Okay, let me preface this review with the fact that I have been a died-in-the-wool GTA fanboy since GTA III first graced the gaming scene and literally changed the way the world previously thought about gaming. GTA was the pinnacle of the sandbox genre where you were thrust penniless and friendless into the open cesspool of a major urban jungle, or more accurately, a jaded, cynical, and extremely comical metropolis. The series has always led with humor and about the most outlandish, over the top, unbelievably unrealistic gameplay you can imagine. Yet, with the "living breathing city" that Rockstar imbued their sandbox with, the games actually managed to feel somehow more real even with the seemingly contradictory lack of realism.

Fast forward to 2008, and Rockstar decided to make GTA an exercise in pomposity with GTA IV, a game that actually has the audacity to preach to you. Gone are the days of rags to riches, now replaced with the boring snoozer of a "rags to better rags" metaphor. Where GTA used to be all about light hearted and zany fun coupled with riotous guffaws of laughter, thanks to GTA IV, it is now an exercise in excruciating mind-numbing tedium intermingled with a lugubrious sense of realism. The game has the impudence to almost scream "crime doesn't pay" at you every time you saddle up and drive this so called "Euphoria Engine" nightmare. The story is so agonizingly depressing that I really believe the game would have been better off euthanizing Niko, the main character, about halfway through the story. The whole affair is like a Greek tragedy without the poignant writing. Near the end you are presented with two choices which branch off the storyline. Clever idea, except that either choice punishes you with a morbidly depressing outcome that all plays out like poorly enacted production of a Euripides play.

Right about now you are likely scratching your head in wonderment as to why I am reviewing GTA IV. I can assure you, I'm not. I wanted to set up the prelude for my Saint's Row 2 review. If I had to boil down my review of this game to one sentence, I would say that "Saint's Row 2 is everything that GTA IV could have been, should have been, but sadly wasn't!"

Where the sandbox in GTA IV was made out of an amalgam of steel and and titanium in its utter constriction, the one created by Volition for SR2 is made out of the golden sandy goodness of utter fun. It is riotous, exciting, diverse, engaging, immersive, and often gut wrenchingly fast paced. The guy below me put it aptly when he said that "Saint's Row 2 is the Anti-GTA IV" because Saint's Row is what happens when you get a bunch of programmers together who like to laugh until they cry and spend their nights dreaming of absurdly stupid and insanely fun ideas to make their game soar to the stratosphere with raw unadulterated fun. While GTA IV is what happens when you decide to condescend to your fans and deign to inform them, through your game, that realism is the new fun.

It isn't, not even close. Again, the reason for the constant references to GTA IV is because SR and GTA IV are the first true sandbox games of this generation, and truly they are the antithesis of one another. Where GTA IV puts you behind the wheel of cars that are absurdly tedious and laborious to steal, ridiculously slow to accelerate, and that slip all over the road as if the entire landscape had a sheet of ice covering it, Saint's Row 2 vehicles are easy to steal, handle like they are on rails, turn beautifully, and can be completely customized. One of the marvels of the Saint's Row universe is that because the customizing is so incredibly diverse, you can see the same exact car ten times and it will look so different that until you really get to know the game they will look like en different cars!

While the main character from GTA IV is a slow moving, horrifically heavy, plodding guy who walks and runs (if you can even call it running) like his clothing is made of led, your Saint's Row 2 character's movements are fluid, smooth, organic, and again, fun. Speaking of the main character, in SR2 you can now COMPLETELY customize your character right from the beginning of the game and change him or her at will. That's right all you feminists out there who wanted to get in on the fun. You can play as a girl. Let me just state something categorically: I have never, and I mean NEVER, been a fan of customizing. I used the first default character and profile in every game I played, spending MAYBE the obligatory two minutes with a few superfluous tweaks, and off I went into the game. Well, the first time I played SR2 I spent no less than an hour customizing my character before starting the first mission. You would not believe the variety you are presented with. It is almost overwhelming. I chose a girl and quite a little hottie I might add. Hell, she's a lot easier on the eyes than Niko's big, hairy, slavic butt. You can change everything from body type, hair style, voice, hair color, a plethora of skin tones, make up if you like, and on and on. I managed to get myself a stunning little cutie and dressed her like a total slutty sex kitten. Nice! You can also purchase and unlock a plethora of clothing and jewelry items, some of which will have you rolling on the floor laughing in their absolute absurdity.

