Saints Row 1 + 2

Okay so we all know Saint's Row, the off the wall series that makes GTA look like a business conference and yes the comparison to GTA is accurate.

To explain the main style of gameplay in these games, it's well GTA, with some additions like being able to call up homies to fight alongside you. Of course if we're going to analyse this series, we'd better start with the first one. Now the first one you play has the you play The Playa who joins the Saint's working under Julius and his 3 lieutenants, Dex, Troy and the legend himself Johnny Gat.

Now in this game you take on 3 gangs, one under each lieutenant, the Vice Kings, the West Side Rollerz and the Los Carnales, so basically a gang of thugs run by a record company, street racing thugs and a mexican mafia gang.

Of course the Vice Kings are the most important here, why, you ask, well the leader Benjamin King is voiced by Benjamin Clarke Duncan who is one of the 2 most high profiled voice artists here.

And I'll say this, he's not the reason that Daredevil movie sucked coughbenaffleckcough. But Tanya where have I heard that voice before.

Yeah that's totally Mila Kunis as Tanya, but I jest this game has a very large celebrity cast. Let me IMDB this shit.

Hold on, that isn't?

Clancy Brown, oh shit,no wonder the city's in such shit. It's mayor is the fucking Kurgan.

Another thing that separates this game from GTA is the activities which in this game, they're all straight, we have chop shop where you steal a car to take to a garage, Demolition Derby, drug trafficking, escort driving where you gotta dodge the paparazzi while driving your client and the whore in the back safely around, hijacking cars, acting as a hitman, racing, wrecking shit for cash in mayhem, snatching hos from pimps, robbing safes from stores, spray painting over tags, collecting CDs and getting hit by cars for Insurance Fraud money.

So what's bad about it, you're wondering, well how about EVERY GANG MEMBER SEEMS TO HAVE A ONE HIT KILL ROCKET LAUNCHER IN EVERY GODDAMN MISSION! I'm serious people and beyond that well it's a GTA clone and not a very good one. People call Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations, diamonds in a sea of shit, well Saint's Row 1 is the shitpickle in the sea of diamonds. Saints Row 2 on the other hands...

At the end of Saint's Row the Playa is blown up with the Mayor and several years have passed and the playa wakes up to a character design screen where it has more options than the first one, well originally your race was chooseable but not your gender, you had to be a man, but in 2 you could be a woman, so what does that mean, the playa was in a prison hospital for years to wake up and find someone completely reconstructed his body through plastic surgery, I mean the doc who would do that more than likely did some fucked up things to your comma patient playa. Anyway you and a guy named Carlos escape from prison, rescue Johnny Gat from a courtroom and get 2 more lieutenants in the form of Shaundi and Pierce.

Another change is that Saint's Row itself has changed from a run down area of the city into Ultor, the giant mega corporations' shiny metropolis and so the Saint's must begin again from a sunken hotel underneath a mission house and this time, there are 3 new gangs to deal with.

These gangs are the japanese Ronin who use samurai swords among the standard gang armoury, the Sons of Samedi, a drug cartel run by jamaicans including a witch doctor with a voodoo doll and the Brotherhood, a gang of monster truckers lead by... Worf from Star Trek.

But the cast again is quite good, Keith David returns as Julius and Daniel Day Kim returns as Johnny Gat, Phil Lemarr from Futurama as the voodoo witch doctor, Neil Patrick Harris as Veteran Child and Eliza Dushku as Shaundi, Eliza Dushku as in Faith from Buffy.

Anyway Pierce helps you out with the Ronin and comes up with all the good ideas, but gets them stolen by Shaundi and when Shaundi comes up with an idea, she comes up with one so bad it actually almost breaks the game.

Shaundi and you have to break into a police station to hack their camera except the cops all show up and you have to escape in a helicopter dodging gunfire and HEAT SEEKING MISSILES!! WTF! This mission was so nigh on impossible that you have to cheat to win, by stealing one of the police's armoured vehicles and pegging it until you see another one and constantly swap between them. This mission made me hate this character for a while, it's that bad.

New Activities crop up in this game too, Trail Blazing where you drive on a flaming quad bike through a timed course wrecking things for more time,

Fight club where you fight in unarmed combat in a ring, Heli Assault, Guardian Angel where you protect someone from a helicopter with a sniper rifle, and Septic Avenger where you spray shit all over town for points, I kid you not.

Oh and I forgot Fuzz where you purposely be an abusive cop to be caught on camera to embarrass the police force and at one point break up a fight between ninjas and pirates.

Yeah there was wacky shit way before Saint's Row 3. But of course, Next Time, we move onto Saint's Row the Third where we find a new city, Shaundi has a new attitude and the madness increases tenfold, I'm The Joel MH signing off.

And oh yeah say hello to my new Pancham sidekick Jabels and yes it is a Jack Black reference.