The Xbox Live features of Saints Row have to be the biggest drawing point for online gamers. I have visited many forum boards and there are online gangs sprouting up everywhere in support of Saints Row. If you aren’t an online gamer, there’s at least 20-25 hours of gameplay to play through, but the real value is the online portion. Online, 12 players are capable of fragging each other with no end in sight of ever slowing down. There are plethora of modes featured for Saints Row including ‘Protect Tha Pimp’, ‘Big-Ass Chains’, ‘Blinged out Ride’, and of course the standard and team deathmatch. The online modes are creative and put to use a lot of imagination.
The ‘Big-Ass Chains’ mode asks the players to take the chains of your fallen opponents, and drop-off them off at particular waypoints on the map. When you kill your enemies, they’ll drop their chains and you are forced to pick them up to win this mode; it’s as simple as that. ‘Protect Tha Pimp’ is reminiscent of Counter-Strike – one team is made up of hitmen while the others are the protectors of the pimp. The goal of the mode, to kill or protect the pimp by all means necessary. The pimp also comes equipped with the ability to ‘pimp slap’ his enemies for a one hit kill. There’s also an online co-operative mode but it isn’t a true online co-op like some may have hoped. It doesn’t include the full single-player campaign like many of us would have loved to see.
Saints Row lived up to all the hype it was receiving for the past year and a half or more. Volition put forth a game worthy of challenging GTA of its crown for king of the sandbox. With a sequel, I am sure Volition and THQ will be able to do even more with the title and expand on what they have already created. This is the fall title you need to pick up before you become heavily addicted to Gears of War.
