Saints Row Updated Hands-On

THQ's Saints Row has been one of the more hotly anticipated Xbox 360 titles since it was announced prior to the system's launch, and with good cause, too. Let's face it, the people are into the whole Grand Theft Auto style of gaming, and Saints Row looks to bring that brand of open-ended criminal behavior into the new generation of consoles. At a recent showcase event held by Microsoft, Saints Row was on display with an updated build. We sat down with the game to get an updated look at how it's coming along.

Saints Row puts you in the role of a customized gang member that you yourself can create. There was already a default character built in this version, but via the game's character-creation system, you'll be able to create a character from a variety of races, builds, and styles. The basic premise is that you've begun representing a local ragtag crew known as the Third Street Saints. Your gang is being targeted for elimination by multiple other gangs in the city, and it's up to you to defend your turf, as well as take over more turf throughout the city. In grand…um, Grand Theft Auto fashion, you'll be jacking cars, shooting up rivals, and doing all manner of illicit things in a wide-open city called Stillwater. The method of play seems to take the GTA approach pretty much to the letter, with progressive story-based missions interspersed with random chaos and side ventures scattered all throughout the area.

We began our time with the game seemingly early on in the storyline. Our character had evidently become a full-fledged member of the Saints, and now it was time to smoke some rival gangs. The first mission was pretty straightforward: Kill rival gang members that are on your turf. Fair enough. For demo purposes, all the game's weapons were unlocked to us. To access them in the game, you'll simply press a button, which brings up a circular display that shows all your accessible weapons. There are several weapon types available, ranging from melee weapons to heavy-duty launchers. It looks as though you'll be able to carry one weapon from each type, which actually translates to up to around seven weapons at once. If you encounter a different weapon from a class you're already carrying, you can swap them out at the press of a button. As for the mission itself, all it took was a few well-placed shots to peel back the caps of the rival gangs, and we were done in no time. Winning the mission earned us some cash and a respect bonus.

The second mission we engaged in featured a similar premise, although this time, the rival gang members were holed up in one of their hideouts. After jacking a nearby car and rolling up to the hideout, we kicked in the door and went in guns blazing. Several gang members were hiding among various tables and debris in the hideout (seriously, when have you ever seen a tidy gang hideout?). By clicking in the left control stick button, we were able to crouch and hide behind objects too, which made it much easier to pop up and dispatch the bad guys. At the end of the area, we were charged with chasing down and eliminating a gang lieutenant. On our first attempt, he managed to hop into his ride and take off. We jacked a nearby car and tried to chase him down, but the squirrelly handling of the cars made it tough to keep a bead on him, and we eventually lost him and had to restart. On our second attempt, we found a side door leading to the alley where the lieutenant's ride was parked. We launched a grenade at it and blew the thing to bits ahead of time, which made our task much easier, since we simply had to chase down and smoke the lieutenant on foot.

After engaging in these missions, we figured it was high time to just cause some out and out mayhem. Like the GTA series, you can just kick back with any of your high-powered assault rifles or rocket launchers, and lay waste to anything that comes into your path. Of course, such reckless disregard for human life and personal property leads to unwanted police attention, especially if you start killing the boys in blue. Waves of cops will start coming at you, including SWAT officers and cops in helicopters. Causing such mayhem actually seemed quite satisfying during our time with the game. The weapons had a decent feel to them, especially the rocket launcher, which caused cars to blow up quite spectacularly. These explosions created some pretty excellent fireballs and spread lots of debris (including the flaming human variety) over quite a distance. Helicopters seemed to explode the best, as they'd start to break apart as they fell to the ground, and the cops came flying out of the thing while it was still in midair. Maybe it's wrong to take too much pleasure in such things in this volatile gaming climate of ours, but straight up, Saints Row's brand of anarchistic mayhem seems like it has the potential to be quite entertaining.

Explosions aren't the only things that are looking pretty good thus far in Saints Row. The environments in general are already very detailed at this stage of development. There's a certain crispness to all the various buildings and set pieces, and the game does its lighting with nice effect. The character models are similarly detailed at this juncture, though at times they look a little goofy, especially some of the rag-doll animations, which get a little weird when characters die. Also, as we've mentioned in previous builds, the frame rate is still quite troublesome at this stage of development, and it's not quite at the steady 30 frames per second the developers are aiming for. But there's still at least a few months left in Saints Row's development cycle, so hopefully that will clear up over time.

Saints Row is currently slated to hit stores sometime in the third quarter of this year. We'll bring you more on the game as it becomes available.