What is everyone else talking about ............this game is nothing special!
The storyline in GTA grabs you from the start and really makes everything you do seem real and important ........I'm russian and the russian in it is hilarious. Saints Row storyline is lacklustre and cliche .........its a non event
The mission system in Saints Row is what really brings the game down. You have to constantly run up respect between the story missions to gain access to the next story mission by running the same handful of basic, non storyline driven activities. Initially these missions are fun ...................but by the 100th time you run them you start to get pretty sick of them. I personally think that THQ used this mechanic to make the game longer and so as not to have to develop as good a storyline or as many story missions which require alot of planning ......all things GTA4 provides in spades. I stopped playing this game b/c I simply got sick of having to spend 50% of my game time not getting any story.
To add to this Saints Row has bugs galore .........there have been a number of missions which I have finished only to find the AI stuck against a fence. When this happens you can't dislodge it by ramming a car into the AI vehicle as it is simply frozen on the screen.
Some of the others features which are not great is the actual open world of Saints Row which in sections is quite baron when compared to the busy metropolis of Liberty City.
Also the character you play never talks and his background is never revealed, hence its hard to make any sort of connection with him .............again this is something that is a real feature of GTA4 as it does both these things really really well.
Some of the good features: The range of guns, being able to take homies on missions, easy to locate train-stations (one thing that GTA4 doesn't do well).
I am not a fan of sandbox games and Saints Row has only comfirmed why. This being said I find it ridiculous that people are giving this game 9's and 10's as ratings or comparing it to one of the most significant games ever made GTA4 ..........these ratings and comparisons are simply off the mark or these people simply have not played enough good games to know that this is not one of them.