While we are on the subject of the character, this is another area where SR2 shines, people's faces. One of the problems with GTA IV is that all the faces of the people, both main characters, bosses, and side characters all have pushed in faces that look like a cross between a pit bull and a pancake. Not so in SR2. The women in this game are pixelated honey's! If you want to have some serious eye candy to look at, then you are going to love the faces and bodies of the women of Saint's Row 2. Now, this is not to say that SR2 has better graphics overall than GTA IV. It doesn't. GTA IV, because of its rather right wing fundamentalist realism, and its lackluster "crime doesn't pay" fortune cookie wisdom, naturally has as its primary boast, some pretty incredible graphics and visuals.

Volition, on the other hand, decided to lay back on the graphics (perhaps just a little too much) and concentrate on packing this title with some absolutely awe-inspiring gameplay. Instead of just the run-of-the-mill "drive here, pick up character A, shoot some people, drive him or her to point B, pick up character B, shoot some more people, fall asleep, and then drop off your AI partners," SR2 brings a palpably fresh perspective to the table. In addition to the normal sandbox GTA'esue missions like the ones I listed above, you can hijack a sewage truck and you must squirt liquid feces all over the buildings (AND THE PEOPLE!!!) and deface public property, causing enough monetary damage to pass the level and discredit the local politician who your would-be boss has targeted. Then there is Insurance Fraud, which rewards you for racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in bone breaking damage to yourself, all accompanied with ghastly bone crunching sound effects as you chain together your rather bizarre stunts. You begin a chain by throwing yourself in front of a moving car or truck and are rewarded with more and more dollars, stringing your damage combos together, based on how long you can keep the damage meter going without timing your combo out. If that sounds like fun it is because it is.

Are you feeling a little stressed and want to cause uncountable damage to people and property? Then go to the Nuclear Island (yes there is a Nuclear Island complete with those cool looking giant steam cylinder generator things!) walk into the "Mayhem" activity and you will be given a damage goal and a time in which to achieve it. You also have a combo meter which keeps going up as long as it doesn't time out or you don't take any damage. This is made even more fun by the absolute plethora of breakable items in the environment that keep on adding to your damage total. You can work for local mob bosses who give you hitman contracts, which you can choose to put on your HUD while searching for your targets. Each "client" has a particular area where they like to hang out and the game sort of hints you toward. Another area where GTA IV failed is in its almost painful lack of viable rewards for the maddeningly boring tasks the game asks you to perform. So unlike the thankless tedium of GTA IV, Saint's Row 2 rewards you with a lavish array of uncountable weaponry, infinite ammo, wild and pimped out vehicles, tons of money, and a slew of other unlockable items. This truly is San Andreas on steroids, because SA was famous for its awesome rewards and devilishly wild variety of gameplay crossing into every single genre you can imagine. Saint's Row 2 takes what San Andreas did best up yet another notch. The game also features three difficulty levels, but I found that Hardrcore, the highest, worked fine for me. Another absolutely beautiful addition to this game is co-op. The way Volition created this game you can go online or just link two consoles together in your home and play through everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, with a partner in co-op mode. Get your USB headsets ready, folks, because I can assure you that this is a blast. Having trouble getting through Level 6 on "Mayhem" because you cannot damage enough property? Just saddle up with a partner and do it together. Best of all, BOTH OF YOU get full credit for the completed activity as well as whatever unlockable reward the activity, diversion, or career mission happens to open.

