Onto the action!
The action begins with you being initiated into the Saint’s gang and gives you a chance to get to grips with hand to hand combat, a feature that you’ll rarely use due to how easy it is to earn money to buy weapons. Apart from the initial initiation ceremony, we’ve played through 48% of the game without ever using hand to hand combat. The shooting mechanic works in a similar way to the Max Payne games. From a third person perspective you’ll control a small crosshair which is controlled via the right thumbstick, whilst the left thumbstick controls your movement. Unlike GTA, where you’ll often run around like a lunatic in an attempt to dispose of other gang members and police, Saints Row is far more skilled based when it comes down to armed combat. Due to the smoothness of the combat system we were able to pop our heads around corners and duck behind cars for cover as we bobbed up and down to take out the enemy. Firing any weapon is executed with a free-aim mode so you’ll need to switch between opponents manually, but it’s an enjoyable experience, and once you’ve become accustom to aiming, gives you complete control over a situation. Shooting from your car isn’t so easy, unless you have a rocket launcher that is! It’s well worth an investment and we found it to be the best weapon to use to take out pursuing officers or gangs due to its range. Even if you slightly miss your target you’ll probably cause enough damage to slow them down or cause a multi-car pile up.
Click for larger imageThe A.I. of the rival gangs, police, pimps and general NPCs can be extremely poor. We’ve seen gang members running into walls and getting stuck, police men heading towards us and then running around in circles trying to swipe us with their baton but totally missing us, and standing face to face with an armed enemy without them shooting. When the A.I. works well it is superb, they’ll duck and dive out of the way of your bullets and move into more strategic positions. 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. The action often gets totally out of hand, with police officers and rival gangs taking over the whole street whilst pedestrians scatter in all directions. While there are some great frantic moments and superb shoot-outs, the A.I. is inconsistent throughout and when it's good it's very very good, but when it's bad it's horrid.
Click for larger imageThe problems don’t stop there. On numerous occasions our character has jogged on the spot outside of a car door rather than hi-jacking it as ordered. This has also happened when we’ve tried to pick up passengers; frustrating considering it should be one of the more simpler actions in the game.