The character creation is immense with the abilities to change several features. You can choose the ethnicity, height, weight, hair style, hair color, eyebrow height, jaw depth, and many other options to create your own one-of-a-kind character. Throughout playing the game, you can alter your appearance with piercings, clothes, and even tattoos. The more thug you look, the more respect you’ll earn within the game.
Volition didn’t follow the trend and use the Unreal 3 engine like every other Xbox 360 game seems to be using. They have their own engine and have incorporated the Havok physics engine heavily into Saints Row – just wait until you crash into another car and see the civilian flying out their windshield. I find it odd that the commercials for Saints Row are low quality; make no mistake about it, the graphics aren’t as bad as the commercials. The environments are detailed and Volition put a lot of time into making Stilwater a living and breathing city.
There are however a few minor problems with the graphics department of Saints Row – starting with the framerates. When a lot of action occurs – cars exploding, rockets being fired, helicopters crashing, grenades flying and so much more – the framerates take a hit. Volition did fulfill one their promises to their core audience, no load times. I am sure many will fall in love with the theory of no load times in video games. Sadly, too many other games still have long load times on the Xbox 360 (I’m looking at you Dead Rising).
The audio for Saints Row is near perfection. Volition has copied GTA’s style of radio stations with covering different genres to listen to. If you want to use your own music, be prepared to ‘pay’ for it within the game. That’s right; you’ll have to buy your own music from spots in Stilwater to hear your music on the radio. I am sure complaints will be heard from custom soundtrack users. The soundtrack Volition did provide is diverse with indy bands like The Fall of Troy and Motion City Soundtrack to rap stars like Lloyd Banks and Twista. Other then that, the voice acting is top notch so there isn’t too many complaints. Volition has arranged a superb cast to voice their characters. Michael Clark Duncan, Keith David and David Carradine all lend their voices that everyone should recognize.
The controls of Saints Row are a mixture between SOCOM and Ghost Recon 2. It is closely related to those third-person shooters rather than other action games, which is a compliment to Volition. The controls work well within the environment. The only problem I had with the controls occurred when I originally started to play the game – it felt very loose. After you put a few hours in, you should be able to pick it up and slaughter enemies.