So with all of these virtues, what are the flaws of Saint's Row 2? Well, for starters, the game is inexcusably glitchy, prone to random freezes now and again. It isn't as bad as some games, but to be quite honest, it is quite annoying, Thankfully the autosave feature will have your progress backing up far more often than you would remember to do manually, so at least on the occasion your game does freeze, you won't lose a whole lot of progress Hint: KEEP THE AUTOSAVE ON!! The pop-in's are annoying, to be sure, and should NOT be a part of a true next gen title like this. By pop-in's, I mean those annoying times when you are driving down the road and the system doesn't draw it completely, and sometimes you don't see certain structures until you are right on top of them or crash into them. Again, this is not something you expect to see on consoles as powerful as the PS3 and the 360, and it is NOT as bad as it could be. In all honesty, it doesn't really get in the way of the game, but it is definitely a chink in the proverbial armor. One other issue is that the PS3 version does not have Trophies. Now, while I am not exactly a Trophy whore, Trophies on the PS3 and Achievements on the 360 are definitely a nice addition to the gameplay. So if you have both consoles and are into Achievements/Trophies, I suggest you consider the 360 version since it does have the Achievements. There is speculation on a Trophies DLC pack in the future, but Volition is quite tight-lipped about this. So, a bird in the hand is worth...well you know. I have the PS3 version and I do not feel cheated, just so you know. A minor niggle I have with the game is definitely nit-picky, but here goes anyway: There is no reward for 100% completion! Seriously. Given the insane variety of rewards for everything from spitting on the sidewalk to accumulating tricks with your vehicles in this game, one is left puzzled as to why you get literally NOTHING for achieving 100% completion. The truth is that if the game were not so shamelessly generous with rewards and unlockables this might be a bigger problem. As it is now it's more of a cute little idiosyncrasy that makes me believe that Volition was so busy stuffing rewards into this game that they simply forgot about 100% completion. Oh well, trust me, you won't miss it too much. It's just a tad little anticlimactic is all. The next weakness of the game, and this is somewhat more serious, is the lack of humor and variety on the radio stations. Now this was truly puzzling to me, because the in-game dialog during missions and cut-scenes is well written, top notch, and often funny as hell. This leads me to believe that Volition absolutely has the ability to write excellent comedy, only they made it a conspicuously sparse on the radio stations. Oh sure, there are some funny commercials, DJ bits, and other radio witticisms, just not nearly enough for my taste. I should mention at this time that the actual music on the various radio stations was damned good. You really get the feel and variety of the panorama of a big city's musical and cultural diversity from the stations. Even genre's of music I normally never listen to, like Rap, Hip hop, and dance, were quite enjoyable in this game.

In closing, I know this game is six months old, but I HIGHLY recommend it. The replay value alone is fabulous.

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I loved the original saints row. I think think this one is better because the city is more detailed. and the game is more violent. i love that I get to rebuild everything ive lost. You get alot more respect on your meter also. You even get double guns. The city is alot bigger to. Lots of stuff you can do in this great game. please pick this wonderful title up.

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Let it never be said that the Saints Row franchise is merely riding the GTA Franchises' coat-tails. With SR2, it has gone in an entirely different direction, one of a little less realism and a lot more FUN.

You play an open world game like this for the freedom to move around and do what you want. I still felt constricted in GTA4, but in SR2, you can really do as much or as little as you one. Linearity is pretty much gone, and I found myself this time around playing a lot more of the respect missions because they were fun, not tedious like many in SR1. The depth of Stillwater is massive, and now you dont just drive around the surface, but navigate miles of caverns, oceans, and the like in your quests. Having solved it, I am aware that there is still a chunk of the land I havent even seen yet. The crib customization is a really cool idea as well, and brings a lot of ownership to the game for the player.

The thing I like the most about the SR games is the lunacy of Stillwater. Things are just wide-open all the time, and its a lot of escapist fun to reside there for a few days. I highly recommend this title.

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OK I've marked this review down to one star because I want to get my point across. One of the problems with SR1 was that when you drive past a number of gang members and you decide to turn around and fight them, they have disappeared, not because they ran off but because the game wants to delete the part of the world that is not in front of you. I'm really disappointed that they did not fix this problem in SR2, i would never have bought it had i known.

I was chasing down a car, i went past it, turned around and it was gone. No it hadn't just driven off because I would have seen it off down the road, it just vanished.

If this is fixable please fix...

Im sure there is a lot to be liked here, but this really annoys me and does not happen in GTAIV

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I was amazed at how fun this game is. I know everyone keeps comparing this to GTA4 but here's another one. I got really bored really quick with GTA4 because it got to repetitive and to frustrating after the first 4 hours of game play or so. I don't think I'm alone with this opinion either. Sometimes you want to play something serious and sometimes you don't. Well think of GTA4 as simulation mode and think of Saints Row 2 as arcade mode, A.K.A., the fun mode. Sure there are technical glitches but it doesn't take you out of your experience. The activities never get old and the missions have a ton of variety. My girl even loves this game. She gets more into the customization. She spends hours just shopping for clothes, pimping out cars and decorating hoods. When she runs out of money she just does some activities and goes right back to shopping. I personally spend hours boosting cars and killing targets. There is so many things to get into it's crazy. I also love the free targetting too. You never find it hard to aim at who you want rather than accidentaly aiming at someone you don't want to, cough..GTA.. The co-op is extremely fun too. If you want hours and hours of entertainment that seems to never get old you'll love this game!

P.S. Seek out the Demolition Derby, it's a BLAST.

