Most Improved Franchise. Worth: $25
based on 360 retail
Did the developers ever imagine Gas Station Hockey?
Incredible mayhem, good weapons, solid controls and camera, great voice-acting, good support characters, decent story. Fantastic customization options for player character and vehicles. Our self-invented mini-game: Gas Station Hockey.
Minuses: The difficulty balance is all over the place, to the point where the game can feel broken.
I played the original Saints Row and it was dreadful. Really hard, no checkpoints, long pre-mission drives to do over and over, and then you die at the end. What crap! I couldn't believe it when SR2 was announced, and I vowed never to play it. Then, three years later, a helpful person at GameStop reco'd SR2 to me as a fun co-op game. It was only $17 so I took the chance. It turns out that SR2 is a good game, period.
Gone is the original game's tedious no-checkpoint mission structure. The missions in SR2 can have their frustrating moments like any game, but generally the checkpoints are well-placed and contribute to maintaining positive progress through the jobs.
The exception to this happy balance are the semi-optional Activities. Some of the Activities are super-easy walk-overs, while some of them are as controller-crushingly difficult as Gears of War on Insane. I classify the Activities as semi-optional because the rewards for completing them can be very valuable. Earning unlimited ammo, invulnerability to damage from falling, and reduced police notoriety all contributed to easing my path through the rest of the game. But actually earning these helpful perks could be an absolute bitch.
I assumed that playing with my co-op partner would help smooth out the difficulty, but that has not always been the case. While some of the Activities are easier with two people, some of them are programmed to get even harder in co-op. This is a shamefully poor decision by the game designers.
With that said, most of the regular story missions get much easier and more fun in co-op. What also gets fun in co-op is coming up with crazy self-assigned activities like Gas Station Hockey.
Gas Station Hockey was invented by one of my buddies back when we were playing Midnight Club. It's simple: you drive your car into a gas station and blow it up. The explosions in Midnight Club would send you flying across the street. It was pretty fun.
When my co-op partner and I tried this in SR2 we almost stopped breathing because the gas station's explosion launched our car -- with us still in it -- 110 feet in the air and we landed three blocks away. When we finally stopped laughing we tried it again. This time we got 125 feet and four blocks. Thus was born our primary reason for playing SR2.
We've spent the last three weeks playing SR2, and during every session we put in some Gas Station Hockey time. At this point we've found the best and worst cars for flying (cop cars are terrific, big heavy trucks aren't), and the best high-speed approaches to each gas station. Our records include: Distance, 850 feet; Height, 298 feet; Flips: 1,250 degrees. Most of the time our characters remain in the vehicle for the whole flight, but sometimes we get ejected on launch. My character's record "Windshield Cannon" is 980 feet.
We've had plenty of "Ghost Rider" flights where the car bursts into flames and explodes in mid-air. The trick is to throw yourself out of the car before it goes off. Here's where the no-damage-from-falling perk comes in real handy because many of these self-ejections happen at 200 feet or higher.
A sub-activity has become driving through a mechanic's garage and instantly repairing our shattered wrecks without slowing down. My partner invented this one night by mistake, and it's become a regular part of the action.
We've learned how to aim our launches by hitting the gas tanks at different angles. We've landed on top of ten-story buildings, in the middle of highway overpasses, and on top of moving tractor trailer trucks. One time we landed on top of a moving train which promptly crushed us into an exploding paste. It was awesome.
On Mars, no one can hear you yawning.
