The Rest -
Like many games of this ilk, you begin as a low level hoodlum in a gang called the Third Street Saints. While the TSS gang is not very big or powerful in the city of Stillwater, they hold an important piece of territory that all the other gangs in the city would like to get their hands on. Instead being a sitting duck and waiting to be taken out, the Saints decided to strike out first in order to control the whole city.

There are missions, territories to take over, respect to earn and yada yada yada. But the game becomes interesting when you factor in the wide openness of the city and the smart enemy A.I. that will only attack you if you have attacked members of their gang. The popos will also leave you be unless you start shooting officers. So far there seem to be only two ways of getting out of the heat once you get too much attention from either the cops or rival gangs - sitting in the safe spot until the meter goes down or getting a plastic surgery. Of course plastic surgery costs lots of cash so you’ll need to beat pedestrians over the head and snatch their money or break into stores and rob the place before God gets the news. There will be extensive character customization, not only like that of San Andreas but also physical and facial. The game’s soundtrack will be centered around the car stereo like in GTA games but it will go a step further to give you a MP3 player for tunes on the go.

If this is sounding a bit too much like a GTA game that’s because it is. But the challenge to Volition will be to make it unique enough to make veterans of San Andreas want to pick up a Xbox 360 joystick to give it a go. Considering the fact that Saint’s Row will be a launch title it will definitely have the visibility it needs to succeed. Now all it needs is for the game play to distinguish itself enough from the juggernaut of free-wheeling gangland video games.

We’ll keep you posted when more news becomes available about Saint’s Row.

Posted: May 25, 2004