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Sweet Baby Jesus this game is awesome,I played the first Saints row and found it a bit "meh," the sequel takes all the complaints I had and fixes them and then breaks them for my amusment. For all of you who compares this to GTA4, you are wrong, this game is a better game in almost every way, let's list the reasons why shall we?

Storyline: Ok I'll admit GTA4 has a much deeper and more serious storyline then Saints Row 2 or any other GTA game. Do you see the problem? I'm all for open world games like this having a deep thought provoking story, but not in a GTA game. When I first heard the words "GTA" and "deep, serious storyline" I sat there for ten minutes waiting for a punchline. But I'll still give this to GTA because it's really a great story, even if it is out of place in the GTA series.

Graphics: Saints Row 2 is so much more colorful then most 360 games I thought the mushrooms in the salad I had just eaten had gone bad. The Graphics are colorful and slightly cartoonish, I had almost forgotten what those colors looked like in video games. The explosions are nice and firey, and the people give the most delightful red spray when you get a headshot. GTA looks good don't get me wrong, but it's just to dull.

Gameplay: It's sort of a tie here, cause they both nail it. The controls work brilighntly for what each game is trying to do, GTA4 feels hard and realistic, Saints 2 is flashy and over the top. It feels like a real fight when you have to survive the cops for 3 minutes in GTA, and it is a blast to run down the streets in Saints Row 2 armed with a missile launcher.

Overall though both games are great buy them both, I just think this one is better.

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I have both GTA IV and SR 2. GTA IV Sucked! SR 2 is like the original GTA and GTA 2 meets the 3D interface. Its alot of fun, but does have alot of bugs. The game will crash on you xbox 360, many times. But it is still worth playing, again and again. It alot of fun.

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The game itself is a lot of fun, but it suffers from a primary flaw. I lost about 8 hours of progress because someone connected to my single player game who had cheats enabled. Even though I kicked this person as soon as it said that, it stopped saving my game. I didn't know it was doing this so I lost all of that progress.

Apart from that, the game crashed twice. The second time it crashed was when I found out it hadn't saved my progress when I restarted it. Saints Row 2 has too many problems, and GTA 4 isn't very fun. I'm still looking forward to a decent sandbox title that is actually made by gamers for gamers.

Also you only get a choice between Australian, black, and mexican for voice choices. I'm a white guy. That's incredibly racist that they would leave that out of the game.

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It is impossible to talk about Saints Row 2 without referring to the Grand Theft Auto series, so I won't even try.

And there is so, so, so much content in this game, I won't even try to cover it. You can get that from any number of online reviews, which have mostly been fair and accurate, unlike the transparent butt-kissing they did for the overhyped, wildly overrated GTA IV (which I am fond of calling Grand Theft Sixty Bucks).

I'll just try to give a subjective impression, by way of comparison to the series it imitates but has now gone far beyond:

GTA IV failed because Rockstar sold out to the current realism fad. Games cannot be realistic in any meaningful sense of the term, and nor should they be. Realism is not the role that video games play in our lives. People play video games for fantasy, fun, the sensation of speed, wish fulfillment, and so on. Games are entertainment, not art. Volition understands this.

Saints Row 2 is superior to GTA IV, or any other GTA game, in virtually every aspect. Even the parts of GTA IV that were supposedly so great are inferior to Saints Row 2. For example, GTA IV looks good while it is sitting still, but when you are actually playing it, the pop-up turns it into a joke, and the whole game looks dreary and depressing. Saints Row looks better because it's designed to be brighter and prettier and it looks better in motion because it doesn't have as much pop-up. GTA is nice in still shots, Saints Row is nice in action.

Likewise, the vaunted physics engine and pedestrians of GTA IV pale in comparison to Saints Row 2 in the fun factor, because the crazier physics in the Row create all kinds of nutty situations with cars and peds flying through the air, and the peds are doing funnier things to begin with.

Even the writing and cutscenes are better in Saints Row, because the effect of GTA's pseudo-serious, pseudo-realistic characters, scenes and dialog is in jarring contrast to the goofiness and mass murder that is usually taking place in the game itself. The supposed realism actually only acts to take you out of the experience. Saints Row isn't realistic, it's surrealistic, like the old GTA was. That's the only thing that works in this genre of game - self-aware satire.

As far as the controls, missions, soundtrack, city layout, diversions, customization, and every other part of the game are concerned, there is no contest at all: Saints Row 2 is better than any GTA game, and an order of magnitude better than GTA IV. That's because Saints Row is a true open world game, which GTA IV is not. Unlike GTA IV, you choose the game you want to play, not the game the developers want to shove down your throat. For example, I hate the whole rap thing, and this game is full of it - but only if you want it to be. It's also full of other types of music and characters, and you largely get to choose how much of each you want.

