Saints Row then.....

[Mercury]

is anyone up for starting up a rllmuk gang for some online fun?

Yep.

[The Bag]

Okay, so it is probably me being thick but how do you find the people you need to kill in the Hitman missions? Is it just a case of searching their area until you spot them as I can't see any marker on the map.

If you've got them added to the hud they'll come up as a crosshair on the hud, like the icon denoting the location where you get the mission.

I've been playing this for 11 hours so far and it's great fun, I've been doing a lot of the side missions - hitman, insurance fraud, chop shop. I like the little details like taking hostages when carjacking a vehicle, holding up shops, breaking into safes.

The controls are a step above GTAs especially for combat.

I love the fact that once you've added a car to you garage you can always get it back even if you destroy it - so you don't spend money on upgrading a car and then just lose it, like GTA.

The mp3 player, with the playlists from your pc...

it's like they've taken aboard all the criticisms of GTA and fixed them, here's hoping Rockstar do the same.

[Rowan Morrison]

Yeah, had my doubts but I'm enjoying this a lot. It feels like a guilty pleasure, as has been said, because it's one almighty rip-off. And while it doesn't have GTA's style and charm, it's not as bad as its marketing would have you believe - it's quite witty in places and, like GTA, it doesn't take itself too seriously once you're playing it rather than reading press releases or looking at ads.

It definitely improves on GTA in a number of areas, which have been noted already by several people. One general point in its favour is that in several hours of play I've never once felt frustrated by the game or felt as thought it was working against me - almost everything's well planned and executed. The biggest problem I have with it, I'd say, is that it doesn't auto-save - and you have to select a storage device to load from even if you only have one device available, just like Hitman, which is a minor drag. I can see myself forgetting to save before turning off one day, and that'll be annoying. Oh, and there's no option to map the accelerator and brake to the triggers, which is a drag. You can map them to the left (steering) stick, but that's nowhere near the same. The accelerator does appear to be analogue, but not to the extent that you can cruise around calmly.

The city isn't especially memorable, which is a let-down; put me anywhere in any of GTA's environments and I'll know where I am straight away, and how to get to where I want to go. In Saint's Row the navigation device is a blessing because I don't think the city's well enough designed to cope without it. But it does look very nice in places, and it's not as dull as the demo might have suggested, and there are opportunities for jumps and stunts.

The animation deserves special praise, because it's often excellent - the dancers in the various clubs are great fun to watch, and there's a lot of variety in general among the incidental characters.

The gameplay is nice and varied - the side missions are enjoyable, maybe more so than GTA's - I miss Vigilante, but the insurance game makes up for that. Mayhem is good fun, too - there are no real duffers. The main missions offer a reasonable mix of activities, and there's plenty of scope for messing around - though GTA:SA trumps it in the sandbox department easily thanks to the likes of tow trucks, go-karts, bikes, copters and so on. But Saint's Row has Havok physics on its side here, which helps - you can generate some fantastic DIY set pieces.

Haven't tried the multiplayer yet - we should get some rllmuk action going. But I'm pleased with the game so far - it's really better than I thought it would be, and I don't think my copy's going to get eaten by Dead Rising after all.

[angel]

so much love for it. must be better than the demo. might invest after all.

[Dandy_Sephy]

I'm not a fan of the 3d gta's at all, should I give this a try regardless?

[Rowan Morrison]

so much love for it. must be better than the demo. might invest after all.

If you like GTA, I can't see why you wouldn't enjoy it. You don't get as much scope for sandboxing, but the engine behaves better (not perfectly, but it hasn't annoyed me yet) and the combat is actually fun - in GTA I'd often sigh when a gun battle broke out (less so in SA, admittedly) but in Saint's Row I dive straight in wth gusto. If there are some of my gang members and / or police around, so much the better.

Early on there's a mission where you get involved in a turf war at the docks; I drove in there with my AI shotgun rider, Mudhoney came on the radio, and I grinned all through the ensuing massacre.

Top marks for the easy listening station and the inclusion of The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag, too - nothing beats making a getaway with Scott Joplin blaring out.

[Dimahoo]

Theres a patch update for this apparently.

[angel]

n1 rowan. il see if somewhere'l match tesco for 39.99

[Rowan Morrison]

Theres a patch update for this apparently.

