The turf mechanic is back and better than ever in SR2, there are numerous hoods to own and once you do, you’ll get a cash payout per day. You can own shops; you can own property and these will also give you a small cash payout as well. If a hood comes under attack you need to go and clear it out, if you don’t, you’ll end up with a hood that doesn’t generate cash until you go there are sort the problem out. You earn hoods by playing missions or doing Strongholds (which are mini-stories in their own right with their own unique theme) – this gives you respect, which you can use to play more missions. Respect is generated from actions in the game world, gang kills, beatdowns and driving like a lunatic doing stunts and jumps. In fact, virtually everything you do earns respect.

Owning property and better clothes gives you a style rank, which can be upgraded to give you a bonus on earned respect. It’s an elegant system that works extremely well and provides a reason to always own the best of everything. There is no doubt about it that just from a pure gameplay point of view, Stillwater is a bigger city with tons to do, so much to explore and so many hidden goodies to unlock. It would take a big review to tag it all, and I have a feeling I’ve not really scratched the surface. I’ve played a chunk of the story and I’ve hammered out some of the multiplayer, including co-operative gameplay and adversarial/team based.

Talking of co-operative play and moving nicely into this part of the review. If you’ve read my previous reviews you’ll notice that I love co-op, in all shapes and forms. SR2 delivers a huge chunk of co-op goodness that allows two players to tackle the story, the in-game activities and diversions or just rip off their clothes and streak a bunch of people on the boardwalk armed with a katana each. (Yes, we tried that one Ed)

You can play the multiplayer modes in System Link or across Xbox Live and the experience has only a slight lag now and then over Live. It’s also fantastic fun and you can save at any time, so can your friend, so things you earn in co-op gaming can be transferred to the single player and it’s a great way to build up cash. Of course Volition have made sure that the enemies are ramped up for co-op, there are more of them, more challenge and the health bars are bigger for your characters.

It’s all nicely balanced so far.

I could go on about the co-op for quite a while, but we’re far from done yet.

The controls for the game are simple enough and they’re responsive, the car handling is a little on the arcade style and you might prefer the GTA IV car physics in the long run. SR2 has cruise control however and it is quite useful for when you need to aim and shoot at a vehicle in front of you whilst maintaining a constant speed. There are planes, watercraft and helicopters as well, so you’re not spoilt for choice. A welcome addition to the game is an improved gun combat, hand to hand system with combos and the ability to take human shields to either execute or to throw in amusing ways.

Saints Row 2 has managed to push the bar for fun open-ended sandbox worlds in terms of graphical frame-rate, there is some pop-in (it’s to be expected) however it’s hardly noticeable even at speed. The graphics are good, they’re not cutting-edge but they are functional and superbly animated (we’ll come to that later on as well) especially in the cut-scenes. The day/night cycle, weather and atmospheric effects are top notch and Stillwater has been brought to life with an incredible level of detail. You can see the city is a labour of love from every trash infested back alley to the pristine towers that are now in Saints Row itself. It’s obvious that the designers have taken there time here.

There are some expansive interiors and the load times for these are almost negligible, the whole thing is seamless and looking out of the windows of a crib onto Stillwater as it transitions from day to night is simply breathtaking at times, especially if a thunderstorm is raging on outside. Moving on to the animations in the game, they are the key to bringing the city to life and there are a massive amount of spot (or Ambient) animations in SR2. Every non player character (NPC) has various action nodes that litter the city, around 20,000 are hand-placed by the developers and they include things like fishing at a boardwalk, smoking a cigarette and drinking a 40oz at the corner of a street to name only a few.