16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's a good game once you overcome the bugs, May 28 2010
By FordGT90Concept - Published on Amazon.com
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Saints Row 2 (DVD-ROM)
I won't say much on gameplay because that topic is pretty well covered. It is a lot like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas except that all vehicles and your character are heavily customizable. You can do pretty much whatever you want in the game just like the Grand Theft Auto series. The game is a lot of fun once you get it working right.
There's two major problems with this game that aren't obvious:
1) You need a tri-core or better processor. On a dual core processor or less, it is nearly impossible to drive at full speed due to lag.
2) This game has timing issues on Windows 7. You can use Saints Row 2 Power tools to fix this: [...]
Note that even the boxed retail copy of this game requires Steam to run. Don't be surprised when Steam asks you for your serial number instead of the usual installer.
It has at least 35 hours of single player game time if you do everything. It offers cooperative and other multiplayer modes for online (GameSpy ID) and LAN networking.
Once you get it working right, I would rate this game 8/10. It gets docked one point for requiring Steam and one point for having low bit-rate music.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works great for the right computer, Jun 7 2011
By stcrowe - Published on Amazon.com
Okay, first let me say that Saints Row 2 (SR2) is an awesome game... just read the Xbox 360 reviews if you do not believe me. Now let me tell you that the PC version is a suckage port by suckage company, and therefore the game will run laggy on almost every PC that does match the 3.2 GHz of the xbox 360.
Fortunately, if you have a BA computer and install Gentlemen of the Row mod (google it) then the game should run pretty smooth. I was the lucky few who happen to have 3.2 GHz computer (AMD Phenom II X4 BE), and the game runs smooth as butter.
So before you buy make sure you have a beefy processor and install the Gentlemen of the Row mod. These two things should let you play the game, or you could just wait till SR3 comes out, which is not a crappy port by a crappy company.
Just FYI my specs:
3.2 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 BE
4gb Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not fun, Feb 11 2012
By Atomic Grrrrrl - Published on Amazon.com
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Saints Row 2 (DVD-ROM)
I bought Saints Row 2 because I couldn't afford Saints Row 3 and had heard how it was the better out of both games. Judging from all the gameplay video I'd seen on YouTube where SR3 looked like a blast, I figured I couldn't really lose by buying SR2 if it was indeed much better.
Big mistake. This game was so frustrating to play on PC, an utter nightmare. The cars have no real handling and the camera whips around way too much, which makes for a disorienting experience, especially during crucial car chases. 9 times out of 10 when trying to complete missions or activities, I was spending more time trying to adjust to driving, wonky camera angles, and the controls than I was actually trying to play the game. Navigating the game's UI was also annoying, because the buttons chosen to scroll through all the menu options were nonsensical. For example, when you scroll down vertical menu options, you can use the up and down arrow keys. But when you scroll through the ones that are laid out horizontally, you have to then use the Shift Key.
I thought using a controller would help the situation, but it didn't. Not only did my Logitech gamepad not really work (it caused the camera to keep spinning around), the game's "tooltips" were still for the keyboard. So if I came across an action I had to perform, the game would still say "Press E to open door" or "Press R to pick up barstool."
Making matters worse were the game saves. Even though missions have checkpoints, they're only for when you fail *during* gameplay; they're not for when you actually save the game. So this forces you to keep repeating missions over and over again. For example, say you have a mission that has 5 objectives. You're finally up to Objective 5 and being that it's the last part, it's the hardest one to complete. You get your butt handed over and over again to you and like most people, get tired, save the game, and quit. Guess what happens when you load the game you saved? You start the mission all over again from the beginning, not from the mission checkpoint. Oh, joy.
I tried to tough out all of these problems because SR2 does seem like a really funny, interesting game. However, I couldn't get past the issues. The more I played, the less fun I was having. I knew it was time to uninstall when I looked at my stats and saw that I had only completed 6% of the game. SR2 had felt like such a chore by then I thought I had really completed something like 20%. The idea that I still had over 90% of the game left was so discouraging that I just uninstalled it right then and there.
Keep in mind that my review isn't necessarily for the game itself, but the PC version of it. I don't doubt that on a console it's probably easier to control and more fun to play. But on PC, forget it. The driving and controls sap whatever joy there is to be had with this game.