Probabaly multiplayer stuff. In single player I've had a couple of bugs, but not game-breakers. The first crib mission (from the demo) I parked my car too close to the door, and since it's Y to use doors and enter cars, I couldn't open the door. I got in the car to move it back, but for some reason the game decided I'd killed everyone inside, because it hopped straight to the leader's getaway attempt.

Later I was in a nightclub where half the clientele were buried to their waists in the floor, and that's it for bugs so far. Not perfect, but the kind of little things you tend to get in 'broad' games like this.

The radio is broken, though - a number of times I've heard it repeat the same jingle or play a song twice in succession. The station's aren't GTA quality - way more chaff than wheat.

The Bag is right about the garage, it's a nice addition being able to mod a car and keep it without worrying. I gave up modding in San Andreas because the cars generally blew up in less time than it took to mod them. The modding is pretty good fun, it's nice to check out the different options for each car.

Great moment of serendipity last night - driving on the freeway in a big van, I tried to zip between two big rigs. I clipped one on the way in and it veered out and then in again, crushing me against the other one. I floored it and came out the other side as the doors and side panels of the can flew off straight at the camera, and ended up driving a skeleton van with a smoking engine. And then a short while later I watched John Candy and Steve Martin reenact my adventures in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Hooray!

[Bean Weevil Man]

Oh, and there's no option to map the accelerator and brake to the triggers, which is a drag.

Eh? After struggling through the demo that's the first thing I did on the retail version. Option 2 on the control setup IIRC.

[Rowan Morrison]

Eh? After struggling through the demo that's the first thing I did on the retail version. Option 2 on the control setup IIRC.

Son of a bang! All I saw was the yes/no switch in the options menu to switch acceleration to the stick (it actually activates the stick as well as the button, I tried it). Sounds like I have to look a little deeper - the fact that the stick option was in the main options menu made me assume the trigger scheme would be there if it existed.

Bonus, then - cheers.

[Trokie]

Hopefully the patch will fix the multiplayer issues, ie taking a long time to start a game, and finding players etc....

I did have a cracking game of Pimp my ride last night though. Takes a game to work out what you have to do but after that it is pretty easy to suss. Classic moment was I was driving up the ramp in a little car with my brother as a passenger, in the multi story car park to drop off a chain. When one of the opposing team start firing at me with a Ak47. A couple of evasive swerves and I floor the throttle and charge at him. He carried on firing, but I hit him flush in the centre of the bonnet. He went flying through the air and was heading for the back wall of the car park, we are 3 flights up here and he sailed through a window in the wall and plummeted to his death in full rag doll animation. We cracked up laughing, dropped off the chain and then flew off the ramp at the top of the car park. Great moment in multi player gaming for me. Really good fun. Hopefully this patch will improve the match making ?

As people have mentioned before, if you dont take your gaming too seriously you can and will have a lot of FUN with this game in both single and mulitplayers modes.

[twohe]

Blimey.

Haven't checked this thread for a while.

So it's out? And it's fun?

[Mercury]

Eh? After struggling through the demo that's the first thing I did on the retail version. Option 2 on the control setup IIRC.

Same here - first thing I changed and it makes a huge difference. I am actually looking forward to getting home and playing this tonight. Haven't thought that since I first started playing Oblivion.

[therev]

Blimey.

Haven't checked this thread for a while.

So it's out? And it's fun?

It's out and it's really, really good fun. The story and radio stations don't hit the mark, but just about everything else is very well done. In many ways it actually improves on GTA.

[Mercury]

It's out and it's really, really good fun. The story and radio stations don't hit the mark, but just about everything else is very well done. In many ways it actually improves on GTA.

Some of it is extremely well thought out - particularly the ability to replay missions and the storage of cars. I also discovered the Info tab last night that tells you the status of all the different activities. I agree about the Radio Stations though - not a patch on GTA.

[Rowan Morrison]

Same here - first thing I changed and it makes a huge difference.

I'll be trying it when I get home. How do you fire in that setup, with the A button? Is there a trade-off with the aiming becoming less intuitive? Being able to control speed and move the camera at the same time should be a definite bonus.

twohe: yeah, it's definitely fun. I think it's really been let down by the marketing department, to be honest. It's not the po-faced 50 Cent simulator it appeared to be. The ads for the phone version and ringtones in the Extras menu are a let down, though.

