You can also see the stark differences in the landscape and indoor/outdoor environments, slummy areas will actually look slummy, while affluent areas will look affluent. There are also distinctions in terms of the actual in game time of day. For example, walking around the streets in the middle of the afternoon you might not see a lot of action, but come back in the dead of the night, and a lot more muggings and other criminal behaviour will be going on
Another nice feature of Saints Row is the extremely easy to use navigation system. Many missions and activities will require you to drive places, and in a city as big as Stilwater, you might get a little lost. So THQ have implemented a very well designed position indicator that generally works as good, if not better, as any I have seen in comparable games. It certainly makes completing missions a lot less frustrating – there’s nothing worse than having done all the hard work to complete something, only to fail because you couldn’t find where to head back to.
While we obviously didn’t get to play through the whole game, the missions were varied and always interesting. They also related nicely to what is quite a deep storyline. For every mission completed you gain notoriety and money, which in turn increases your gang turf and unlocks new city areas in which new activities and missions will take place.
Saints Row is definitely a title to put on your watch list. The levels of customization, interactivity, and generally things to do within the city was great to see. What’s more, there is also an online multiplayer mode, and while it was not available to us, it will be very interesting to see what that is like. No doubt it will add a lot more value into what already looks to be a great title.
