Saints Row

Saints Row is a 2006 action-adventure game developed by Volition and published by THQ exclusively for the Xbox 360. It was released in North America on August 29, 2006, followed by an Australian release two days later and a European release on September 1, 2006. Set within the fictional city of Stilwater, based on Detroit, the single-player story follows a player-created character who joins the 3rd Street Saints gang after they save his life, and helps them rise to prominence by undermining enemy criminal syndicates, while slowly building up his own reputation within the gang.

Description

At the beginning of the game, players create their character through a system that allows them to customize his ethnicity, fitness, face and hairstyle. After completing the first mission, players are then given free roam over the game’s open world, the fictional city of Stilwater, which is modeled after Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago. The game makes use of third-person view, which allows players to freely rotate the camera around their character. Players can run, jump, swim or utilize cars to navigate the world. They may also access the character customization system again at a plastic surgeon to apply cosmetic changes to their character.

They can further alter the appearance of their character at clothing stores, tattoo parlors, barbers and jewelers, and tune vehicles at chop shops. A personal garage can be used to store customized vehicles, and vehicles that have been destroyed or lost can be redeemed for a cash fee. In the bar introductory and epilogue mission sequences, missions in Saints Row are divided between three linear story arcs which can be progressed through simultaneously or one by one, each with the objective of extinguishing a rival gang.

Players engage in these missions at their leisure, but a prerequisite to instigate a mission is that they have filled up a bar on their Respect meter to allow them to unlock and play it. Respect is a currency earned by completing activities, which are mini-games that are scattered across the world and have increasing levels of difficulty. Missions and activities also accrue a player’s cash income, which can be spent on goods and services such as weapons and clothes. Should players fail a mission, they may instantly reattempt it without incurring a loss of their Respect points. Cinemas scattered throughout the game world allow players to replay missions an unlimited number of times.

Players use hand-to-hand combat, melee weapons, firearms, and explosives to fight rival gangs and the police. A free aiming reticule appears on the screen while players have weapons equipped. Weapons are accessed by a “weapon wheel” inventory system that appears on the screen as players hold down a button. Each of the eight slots on the wheel corresponds to different types of weapons, such as submachine guns and pistols. Players may only carry one of each type of weapon at a time. Saints Row makes use of regenerative health, but this process can be accelerated by eating fast food items.

A “wanted level” system governs the response by opposing forces to players’ aggressive actions. In the head-up display, surrounding the minimap, there are two bars; the topmost bar represents rival gangs and the bottommost bar represents the police. As players incite opposing forces, the corresponding bar fills up. Each bar filled is represented by the provoked enemy’s logo, be it a star to represent the police or a “gang sign” to represent an enemy gang. One bar of notoriety will result in non-lethal retaliation. However, two, three, four or five bars of notoriety will result in a gradually increased lethal response. Notoriety depletes over time, but enemies will continue to be aggressive towards players until the meter recedes.

Players may remove their notoriety instantly by utilizing drive-through confessional booths, visiting plastic surgeons, or inputting cheat codes. If arrested by the police, players will reappear outside a police station with a small bounty collected from their earnings. Saints Row opens in 2006 in Stilwater, a city suffering from gang warfare at the hands of three distinct criminal syndicates: the Vice Kings, an African American gang that primarily earns revenue from strip clubs, brothels and record labels; Los Carnales, a Hispanic drug cartel that dominates the narcotics trade and gun-running; and the Westside Rollerz, a gang consisting of Caucasian and Asian members who operate on the lucrative underground racing club.

The player character (Kenny Blank, Joe Camareno, or Andrew Kishino), a random bystander, becomes caught in a crossfire between the three gangs, but is saved by Troy Bradshaw (Michael Rapaport), a member of a smaller multiracial gang called the 3rd Street Saints which is dedicated to controlling violence in Stilwater. Saints leader Julius Little (Keith David) initiates the player into the gang and has said initiate reclaim the district of Saint’s Row, before assigning this new member to work under his top lieutenants, Johnny Gat (Daniel Dae Kim), Dexter “Dex” Jackson (JAQ) and Lin (Tia Carrere), in wiping out each rival gang.

Gat focuses on hitting operations owned by the Vice Kings, including faking the death of their key asset – Gat’s girlfriend and famed R&B singer Aisha (Sy Smith) – which culminates in the gang’s leader, Benjamin King (Michael Clarke Duncan), being betrayed by his underlings for refusing to respond to the Saints’ actions. After Julius has him rescued, King agrees to retire his gang in exchange for the Saints’ help in killing his traitorous successor: former Vice Kings madam Tanya Winters (Mila Kunis).

Meanwhile, Dex focuses on the Carnales by having the player help the Saints take over their drug operations and ultimately kill their leaders, brothers Hector (Joaquim de Almeida) and Angelo Lopez (Freddy Rodriguez), while also securing a deal with the gang’s chief Colombian supplier, Manuel Orejuela (Carlos Ferro). Concurrently, Lin works undercover amongst the Rollerz, eventually learning that the gang is led by street racer Joseph Price (Gregory Sims) and his uncle, wealthy private attorney William Sharp (David Carradine). After Sharp deduces that Lin is a mole and has her killed, the player exacts revenge by killing Sharp and Price.