[Mercury]

I'll be trying it when I get home. How do you fire in that setup, with the A button? Is there a trade-off with the aiming becoming less intuitive? Being able to control speed and move the camera at the same time should be a definite bonus.

twohe: yeah, it's definitely fun. I think it's really been let down by the marketing department, to be honest. It's not the po-faced 50 Cent simulator it appeared to be. The ads for the phone version and ringtones in the Extras menu are a let down, though.

Yep, A becomes fire when you are driving and I haven't had a problem when aiming. The only issue is remembering to switch back to the right trigger when you get out of a car.

[Rowan Morrison]

Yep, A becomes fire when you are driving and I haven't had a problem when aiming. The only issue is remembering to switch back to the right trigger when you get out of a car.

I'm going to try it anyway, it sounds much better for driving as I like to have a look around as I go. I'm not sure about the shooting - sounds like you have to take your thumb off the aiming stick to fire, and when I'm driving and shooting I'm having to make constant adjustments to track my target. Still, the option's there so we've got the best of both worlds, I suppose.

[kerraig UK]

I'm liking the sound of this. Can someone please explain the multiplayer modes to me?

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

After spending the best part of this weekend on this game, I still love it. Even more I guess.

One thing I really like which hasn't been mentioned is the difficulty upscaling during the game. When we started, the police were a bunch of pussies. I was worried a bit, because one of the great things about the GTA series is the police which are pretty much willing to kill themselves in order to get you. When starting out in Saints Row the police (or other gangs) were so easy to evade and kill that there wasn't that much of a challenge.

However, once your ranking/respect increases and you get more stuff done, I've noticed a severe increase in police brutality. I found myself being cornered off by 3 kamikaze police cars while others were shooting my tyres and a lineup of SWAT trucks was blocking the road off. Now that's more like it! Also, in the levels were you have to kill gang leuitenants I like it that more and more mobsters arrive by car. In GTA you just had to kill all the baddies, here you have to make sure you hit your target and get out because the reinforcements will just come and come. This works very well.

Compared to San Andreas, I'd say this game lacks in atmosphere and rides only. I wish there were motorbikes and maybe some planes or choppers. Something for DLC maybe? It also lacks the versatile landscape of San Andreas, where it was so cool to just go out and drive through the country. On the other hand is the more limited scope not too bad, as faffing around in San Andreas also meant many tedious miles through uninhabited terrain.

On the whole the playability is about perfect. The controls work really, really well. On foot combat is fine, shooting is great. The car handling is nice and I like it that the cars are a lot meatier and don't break down so quickly. It has the same room for experimentation and messing around as any GTA game. The customizable character and cars are cool too. Missions seem varied enough and the oddjobs are fun for a change.

All in all I'm very impressed, especially as I expected this to be a me-too GTA wannabe. This is a wannabe so close it could be considered GTA's long lost twin brother who also turns out to be a very nice chap. I hope Rockstar takes not of this game to steal back all the stuff that was improved over GTA for GTA4.

[Boozy The Clown]

Gangsta Brawl/ Team Gangsta Brawl - Deathmatch You can choose a total of 8 weapons for the levels. There are 3 levels for this mode.

The Naruto Dome - A destruction derby style arena with some 1 player vehicles.

The Corner - 4 buildings with interconnecting walkways.

Hotwired - A multi storey car park with 4 or 5 different cars available.

Big Ass Chains/Team Big Ass Chains - Collect chains from people when they die. You have to take the chains to a randomly placed spot which changes every couple of minutes to score. The same 3 levels as deathmatch mode.

Protect the pimp - Escort The Pimp out of a hotel building. Team based bodyguard style game. The pimp has no weapons but is armed with the mighty pimp slap, a one hit kill backhand slap.

Blinged Out ride - Team based game where you have to collect chians that appear throughout the map. You have to take the chains to a point on the map to get money. Once you have enough money you need to drive an old beat up car to a garage to level it up. Each team can blow up the others cars. The levels are symmetrical with the goals in the centre of the map. A twisted type of capture the flag game with great depth and possibilities of epic games. I've only seen one level of the 2 available but it was based around the multi storey car park deathmatch level but a bit larger.

Co-Op - 2 types of game and map available. A simple get to the finish and kill all the cops airport terminal level, and another where you have to get 2 boxes from one end of a street based level to the other. You can only put the boxes down for 30 seconds or they return to the start. Enemies can appear from all angles and you start with a bunch of guns and bombs.

