Saints Row (2006)

Saints Row is a 2006 action-adventure open-world video game developed by Volition and published by THQ. It was released in August 29, 2006 for the Xbox 360 with a PlayStation 3 port in development but cancelled, practically making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. The later sequels would go on to be multi-platform though.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It was one of the first Open World games that allowed you to create your own character with various customizations like your hair, eyes, mouth or even size.
 * 2) Your protagonist, humorously named "The Playa", joins a gang called the 3rd Streets Saints in an effort to clear out all the rival gangs of Stilwater.
 * 3) Stilwater is a huge city to explore around and there are many pedestrians who are doing their own business like eating at restaurants, shopping at stores or simply having to chill on the benches. There are also various collectables for you to find like CDs and Tagging.
 * 4) There are three major rival gangs in Stilwater: The Vice Kings, Westside Rollerz and Los Carnales. Each of them have their own distinct style and businesses like Kingdom Come Records, The Carnales' Drug Dealing or The Rollerz' Street Racing.
 * 5) While the gameplay is most comparable to Grand Theft Auto, there are some aspects that improve upon that such as Regenerating Health, a GPS navigation system and the ability to interact with your phone making it one of the first Open-World games to have an in-game mobile phone.
 * 6) Speaking of the latter, your mobile phone allows you to access certain features such as calling some of your homies, listening to music or customizing it and even calling contact services and billboard numbers like to order food or wait for a taxi cab.
 * 7) There are various missions from each of the three gangs of the game, all of which can be done in any order. You cannot do missions all the time because...
 * 8) Missions are locked behind a meter called Respect. Your Respect meter fills up by completing various side activities scattered throughout the game which, when at least one is completed, allows you to do a mission. In fact, if possible, players can complete all the side activities to fully boost up their Respect system so they can do missions all the way through.
 * 9) Lots of side activities that are actually fun to play (Mayhem, Drug Trafficking, Snatch, Racing etc.).
 * 10) Great graphics for the time, as it showed what the Xbox 360 was capable off.
 * 11) Good story, as it pits three gangs brawling to claim all turfs of Stilwater but having one other gang that wants to get rid of them completely and take control themselves.
 * 12) Great variety of weapons to chose from such as Pistols, SMGs, Shotguns, Rifles, Grenades or RPGs. There's also a huge variety of vehicles to choose from.
 * 13) There are various ways to customize your character's appearance such as clothing, tattoos or jewelry. You can even fully customize your vehicle which could be useful in the Racing activities. However there are features that are not present in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas nor Grand Theft Auto V, such as the player can paint the trim color (the metallic front bumpers from classic cars) and customizable emergency vehicles like police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.
 * 14) Memorable characters like Julius Little, Troy, Dex, Aisha and Johnny Gat. Same goes for the Gangs with The Carnales' Angelo Lopez, The Rollerz' Joseph Price and The Vice Kings' Benjamin King.
 * 15) *It also has a great casting choice such as Mila Kunis as Tanya Winters, Keith David as Julius Little, and Clancy Brown, the voice of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants and Hank Anderson from Detroit: Become Human as Alderman Richard Hughes.
 * 16) Unlike Grand Theft Auto, players are able to recruit members of the 3rd Street Saints to help them out in missions, activities or just roaming around the city.
 * 17) *Adding to this, completing missions and activating will unlock Special Homies that you can call from your phone. Unlike the ones you can usually recruit, these ones can't always be recruited by you since they can sometimes be busy doing their own things like late work shifts or doing laundry.
 * 18) Good licensed soundtrack.
 * 19) There's online multiplayer which allows you to play in a lot of game modes such as:
 * 20) *Protect Tha Pimp: Similar to the VIP mode in Counter-Strike, the game mode relies on protecting the "pimp" on reaching a location.
 * 21) *Blinged Out Ride: The rules is to pimp the team's car by collecting money (killing opponents, collecting chains, destroying opponent's car) and bringing the car to a chop shop to progress.
 * 22) *Gangsta Brawl: A contemporary deathmatch game mode.
 * 23) *Big Ass Chains: A game mode in which resembles the Kill Confirmed mode in Call of Duty games, with the dog tags being replaced with chains.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) As mentioned with WIR #5, it's very similar to Grand Theft Auto's gameplay with many at the time claiming it to be a GTA clone or blatant ripoff. It differentiated itself more in the later sequels though.
 * 2) While some of the activities are fun, they can get a bit repetitive since there's up to 8 levels in each activity (except for Hitman and Chop Shop).
 * 3) The Hitman and Chop Shop activities can be frustrating since it requires players to roam around and kill targets with specific weapons or find vehicles with specific car modifications. Hitman is the worst offender since the targets could sometimes never show up even if you have the right location for them.
 * 4) Despite having Regenerating Health, it could be easy for gang members to drain your health and kill you (though it can be strengthened by completing activities).
 * 5) You can't zoom in whilst aiming.
 * 6) The graphics, while great for 2006 standards, might not have aged that well.
 * 7) Despite a huge variety of vehicles, there are no bikes, boats or helicopters (only used by police) that you can drive. The later sequels would include them though.
 * 8) Artificial difficulty. There are 2 very unnecessarily difficult missions in the game:
 * 9) *The final mission of Los Carnales story arc, What Goes Up..., in which Dex drives the car around the airport like it's a skatepark instead of riding along the hardline and catching up to Angelo in his plane, while several Carnales members in RPGs try to pin you down.
 * 10) *The final mission of the epilogue, Hail to the Chief, in which you have to assassinate Chief Monroe at Mayor Marshall Winslow's funeral while dealing with the FBI, S.W.A.T. teams, and helicopters (5-Star Notoriety) and eventually escape by heading to Forgive & Forget.
 * 11) There aren't as many character customization options compared to the later games. For example, you can't be female, a feature that would be added from Saints Row 2 onwards.

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