And it is simply a fact that the side missions and diversions in Saints Row are much more fun to play than even the main missions of GTA IV, let alone the absurd bowling, TV watching and dating games that Rockstar put in their game. Playing Saints Row 2 makes you wonder all over again what on earth it is Rockstar was thinking.

In short, Saints Row 2 recaptures the magic that the old PS2 GTA games had, only they have gone far beyond it because they have given us three times more of everything that used to make GTA great, and eliminated literally every little frustration that came with it. This is the next generation GTA we all wished for, only better. This is fun and freedom, with relentless humor and action. This is video games, evolved, and video games, defined. I've been playing games since Pong, and this is the best one yet.

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If you're a GTA fan, you have got to get this game. It will truly give the GTA series a run for their money. Better weapons, better cars, and with the missions and customization of your person, you can't lose!

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... that looks, sounds, and plays like this one... which is to say not very good at all. I had fun with the original, but I would much rather play GTA IV than this game. Actually, it helped me appreciate GTA IV again. So I guess it's worth something after all.

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I really enjoy this game, its what I wanted. I loke the graphics all of the customizing you can do makes it extra fun.

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GTA IV sucked. If you don't agree that is sucked, I want you to wear aluminum foil on a daily basis so if I see you walking down the street, I can go, "Okay, avoid that guy - he's an idiot."

Saints Row 2 is what a Sandbox "Guns & Glory" RPG should be. This is how GTA began so many years ago (anyone else play the original top-down version were you got mad points for running over a bunch of chanting tribes-men all at once?) I wasn't but an hour into Saints Row 2 before I was riding along in a Sewage truck, spraying fecal matter onto homes, people and cars because some realtor wanted to get revenge on a competitor. You can't learn that kinda stuff! That's pure genious. Ever spray crap on a cop before? I hadn't!

I won't go into too much detail for now - I just started the game. The character customization was nice but kinda difficult - I spent over an hour on it and my guy still looks like a tard. But in the end I'm pretty content with him - he looks like a good s**t-kicker which is what he should be.

Graphics are okay - nothing awe-inspiring. I'll admit GTA IV looked better. But there's none of these heart-felt phone calls from your whiney cousin going "We don't hang out anymore!!" or stupid girlfriends that you have to dress up for... In fact, it appears that you don't even have to wear the Saints Purple to earn street credit - you just buy nicer clothes. You can buy multiple versions of the same shirt and just keep racking up respect, as long as you have cash to back up the binge.

Car customization is AWESOME - they really beefed up that aspect of the game. After completing just the first few missions, I came across a "Superiore" - looks like a Lamborghini Countach. I took it to a custom shop and went nuts on it - multi-layered black tints with a "Saints Purple" stripe, purple interior... There's over 30 different wheels! You can also upgrade the performance of the car - most of it appears to be body strengthening - I'm guessing so you can take more thumps and bullets.

The appearance of my character, wearing clean, "stonewashed" jeans and his black-and-purple Saints football Jersey, standing alongside his black-and-purple "Countach," arms crossed - lookin' all thuggish - was the neatest thing ever.

And by the way, whoever does the voice of Johnny Gat is one of the best, most talented voice actors in the history of video games. That guy is HILARIOUS. He delivers lines with perfect precision, dripping with sarcasm and laced with dark humor. I am absolutely relieved to see that he has returned to the series. My applause to you, sir.

I still have a lot more gaming to do, but with so many let-downs in the prior year - GTA IV, Mercenaries 2, etc - it's GREAT to see one title that took a good idea and actually made it BETTER.

Let's go SAINTS!

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This makes up for the disappointment Grand Theft Auto IV was. If you loved the first Saints Row, you will absolutely love Saints Row 2. Saints Row 2 is everything that was advertised. This game is all about the fun and not about being super realistic. If you want to have fun, buy this game. After playing this game for 30 minutes i knew it was better than GTA IV. GTA IV lost the fun factor in favor of realism. I am a hardcore GTA fan. I still consider GTA: San Andreas to be one of the best games ever made. I must say after the fuzzies went away while playing GTA IV, i got bored very quickly and i was glad when the game ended. Saints Row 2 is so much fun that you don't want it to end. If you watched all the Saints Row 2 trailers like i did and were hoping it would deliver as advertised, you can put any worries you might have had aside. Saints Row 2 delivers. if you are not a fan of sandbox games you will probably not enjoy this game. As for everyone complaining about the graphics, i think the graphics look great. I would say that the graphics are on par with the first game and perhaps a little better, in certain areas. If you were disappointed that GTA IV was not funny and lacked fun activities and missions, you have found what you were looking for. Saints Row 2 is a great game, with lots..... of customization, crazy side missions and activities, and it is a lot of fun..........

