My Bits and Bytes: Saints Row in top marks for Xbox 360

Saints Row for the Xbox 360
I came into this game thinking that it would be nothing more than a Grand Theft Auto clone with nothing new to offer. With that said, I know it's been out for a while but my buddy who bought it dropped it off this week and said, “play the damn thing because it's fun.” Skeptically, I put the game into my 360 and started. It's now been over a week and I'm addicted to it.

I have to say right off the bat that this game isn't any leaps or bounds over Grand Theft Auto. The game play is basically the same and the graphics, while nice looking, still have that cartoon feel (WITH NO BLOOD).

You can't take control of any planes or boats in this game, either. Even the scale of grandness of this game is small compared to “San Andreas.” With all that being said, that's most of the bitchin' I'm going to do about this game. The positives start with the mature content and voice acting. If the ESRB was pissed off about the “Hot Coffee” mod, I don't know why they let this one go with the vulgarity and sexual innuendos. This game is WAY worse (I should say better, in a mature gamer sense) than GTA but it got past the committee.

The gun play is way better than GTA. To select a weapon, all you have to do is hold down the B button and use the right analogue stick to select. From there, the crosshair appears and you can have your fun taking people out.

You have to be careful with the shotgun, though, because even though in real life these gangsters would be smoked if you aimed to their right or left, you have to aim right at them to take them out, which causes some frustration during some of the missions where you have to kill hordes of gang members.

In this small space, I have to give props to the character customization, diversity of missions, fun side missions like rescuing hookers and killing pimps, holding drivers hostage and my favourite, the insurance fraud missions where you have to lunge in front of cars to make lots and lots of money due to your injuries.

Xbox Live comes into play by taking all the gang violence online with ranked matches and an abundance of achievements to unlock. Even if you've found and done everything in the single player mode, multiplayer, while not as robust as some games, will have you coming back for more.

I have to say that I am surprised that I enjoyed this GTA clone so much and that I will be continuing to play it until I get my hands on the new Splinter Cell that came out this week. You GTA fans will love this game, too and it will definitely hold you over until GTA 4 comes out next year. Let's hope they get realistic graphics and keep the blood in. Yes, I'm sadistic but it's ok.