Unfortuneately the setting up of multi player private games can be very convoluted at first and the manual offers no help at all in doing this. I've also noticed that it played fine with 3 people but 4 or more was a laggy mess. hopefully the patch has fixed this. You can earn money in some of the games to buy clothes, jewelery etc.. and this is entirely seperate from your single player wardrobe. In the lobby you can run around killing each other or making "suck it" style gestures ala DOA4.

All in all pretty good fun but I think it would need at least 8 - 12 players in most modes to be played properly.

[Yewone]

Add me to the list of suitably impressed people.

Its much better than expected. As has already been mentioned the onfoot combat is leaps and bounds ahead of GTA. Especailly the way the gunplay can flow effortlessly from inside buildings, out onto the street.

The 3rd person freeaim works perfectly too. There's just no better feeling than seeing a rival gangs car hurtling straight for you, and instead of having to run you can stand your ground, offload a few clips into the windscreen. Then see the car slowly roll to a stop with the driver slumped over the steering wheel.

The garage is a godsend. It actually means I can now experiment with the modded cars Ive spent my hard earned cash on.. without fear of it blowing up and being lost forever.

The level of customisation is just nuts! (right down to choosing which finger to put a ring on!)

Some nice side-mission activities - especially Hitman, Insurance Fraud, and Chopshop (or import/export as its known in GTA) with the added difference of having to provide cars with specific modifications.

Yes it lacks GTA's atmosphere and vehicle variety, but as clones go its a damn good effort. And one that thanks to the improved controls and graphics engine may actually please a lot of the GTA haters.

[Qazimod]

Is it worth the £49.99 tag I saw slapped onto boxes in Game? I thought those kind of prices went out with the SNES era... I mean, I'm no 360 owner so it doesn't matter to me, and I'm no cheapskate - I'd probably pay the same amount if it was something that I thought would be worth it. But isn't this just taking advantage of the kidz and screwing over everyone else?

[rubberducker]

the handbrake makes driving faster a lot easier than GTA. which is a good thing.

[The Bag]

I noticed last night when I was shooting up cars, people & police for fun (I like how the game members pick up weapons, so all three of us had shotguns) the reactions of some of the pedestrians, most ran but I found one lying on the ground sobbing, later I saw one sitting rocking, someone else begging to be spared. I must admit I found this shocking and kinda disturbing when I first encountered it, but it really adds to the level of 'realism' in the world and moves the npcs in this another step beyond the moving targets in the GTA games.

[Rowan Morrison]

Is it worth the £49.99 tag I saw slapped onto boxes in Game? I thought those kind of prices went out with the SNES era... I mean, I'm no 360 owner so it doesn't matter to me, and I'm no cheapskate - I'd probably pay the same amount if it was something that I thought would be worth it. But isn't this just taking advantage of the kidz and screwing over everyone else?

It's the standard RRP for most 360 games. Knock a tenner off if you buy it online, more if you import. It's no more expensive than Prey, NNN, Oblivion etc. Doesn't mean it's not expensive, but it's nothing to do with this particular title.

the handbrake makes driving faster a lot easier than GTA. which is a good thing.

The driving is easy, but I do miss good old wide handbrake slides - it's a little tighter than I'd like it to be, but you still do occasionally feel like you're only just in control, which is how it should be.

I also miss not being rewarded for huge jumps. I demand recognition!

[therev]

And I can just mention the homie system? Taking guys along with you on missions is great fun and actually useful.

Though standing in the middle of the road waiting for a vehicle with more than two doors to drive past so you can fit everyone inside can take a while sometimes.

[hoot]

Wish I'd ordered this off Play-Asia while they still had it at the cheap price, only decided against it as there's so much other stuff coming out. Quite amazing how this thread has turned around.

[Yewone]

I spotted a post earlier that mentioned targets being highlighted on your map during the Hitman activity...I'm sure this didnt happen for me.

I had to search a neighbourhood from top to bottom looking for "Marty" (an old guy in a red jumper).

Four dead O.A.P's wearing red jumpers later I found him!

Thing is I actually prefered the lack of prompts. It felt much more realistic, by just being given a photo and a vague location as to where he will be. Another nice touch is that you have to take them out with specific weapons. (a baseball bat to the back of the head in Martys case)