GTA IV eat your heart out.... I am still mad at how crappy GTA IV really was. GTA IV was simply an upgraded version of GTA III from the PS2 days.

Enjoy Saints Row 2!! As for all the supposed glitches, i have yet to come across anything major. I have noticed some occasional pop-in, but that is about it. I have played the game for like 5 hours, with no freezing whatsoever. it should be noted that Saints Row 2 has already been patched. When i got the game, i popped it in and there was already a patch that needed to be downloaded. I installed the patch and i have not had any issues so far. So, go buy Saints Row 2 and have fun!!

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I have avoided violent, sandbox games because I don't like the thought of shooting law enforcement (even in games ... yeah, whatever), and I just never understood the desire for people to play "the bad guy". Call it my own moral and ethical compass or something. But I decided to throw caution into the wind and actually buy one of these games. Considering how popular they are, they must be doing something right.

I was amazed at how much fun and expansive "Saints Row 2" is.

When I first started playing it, I walked/drove around for hours just marveling at the attention to detail in the buildings, landscape, and activity that went on around me. Even sidewalks that you would have zero chance of seeing under normal circumstances, hidden behind derelict buildings, can have small details like gang symbols painted on them. The attention to detail in Stilwater is just amazing!

I'm the kind of person who has to play a game to the utter completion when possible. When playing fantasy RPG games like "Neverwinter Nights", I hate leaving side-quests unfinished. I hate having incomplete maps. If I'm playing a game, I want to experience the whole game. "Saints Row 2" has such a huge amount of side material to play that I anticipate at least 80 hours of gameplay from running around, exploring, and performing side quests, before I consider it to be done to my satisfaction. Getting 80 hours from any kind of game is utterly unheard of! I've already played for over 24 hours, having done a large number of side quests and activities, and I'm only at 20% completion!

What really helped me to overcome the "playing the bad guy" issue is that Volition loaded the game with just utter silliness. They clearly made the smart move in removing some of the realism to add humor and goofy playability. Whether the humor comes from the outrageous commercials on the radio or the sheer toilet humor (pun intended) in spraying sewage all over the place, there is a ton of off-the-wall humor and irreverent activities in this game. Even being able to just wave "hello" to passers by and have them respond adds another bit of over-the-top silliness. Here you are trying to take over the city, having just ruthlessly killed rival gang members, but wave "Hi" to a person walking down the street and they respond like you're the friendliest person on each. It's one of those stupid, subtle bits of humor that had me chuckling not because it was genuinely funny but because of its absurdity.

I share the frustration with other reviewers that cars, people, or objects have a tendency to disappear once they are out of your view. There have been many times where a car that is wanted at the chop shop would pass me, and by the time I turn around to try to carjack it it's gone. Other times I'm just so frustrated with running that I turn around to steal the car in the parking lot that I just ran past. The car's not there any more. This happens often and can be incredibly annoying. This game should be fixed so that there is a certain radius around your character where all items or people stay where they are until they are completely out of that radius.

The only real WTF moment was when I saw that the "streaking" game utilized censorship over the character's nether-regions. Once again, the American need to act Puritanical shows itself. Blood, violence, swearing, running over people with the car, mowing them down with a machine gun, killing law enforcement -- hey, no problem! But show a certain part of the body and suddenly it's "NO, NO, NO!! We can't show that! Blowing people's heads off is fantastic! Go for it! But don't expect us to show a nipple! We have to censor that!" { face palm } Volition, either we're mature enough to handle the whole package or we're not! Pick one! Don't treat us like adults and use the "M" rating for cover when it comes to violence, then hide in cowardice and treat us like children who need to be shielded when it comes to nudity!

Regardless, I was shocked at how much fun this game is. The violence is cartoonish more than anything else; the gameplay can be fast and furious; hidden items and quests abound; there are lots of absurd humorous bits; and the number of side quests and activities can keep you occupied for dozens and dozen of hours.

Buy it. Once the absurdity of the gameplay and the scope of what you can do in Stilwater kick in, the fun factor takes over and you could end up spending a lot more time with it than you thought.

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