With Grand Theft Auto IV still going strong all over the world, you could be forgiven for overlooking the fact that Saints Row 2 has also now hit shelves. Will it make you put GTA back in it’s case for a while?

The simple answer to that question in most peoples case is, probably not. However, if the new slightly more grown up direction that Grand Theft Auto IV has taken has alienated you, then Saints Row 2 serves as the perfect alternative as developers Violation seem completely uninterested in allowing Saints Row to grow up and have stuck with the pure moral free, carnage causing formula that was present in the original title of the series.

However, it breaks down no new boundaries at all, and can simply be compared more closely to earlier GTA titles rather than the current series counterpart. In all honesty, these is very little advance in Saints Row 2 from the original in terms of gameplay, the quality of missions or the overall addictiveness, but it remains a whole lot of fun if you want to roam a huge city environment bringing ultimate pain and suffering to it’s citizens for no real reason.

You start off in a prison hospital where you awake from a coma which you have been in since the giant explosion at the end of the original Saints Row game, where you underworld days came very close to being numbered. You soon make your escape from the low-security establishment and hit the streets once again, with the intent of recruiting people into your gang as you begin your attempt to once again take control of the city.

The main storyline is not the best, but some of the missions contained within it do give the game an appeal which the standard city-roaming sandbox style of play does not give you and it is certainly worth playing through all the missions you find. It seems the vast majority of them though are of the drive-by-shooting variety, and those that are different do not tend to stray too far from that format, but they do offer a bit of variety which the original Saints Row seemed to lack. In particular, the Brotherhood gang missions are based around acts of vengeance and focus on dark subjects and outcomes - which of course makes them the most fun, so don’t pass those up.

The controls in Saints Row 2 are highly accessible, are it has to be said are very much alike the control system used in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although in many peoples eyes Saints Row is nothing more than a cheap attempt at a GTA clone, personally I feel the similar control system was unavoidable as it is hard to see where they could improve it for a game of this kind. The ease at which you will pickup the controls serves you well, as it allows you to get the hang of the game very quickly and begin getting in the action.

The way you can dispose of your enemies is almost limitless. Of course you have a huge choice of incredibly powerful weapons at your disposal, and a few less powerful ones too, but you can even grab hold of your enemies and use them as a human shield if you are in the middle of a frantic fire fight and just throw them away when you are finished with them - and we mean throw! You appear to gain super strength from somewhere, as you appear to launch them a good 20 feet and their reaction when impacting objects on the way are a great humorous touch.

All in all, there is little worth mentioning that players of the original Saints Row will not have seen before. But perhaps looking on the bright side of things, there was not a lot wrong with the original, so everything from before making another appearance is not such a bad thing despite the lack of innovation and progression of the series. The gameplay is good and addictive, the graphics do a great job without being anything special, and the game is packed full of fun things to do for those of us with no morals.

If you are a mission player, you could get bored of the sometimes repetitive missions in Saints Row 2. But if you want the freedom of a huge city where you can play around with powerful weapons and highly damaging vehicles, Saints Row 2 is definitely for you. A good game all around, although it is no Grand Theft Auto IV it has to be said.

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