Team up with your homie and crack some skulls
Customisation begins right from the outset when you wake up in hospital and you’re tasked with creating your character from scratch. Tweaking everything from his jaw-line right through to eye colour, you can adapt his look a thousand different ways. However, what makes it more interesting is that you can set the likes of personality traits, facial expressions (try insane!), the way he walks (pimp lean) and his voice.If you can forgive the worst “mockey” accent that you’ll ever hear in a videogame (if you're English and you select this voice, you'll be irritated throughout), you'll see that the customisation options do add a personal touch to proceedings, whilst seeing your created character appear in each cut-scene is an added bonus.
Aside from pimping your character, customisation also plays a part in the game. You can visit shops to dress your player, or get a tattoo, gaining style points and respect on the streets, or you can even furnish and customize your crib by taking it from being a dingy hovel to a pimped out luxury apartment complete with pool table and strippers. You can even choose gang signs and specific clothing for your crew so that they’re recognizable as well as stylish on the streets. And you’ll no doubt want to look your best whilst you’re beating the living crap out of neighbouring gangs!
Gang fighting and combat play a big part in Saints Row 2 and thankfully some of the AI issues that plagued the original game have been addressed.
There are still a few examples of erratic AI, but the majority of the problems have been ironed out and, in general, pedestrians, gangsters and police react to the action around them, diving for cover during gunfights, taking up strategic positions or chasing you through the streets. Attack another gang’s area and they’ll descend on you faster than you can say ‘mutha f**ka’, hurtling around the corners with armed hoodlums leaning out the car windows trying to gun you down.
Click for larger imageContinued overleaf...