I’d seen advert for RFG, but nothing about them really made me think, wow that’s something new I really want to play it. As soon as someone mentioned you can destroy the environment and best of all you can do it with a giant mech if you so wish, I was in there. The game is basically a standard open world free roaming job, which is great, but the real icing on the cake is that you can destroy pretty much any structure and object, buildings, bridges, vehicles etc. You play the part of a explosives expert of sorts so you start of equipped with remote explosives and a big old mining hammer type thing, both of which are capable of levelling structures in their own way. Vehicles can also be driven through and into building causing damage. Once a building becomes structurally unstable they usually collapse in a fairly realistic way. My favourite structure to topple at the moment are the giant  smoke stacks.

I haven’t actually finished the game yet, but i’d say it definitely gets better as it progresses, I recently even found a smaller walker called a “Walker Light” which even included a jet pack. My only critisisms at the moment are that the walkers rarely come into the game at least up until the point I’m at, but I’m guessing that’s to stop it from becoming too easy, the cover system is also very limited and tends to be more difficult to use than just standing behind something and manually ducking, also the character and the vehicles find it very hard to climb most hills, which is strange for a game where the landscape is made up of steep ridges and hills which can provide excellent cover for an attack.

Check out the video below for examples of the geomod destuctive environment and how it adds to the gameplay.

I was one of the people that bought the first Saints Row, it was the first sandbox game I’d played on the 360 and possibly the first of that genre on the platform. GTA IV was a long way off at the time and so it seemed like a good decision, and i think for the most part it was. Saints Row 1 was nothing special but it was entertaining enough.

So now GTA 4 has come and mostly gone (roll on the DLC) and it was pretty awesome, it looked good, it played well and I found it very hard to put down. I even took the launch day afternoon off work so i didn’t have to stare at it on my desk until 17.30.

So along comes Saints Row 2, from the screen shots and videos it looked very similar to the first outing, the graphics weren’t up to the GTA IV standard but apparently it’s not all about graphics anyway Last week i actually purchased Saints Row 2 (it was my birthday after all). There’s loads of differences between it and GTA and I don’t think there’s much point is comparing the two, however the one thing I wold say is that Saints Row 2 is 100% fun, whereas GTA had certain elements that were incrediliby boring and pointless (dates, pool and bowling). Saints Row 2 has loads of activities and I’m sure they’ll not all be to everyone’s taste they’re all fun and that’s what gamning is about at the end of the day isn’t it?