Remember When Saints Row Was Actually Good?

Saints Row started as a GTA clone. There, I said it. And I liked it anyway.

When Saints Row 2 arrived in North America on 14 October 2008 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Volition wasn’t exactly trying to hide where the inspiration came from. The original game had borrowed generously from Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the sequel wasn’t about to abandon that formula.

But here’s the thing: Saints Row had its own flavor.

Where GTA was increasingly leaning toward gritty realism, Saints Row went in the opposite direction, embracing irreverent humor, ridiculous situations, and gloriously nonsensical action. And while the first game sometimes felt like the developers were still finding their feet, by Saints Row 2, they knew exactly what they were – and what they weren’t.

And they played it up beautifully.

Building a Criminal Empire, One Neighborhood at a Time

One of my favorite things about Saints Row 2 was the customization. Sure, creating your own ridiculous criminal mastermind was entertaining enough, but you could also customize your gang’s appearance, vehicles, and overall style.

There was something wonderfully satisfying about building a criminal organization that looked exactly as ridiculous – or intimidating – as you wanted.

And then there was the territory system.

I’ve always loved games that let you take over territory and gradually build an empire. Whether it’s conquering provinces in a strategy game or pushing rival gangs out of their neighborhoods, there’s something addictive about watching your influence spread across the map.

In Saints Row 2, taking back Stilwater from the rival gangs was a big part of the appeal. Every neighborhood you claimed felt like another piece of the city falling under your control.

It wasn’t exactly sophisticated geopolitical strategy. But it sure was fun.

Insurance Fraud, Septic Trucks, and Other Respectable Careers

Of course, I can’t talk about Saints Row 2 without mentioning its completely ridiculous side activities.

There was Insurance Fraud, where you deliberately threw yourself into traffic to rack up increasingly absurd injury payouts. Septic Avenger let you drive a sewage truck around town spraying buildings, vehicles, and unfortunate pedestrians with the contents of its tank.

FUZZ had you impersonating a police officer while a camera crew filmed your increasingly outrageous attempts at law enforcement. And Trail Blazing involved racing through the streets on a flaming ATV, setting everything around you on fire.

There were also familiar activities like Mayhem, Escort, and Demolition Derby, giving you plenty of opportunities to cause trouble when you weren’t busy advancing the story.

The beauty of it was that none of this needed to make sense. Saints Row 2 wasn’t trying to convince you that it was a realistic crime simulator. It was trying to entertain you.

And it succeeded.

The Real Star of the Show: Co-op

But what really made Saints Row 2 special for me wasn’t the story, the customization, or even the outrageous activities.

It was the cooperative multiplayer.

Being able to run through the campaign with a friend changed everything. Suddenly, every mission, police chase, gang war, and completely unnecessary act of destruction became a shared adventure.

I spent weeks rolling through the hood with my homies, taking territory, causing trouble, and generally making Stilwater a much worse place to live.

And those are some of my fondest memories from the entire Xbox 360 era.

There were plenty of great games on the 360, but not all of them gave you that kind of experience. Saints Row 2 was the sort of game where you could sit down intending to complete a couple of missions and somehow spend the entire evening doing absolutely everything except what you’d planned.

Those were some good times.

Not Quite a Perfect Crime

Now, I’m not going to pretend Saints Row 2 was flawless.

The graphics weren’t exactly cutting-edge, even in 2008. The character models could look rough, the animations were sometimes awkward, and the whole thing lacked the visual polish of Grand Theft Auto IV, which had arrived earlier that year.

But I’d take an entertaining game with a few rough edges over a gorgeous game that forgets to be fun.

The driving and shooting could also feel clunky. Vehicles weren’t always particularly responsive, and gunfights sometimes relied more on sheer chaos than precision. Fair criticism, although I’d argue that the chaos was half the point.

Then there were the technical issues. Bugs, performance hiccups, occasional crashes, and some frustrating mission design could certainly get in the way. And the PC version, which arrived later, developed a particularly poor reputation for its performance and compatibility problems.

Those complaints were legitimate. A game being fun doesn’t excuse everything.

The activities could also become repetitive, particularly when you needed to earn Respect to unlock more story missions. I enjoyed most of those diversions, but I can understand why someone who just wanted to follow the main storyline might find the system irritating.

And while the game was generally happy to embrace absurdity, the main story could get surprisingly brutal. That contrast between cartoonish stupidity and genuinely nasty gang violence didn’t always sit comfortably together.

Still, none of those issues overshadowed the fun I had with it.

The Verdict

Saints Row 2 didn’t reinvent the open-world crime game. It borrowed plenty from Grand Theft Auto, threw in some of its own ideas, and then turned the ridiculousness up until the dial broke off.

But that’s exactly what gave it an identity.

The first Saints Row showed that Volition could make a competent GTA-style game. The second proved that it could make something with a personality all its own.

For me, the customization, territory takeovers, ridiculous activities, and especially the cooperative campaign made it one of the most memorable games of the Xbox 360 generation.

I don’t need every game to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes I just need it to let me steal the wheel, customize it, and run over my enemies with it.

And Saints Row 2 delivered.