It's a blatant rip-off of GTA's central idea, but the idea has been ripped off by people who understand that what made GTA fantastic wasn't just stealing cars and thumping people, but humour and character. It's a game that wears its heart on its sleeve. Does this look a) ridiculous and unrealistic or b) really good fun? Or the time I walked into a stadium to discover a fully functional Destruction Derby, complete with customisable scrapyard vehicles. For all the visible seams, I'm happier talking about fun stuff, like the time I hijacked a car with a passenger still inside, and found myself playing a hidden mini-game where I had to evade the police without letting him escape, until he was so terrified that he offered to pay a ransom.
If you look past that, though, you've got approach number two: it's the first sandbox game since Vice City where 3am comes and goes, and for me, Saints Row 2 is a diamond, no matter how roughly hewn. It's even got a little bit of screen-tearing and the occasional frame-rate drop. If you want to nit-pick Saints Row 2, you won't have a hard time doing so. Or you might complain that enemy AI and other road users are fairly simple and dim, or that the radio stations are understocked to the extent that the '80s station seems to play The Final Countdown at least three times an hour. You'd probably go on to mention, with faintly pursed lips, that the animation messes up regularly - with characters "popping" out of cars when the doors don't have space to open, for instance.
It's got a huge city for you to explore, but compared with the deftly filtered visual richness of something like Grand Theft Auto IV (a comparison that's going to be hauled out a lot, I'm afraid), it looks dated. You could talk, in technical terms and a tone reminiscent of a slightly disappointed maths teacher, about how the graphics aren't terribly impressive. If you want to talk about Saints Row 2 (right place to be, innit), you've got two different approaches open to you.
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