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I've been playing Saint's Row almost nightly this week, which is sorta unusual for me. What with the Rocky Mountain News, Kotaku and my family I don't usually have or take the time to play a game...nightly.... till 2 a.m.
But Saint's Row has hooked me. I'm not crazy about the graphics, they're sorta cartoony and that bugs me, but the rest of the single player game is golden.
SR is essentially a next-gen GTA. But there are two things that makes the game more addictive for me: the amazing artificial intelligence and the unbelievable rag doll physics.
It's not that the bad guys are exceptionally clever or use good tactics, actually they sort of suck, it's that everyone in this world seems to have a much higher level of AI than I've ever seen before.
Walking around on my home turf some woman walked by me muttering something about my attitude, so I pistol whipped her of course.
After I knocked her to the ground I was about to walk away, but a fellow banger (your gang's members are all over the place, this one was just walking down the street) ran up and started kicking the hell out of the woman, screaming that the woman needs to show me some respect.
If you whip out your gun and fire a shot or two, people run, cower, beg for their lives. Some even run over and try to stop you. It's amazing.
I noticed early on in the game that you can hop onto the hood of a car and car surf. "This will be fun," I thought. But a few seconds into my ride and the driver just started freaking out, screaming, swerving all over the road. She was basically acting like you or I would if someone just hopped onto our car with a gun and expected to go for a ride.
It's this across the board AI that makes the game, and running around inside it, so much fun.
I know rag doll physics are nothing new, but the way this game uses them is just hilarious.
The first time I noticed something different was when I got into a head-on collision with a convertible. Yeah, the car buckled. Yeah, glass broke. But then something else happened. The front passenger in the other car shot through the windshield and the backseat passenger went flying over my car.
And running into people, they don't just fall over or get knocked to the side. They fly, arms flailing, legs at painfully odd angles, across the screen to land in crumpled heaps.
Sweet lord, this could be it's own game.
The online modes are just as addictive. Volition has done a lot of things to make it tons of fun.
First off, the modes are really interesting. There's Gangsta Brawl, Big Ass Chains, Protect the Pimp and Bling My Ride.
Most of these are modes you've seen in other games with a gangsta twist. But whenever you can pimp slap someone in a game it's all good.
The game also supports gangs. You can form a gang and get members to join in. I've formed the Kotaku gang for those of you interested. Currently it consists of me. (My gamertag is crecente if you want to hit me up in the game.)
The best part is that most upgrades to your character's appearance is done by earning cash in the ranked matches and then going shopping. I'm saving for some pimp sunglasses right now.
Unfortunately, Saints Row suffers from some of the worst lag I've seen in an Xbox 360 game. It makes the modes nearly unplayable. Every single game I've played online to date has suffered from this problem.
Fortunately, THQ have already said they are working on a patch.
We are working hard on the update now. Here are a few (but not all) of the issues we expect it to address:
Improvements to the way the game handles packet loss and bandwidth management between players. This will address the issues commonly cited as "lag", and general synchronization problems between the players' clients (vehicles/players warping around, etc).
The system for rating a player's quality-of-service has been improved, and made less conservative. This means you'll see many more matches with 10-12 player limits.
Fix for the "clothes stealing" exploit in multiplayer
Fix for widescreen formatting issues in certain resolutions
Changes to Matchmaking phase, to get players in the game faster
At this time, we have no ETA on when the update will be available. We want it to be available soon, but we also want to make sure it addresses as many issues as possible.Microsoft provides product updates to anyone with a Live connection, even without a paid membership.
Get it done already, I need to get me some big ass chains.
