Immediately the best thing Saints Row does is give you the opportunity to completely create the character you'll be spending the next 40+ hours with. In fact, the character creation options are so indepth that you can easily knock away 30 - 60 minutes fine tuning everything from the angle of his brow, to the width of his chin before setting his muscle/fat ratio and heading into the middle of Stillwater. After naively stumbling into a turf war - that's gang A trying to take out gang B - and getting a gun put to your head, you meet (and are saved by) Julius, the leader of the Saints. He likes your style and asks you to join him at the church for a gang meeting. Upon doing so you find yourself being canonized into the group (viz: trying not to be killed by the group).

The game seems to flow well from start to end and after every mission you will know exactly where you need to be, or exactly what needs to be done to progress. After being canonized, Troy (voiced by Michael Rappoport) informs you that you need to get yourself a gun and thankfully you have enough starting cash to ensure that that happens. After picking up your first gun you are introduced to the task of taking down some members of a rival gang. The more missions you complete and gang members you take out the more respect you earn from your gang. The higher the respect the more followers you can have at anyone time. After being canonized you have one, but soon enough you'll be able to drag a good following into battle with you.

After taking out the first set of rival gang members you are told to grab a car and head off, and this is where you are introduced to the vehicular side of the game. Controls while you are inside the car are a mixed bag. Most gamers will no doubt be used to using the R trigger as an accelerator and the L trigger to brake/reverse and while the option to change to this layout is there it does make driving and shooting simultaneously almost impossible. Instead, the default in car controls use the A button to accelerate, X to brake/reverse and the R trigger to shoot. While aiming (done with the right stick) and shooting becomes almost stupidly easy - the controls just work so well - jumping into a car and holding down A seems almost counter-intuitive. So what's the middle ground? For the missions that have you in the passenger seat for an on-rails style shooting mission, quickly change over to the R = shoot control scheme, unless of course you're happy with digital acceleration because then you'd be silly to choose any other control.

Saints Row doesn't do many things wrong, but the one area that could have had some kind of improvement is the vehicle selection. Sure you can steal and drive any number of quad wheeled vehicles, ranging from beaten up rusty demolition cars to ambulances, police cars, SWAT vans, 18 wheelers and construction worker diggers. But where are the motorbikes, the scooters, the boats in the surrounding waters or even a helicopter or two. While planes are forgivably absent due to having a much smaller map than San Andreas, the fact that the police can chase you down with a helicopter is somewhat frustrating.

While most of the story missions follow a formula; shoot rival members, chase rival members, blow up rival members, destroy rival members hideout, it's the sub-missions that make you feel like the time you're spending in Stillwater is time well spent. If after completing a few story missions you feel you need a change of pace, go visit your friend down in Chinatown who will give you a list of people he needs killed. Along with a list of their names and photos of the individuals you are told by what means each needs to be offed. It could be anything from chucking a hand grenade under the feet of the guy that's dressed as a hotdog, or maybe you need to slide a knife into the speedo-wearing crazy you found sitting at the bus stop. Sure they aren't the nicest ways of dealing with people, but it definitely adds a lot to a game when you are looking for specific character traits in a city. To make things easier if you get close to them they will show up on your map as a small crosshair and the same goes for the Chop Shop sub-missions.