I like cheese, better, but this game's fine to.
Saints Row 2, starts 15 years after the events in the first one. You survive the explosion, but fall into a coma, and wake up in a prison hospital. You, and latin-american named Gomez, escape the prison, is protected by a handful of guards, and doesn't have any locks on its cells. Soon after your mundane escape, you revive the gan, with some old friends (Johnny Gat, and Aisha), and some friends you might recognize from the third ( Pierce, and Shaundi).
After the explosion, the saints fell apart, and Steelwater is now dominated by 3 over-the top gangs, and a corporation called Ultor. YOu fight the Ronin ( Japanese, Samurai Sword- Wielding, Sports car- driving, yellow- wearing goons), the Sons of Samedi ( Drug-dealing, voodoo powers, machete-wielding, green-wearing university students with guns), and The Brotherhood ( truck-driving, sledgehammer-wielding, tatoo-wearing, monstertruck-loving, mechanics with guns). The story is pretty straightforward, with the occasional plot twist, and alot of dialogue that attempts to be funny , but fails.But the story in 2, is, overall, better than the third, so.... Saints Row 2: 1 point Saints Row the Third: 0
Unlike the third, and more like the PS2-era GTA games, you start out small in every way. You live in a small apartment, you carry only the weapons you managed to scavenge from the dead guards, you carry no money, and your controls only a single neighborhood. But after a couple of missions, you gradually start becoming the protagonist you remember from the end of the first game, or the one you met in the thirdone ... the one packed with rifles, and subs, who lives in a penthouse full of strippers. In my opinion, starting the game this way, is much more fun, than starting out as a rich man. While in the third, you start as a titan, you have actual character progreesion, in the second, so....
Saints Row 2: 2 The Third: 0
The biggest downside to The second ,is that you need to first fill your respect bar to play missions. You can fill your respect bar up as many times as you want, but playing a mission costs you 1 bar worth of respect. How do you fill your respect bar ? You either buy stores, and cribs ( the slow way), or complete activities (faster). If you've played the third, you know what activities are: short arcade-style challenges, such as getting hit by cars, causing destruction, and escorting prostitutes. Some of them are fun,(SOME),but usually you'll want to just move on to the next mission. In the third, you were never forced to regularly play activities ( not including a couple of main missions that force you to atleast try them), but in the second, it becomes the only way to move on the game, so....
Saints Row 2: 2 The Third: 1
The aiming in Saints row 2, is extremely clumsy, just like in the third, even tough it was improved alot in the third one.
The 2: 2 The Third: 2
The physics in the second one might be ridclous as well, but atleast cars aren't flying into the air, after low-impact crashes.
The 2: 3 The Third: 2
There's some bad pop-ins in the second. How bad? Yachts, and SWAT road- blocks, appear right before you're about to crash into them
The 2: 3 The Third: 3
There's parachutes in the second, but you rarely have to use them, and you can't open them until a certain period of time in the air (a pretty long one), so if you manage to survive your skydive, you won't feel as satisfied, as you are when you do it in the third, because it doesn't look nearly as badass.
The 2: 3 The Third: 4
The third plays much faster than the second, thanks to the jumping into cars- trick, and a faster sprint, and reload.
The 2: 3 The Third: 5
Flying aircraft in the second is much more diffucult than in the third. Helicoptres won't stay in the air, and take for ever to turn. The planes refuse to fly higher at times, and their huge metal wings, are suprisingly easy to break.
The 2: 3 The Third: 6
Just like in GTA, you control neihboorhoods, and sometimes, your neighboorhoods are contested by rival gangs, when that happens, you get a phone call, after that, taking back the neighboorhood, becomes tedious. You take it back, by killing all 5-8 tagged enemies, scattered around the neighboorhood. You can't drive through the hood, without attacked by Bazzokas, and 15 cars, and your current GPS target is automatically changed, and set to the nearbiest target. You won't be able to ignore it, very long. The third one also had a 'hood' system, but it was less noticable. Don't get me wrong, managing these neighboorhoods, by buying stores, and protecting them, is a whole lot of fun at times, just a little annoying at times.
Nobody's getting a point for this one.
There's some really neat places in Saints Row 2, that you'll shoot in, including a prison, nuclear plant, hospital, strip club, a replica of a greek temple, a farm, chinatown, a trailer park, and an airport. There's really neat places in the third to, but you don't get to play in them as often as you get to in The second. You meet most of them during stronghold missions, which are just like regular missions, but you don't have to play through them in a particular order, and, to be honest, most of them are better than the regular missions.
The 2: 4 The Third: 6
The saints' games have a really neat feauture, that all open-games should adopt: Cruise control. Activated by a press of the L1 button, it starts driving the car for you, without having to press theX boutton the whole time. You can control the speed of your car during this mode. This makes shoot-and drive missions during single player, so much easier. The visuals in the third are better.
The 2: 4 The Third: 6
The weapons might be more explosive, and awesome, in the third, but I didn't miss the Purple you-know-what and the Apocafist too much, because they were making the game too easy. In the third, there's no challenge at all. Your health is overly generous, you survive plane crashes, and regenerate quickly, I'll be surprised if you ever got into a situation, where you ran out of ammo, during a firefight. The second isn't hard either, in fact, the health bar is still a bit big, but atleast, there's some challenge to be had.
The 2: 5 The Third: 6
The second is a much larger game. the difference might be about 6-10 hours, depending on your skill, and how much time you spend pulling a GTA. The 2: 6 The Third: 6
THe AI''s are still morons, the characters, and the story, miss the greatness of the GTA series, and managing your economy is still awfully shallow, compared to other open-world games
6:6
It's a tie, but for some reason I still enjoyed the second more than the third. Maybe it's the similarity to the PS2 GTA. And yes, it's a clone, but it's a good clone!