Saints Row is the first time Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto has officially been challenged for its sandbox free roaming title. The game offers some things that GTA has yet to offer in their series of games. For instance the online play which is something that Xbox fans have wanted from the GTA series since they first started porting over the series to the original Xbox. Then it offers complete creation of your main character allowing you to either make yourself, some random person, another video game character such as Agent 47 from the Hitman series, or even George W. who can be put into a pimp suit.

The story comes off as a typical GTA storyline except for the true ending which is very shitty in my honest opinion. Single Player offers the free roam do what you want to do in a sense except you have to earn respect to unlock missions which can be earned through activities or other acts. Some of the activities it offers are Snatch, which is an activity where you steal ho's from pimps in rival gang territories. Chop Shop, where you find and steal cars on a certain list and return them to the Shop that gave you that list. Escort missions which is perhaps the funniest of all activities as you have to drive a hooker around while shes with a customer keeping away from news vans and significant others. And then theres the other activities like Hitman, Demolition Derby, Drug Trafficking, Racing, Insurance Fraud, & Loan Sharking. Also mix that in with the ability to mug random people or take hostages in vehicles that you hijack that have more than 1 person in the vehicle and the activities can be pretty fun until you reach a certain level of difficulty for them. Then theres the stores that you can buy from like Freckle Bitches, a fast food joint, Impressions Clothing, Branded Clothing, On The Rag Clothing, Sloppy Seconds Clothing, Rim Jobs Mechanics, Friendly Fire weapons, and of course your local liquor slash drug store which allows the purchases of bongs, forties, cognac, pipes, blunts and spliffs. Oh the joy this game offers.

In my playtime one thing i have noticed is that the game was supposed to offer Welfare and Food Stamps but i have yet to find them. Overall the free roam and doing all the missions the total game play time is still not very long. I've played for 31 hours as i type this review and have yet to finish all activities but i have taken over the town Stilwater where the gang war is and am 75% finished with the game. From the people that i know that have finished all activities they have spent roughly 40-45 hours playing the game. A little more info on the single player is that your character whether he's Hispanic, White, Black, or Asian will be forced to join the 3rd Street Saints and take on three rival gangs called The Rollers, The Vice Kings, and Los Carnales which has a very funny cut scene due to that gangs particular name. Included in this is also the police who, for the most part, ignore you unless you specifically do something in front of them. Continued on page 2 »