In Saints Row, you'r the tough guy thug who has to do alot of bad stuff to get ahead in life. Like one of those Shakespeare plays, but with more bling bling.

Getting back to the review, Saint's Row has you as a gang member who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (like there's any other place for gangsters to be in). First thing that happens is you're surrounded by opposing gangs and are about to get wasted. Luckily for you, you got backup coming and they save your hide in time. You escape before the cops arrive. So begins your life as a gangster. Your job is to make your gang, the Saint's "Numba One" and yourself their king. So let's start.

But even before that, you got the customize your character. You got skin color, hair color, face shaping, and even bodyshaping (no female character though). Which is a real shame since this could have been the first game that featured a female gangster as the main character. But the body modifications are nice. Only problem is they have no affect on how you move. So fat people are just the same as skinny people, and everybody moves like John Cena. And there's plenty to add to your character from rings to shades to all the cool clothes. And yes, there's the pimp suit for all your playas. You can also change your character's appearance by going to the plastic surgeon. No we're not kidding about that. It's a good feature for those who care about appearances. And there's plenty of weird outfits for you people who like weird outfits. Doesn't really change the gameplay though.

Once you create your badass guy, your job is to rule over your turf. You do that by going on missions to gain respect. And newer missions open up as you gain more respect. So really, your job is gaining respect.

But how does one gain respect you ask? In thug fashion, you cheat, lie, steal, and kill. There's missions for all of them. The lying is interesting. It involves getting hit by cars to collect the insurance money. Although we think they did that just to show off the ragdoll physics engine. The stealing and killing, not that different from other games in this genre. It's more of the same. You have to perform steals similar to real life. That means pointing a gun at the person and telling them to open the safe in the back. Kinda boring. And there's always the standard gang turf wars. The AI is smart enough to use cover instead of just standing there while you shoot them.

When it comes to weapons, Saint's Row is just meh. You get your standard set of pistols, shotguns, automatics, and rocket launcher. And yes, there's thrown weapons. The aiming is freeform. You actually have to point the gun, although your character aims kinda slow, and driving and aiming is not so easy.

You also can fight hand to hand with a few combos. Although the fighting feels kinda cheesy. Like watching a bad kungfu flick. This is no DOA or any other fighting game. Think of those old 2D beatemups you played 10 years.

The City is huge, but it's just a plain old city with a train system and nothing really outstanding in terms of monuments. You're a city boy for the entire game. No boats, planes, or even motorcyles. And forget about bicycles. Cars are also sparse. There's just not enough of them on the roads. But you can mod your cars, just without changing the performance. So in other words, if you like stealing cars and living in the big city, this is the game for you. Don't expect a whole lot more than that. The models are varied. The women are huge, and come in all shapes too. It's much better than other games where everybody has the same body types. The ones on the left are our favorite shaped women. But they got the overweight ones too for all you chubby chasers.

Cars handling is closer to real life than most games. Don't expect a cheap truck to do anything other than crash. Luckily, there's plenty of high performance vehicles. There's also plenty of ways to crash them, the most annoying of which is getting tossed through the front glass window in a collision. Seems fun, but wait until you're in a race. There are jumps which are great when you take the ragdoll physics into account.

There's a plot that slowly builds. We won't give you the details, but it's nothing you haven't seen before in games like this. The fun is in doing the missions, not completing the game. And it's a short game. We finished in 48 hours and completed plenty of side jobs. It's kinda short, so you'll either be spending time playing online or just doing side missions. If you're going online, be forewarned or the army of preteens that will probably be waiting for you.

Graphics are solid 360 with great textures. Unfortunately, the characters seem to have low polygon count, almost cartoon-like, but the clothes and city give the game style. We wish the cars were a little more detailed though, but the paint jobs are shiny and they explode real nice. Overall, this game matches Oblivion very closely in environmental graphics, but with more basic character models.

This game has solid ambient sound you would expect from a big city. Although the music selection is awful. But that's just our taste and we don't lower scores for background music unless there's only a few tracks. Fortunately, Saints' Row has a large selection of background music from various unkown and unwanted artists.

Overall, Saints Row provides a solid gangster simulator experience better than most that try this type of gaming genre. Not really that deep, and most of it's been done, but Saint's Row does it with style and is the best (and only) game of its kind for the 360 right now. Considering the 360 competition, Saint's Row is a solid buy for your money.