Let's get one thing perfectly clear -- Saint's Row is very much in the vein of the Grand Theft Auto games. If you don't like GTA3 or any of its ilk, you needn't bother showing up for Saint's Row. Also, if you are expecting the bar to be raised from San Andreas, you may find yourself in for a bit of disappointment. That said, if you're willing to have fun playing a new GTA-like game without expecting a revolution, you'll have yourself a a fun time with Saint's Row.

The voice cast is easily one of the best in a game in a long time. That said, I almost wish there was more for them to do. The story missions, while solid, didn't take a very long time, and I feel like I want more to do. Still, when you have people like Michael Clark Duncan, Keith David, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Rappaport and Tia Carrerra, it's hard to get the voice work wrong. Still, I would've liked to have more actual story missions in the game. There aren't enough of them, and it feels like we're only getting a couple of acts instead of a full movie.

You can't simply blow through the storyline stuff, though. You need to fill a respect bar up in order to do story missions. That's fine, I suppose, but it feels forced. And being forced into doing all the side stuff can be somewhat annoying. Thankfully, most of the side missions are at least somewhat enjoyable. There's a large variety of them, ranging from Mayhem (the absolute carnage types of missions) to Escort (where you're driving around a working girl). A lot of them are fun, but there are a few points where they can get a little ludicrous. (In the Escort Missions, I eventually just started shooting the press.)

The radio stations are mostly solid, although the DJs feel a little devoid of personality. There just isn't as much character to these stations as there are the GTA games. On the up side, however, there is a classical station, and I can't tell you how great an addition this is. If you've never done a mission to "Ride of the Valkyries" then you don't know what you're missing. The ads are pretty funny, though. It did seem, however, that the announcers would have weird pauses from time to time. And the announcer voices always felt quieter than the music by a significant amount, but maybe that's just the way our home stereo's set up.

I saw some strange graphical glitches from time to time (the freeway tended to pop in and out a bit, so I'd be driving on thin air...) and encountered a couple of bugs in the game. At one point, I was doing an escort mission and needed to stop some place mid mission. When I hit that point, the car vanished, but I was still "sitting" in it. Couldn't get out. Couldn't move on. Couldn't drive. Couldn't quit. I did, however, get to save and then restarted the whole console, and I was right back at the beginning of that mission. Still, it was kind of annoying.

Also of some small complaint, the multiplayer action really doesn't have enough vehicular activity going on. While I know system requirements keep things from getting too out of hand, I really would've liked to have seen more car craziness. I like some of what's in the multiplayer set up -- I've created a gang with a couple of my friends, and that's fun and all, but still, as one of my friends pointed out, there's just not enough car craziness happening here. We'll see how much time I spend in multiplayer.

All said and done, I'm glad I picked up Saint's Row, and I hope they make another one. It's not the best game I've played this year, but hell, I had fun playing it, and in the end, that's all that really matters.