Saint’s Row is finally here, but was it worth the wait?
You start the game a no-named gangster who gets caught the middle of a gang war. Luckily you’re saved by Julius, leader
of the 3rd Street Saint’s gang in the fictional town of Stilwater. You get jumped into the gang and start your missions
to start taking over rival gangs’ turf to finally control the whole city. Sound familiar? Yeah, Saint’s Row totally
bites the premise of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. From the dialogue to the radio station selections, there’s no way
that the developers can say that Saint’s Row is an original idea. But even though the game is a straight bite, Saint’s
Row does a lot of things better than Grand Theft Auto, like its excellent online modes plus the fun side missions and a pretty
good story.
Audio/Visual: When you first start rolling through the hood of Stilwater, which kind of looks like a mix between Los
Angeles and New York, you’ll notice how detailed and fleshed out the environments are. The buildings are in-depth with
character, the animations of the people are smooth and fluid and the cut scenes are a bit blocky but serve their purpose to
move the story along. The game, just like Grand Theft Auto, has 12 different radio stations you can choose while driving around
ranging from hip-hop to rock to classical. Artists like Ghostface Killah, Rhymefest and Xzibit recorded original songs just
for the game. The voice acting is well done featuring the talents of Keith David, Michael Rappaport, Tia Carrere, Michael
Clarke Duncan, Freddy Rodriguez and a host of others. The only downfall is that the dialogue is full of curse words that really
don’t flow with the conversation. It’s like every other word is an F-bomb, which gets annoying. Regular people
don’t talk like that.
Controls: The controls are a bit different than the GTA-style games. You use A to interact and open doors, B to select
the weapon you want to use or for you health, X is for jumping, Y is for car-jacking and the triggers is for attacking, shooting,
or swinging a bat. You use the left analog stick to move your guy and the right analog stick to control the camera or aim
when you’re blasting on fools. You use the directional pad to call ‘homies’ to come help you out during
a mission or to get hookers into your car. When driving a car, you use the A to accelerate and the X to brake and go backwards.
You can also use the analog sticks to aim and control the car but be careful because you can get mixed up using both the analog
sticks. Most of the time it’s best to stop the car then blast. By the way, the aiming system on Saint’s Row is
the best yet on this type of game.
Hotness: There are several different side missions that you have to complete to gain “Respect”. Once you
have enough “Respect”, you can do a mission that moves the story forward. Some of the side missions include stealing
hookers from pimps, protecting a drug dealer as he does his thing, and doing hits. One of the best side missions is insurance
fraud where you try your hardest to get hit by cars, get in car accidents and anything else that might get you paid. The more
witnesses the better.
Wackness: It is a copycat, but if you can get over it, you can have good time. Just don’t play it like a GTA
game.
Test Drive Rating: 4/5
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