Overview

For the umpteenth time, a young scoundrel freshly recruited by one of the gangs of the city of Stillwater, the goal being to undermine rival gangs and recover their territories. The result is an atmosphere necessarily very focused on the unhealthy world of the street, without second-degree humor as we can know from the GTA series. The character dialogues are very bland, but fortunately, some rather spectacular cutscenes put the player back in the mood.

Gameplay

A respect gauge symbolizes the hero's influence and allows him to access the many missions when the latter is full. For this, quite varied activities must be carried out: shopping, car theft, escort, dealer protection, etc., the two most original being insurance fraud and chaos. It's delightful to abuse grenades, rocket launchers and shotguns to cause absolute carnage while taking advantage of the physics engine and very classy explosion effects. Once the respect gauge is sufficiently filled, an alert indicates that one can do one of the missions now accessible. These are unfortunately not very varied, focusing mainly on gun-fight. Boredom does not take the lead, however: the gameplay and the pace of play serve as good support. Indeed during the phases on foot, the aim remains free, with relatively good handling avoiding too much imprecision. This same can be said for when driving vehicles - they handle very well all things considered.

As the mission's progress, we unlock new hideouts, new crates in our garage and we have the possibility of being accompanied by members of the gang. Also, when you lose a mission, you resume it directly at the beginning with its initial ammunition, without any need to go back to make your "purchases" to fill your inventory. Finally, when you die or get arrested, weapons and the like do not disappear since only a percentage of your money will be taken. All these elements underline the developers' desire not to frustrate gamers. The difficulty of the game is thus reduced to such an extent that some missions seem good too simple.

Graphics

For Saints Row, the graphical expectations couldn't have been more met with the game displaying a fairly substantial depth of field with outstanding graphics and special effects (lights, shadows, particles and explosions) very successful. The game even becomes surprisingly beautiful when we evolve in stormy or foggy weather while at night, the observation is less optimistic with colors a little too bland. One minor flaw is the drop in frame-rate when displaying too many vehicles or explosions, but this is a small blip as many other aspects of the game is very fluid.

Conclusion

Saints Row remains an excellent game for all fans of the genre, and there is no doubt that its charm and personality aid it. Some may say that it lacks originality, but I still feel it has the merit of an excellent game while exploiting the technical capacities of the Xbox 360.