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Unfortunately, you cannot simply play through the story - you're required to complete reputation meter-filling activities scattered around Stilwater before you can tackle the next plot-driving mission. These activities include everything from GTA's "steal the cars on this list" heists to shotgun-riding drug trafficking jobs to its most creative mini-games: insurance fraud and mayhem.
Each puts Row's stellar Havok physics system to comic use. For insurance fraud, you'll use the controller's left and right triggers to make your avatar's body go limp, allowing you to throw yourself in front of moving cars. You'll earn fraud money based on distance hurtled, witnesses present, etc. Mayhem missions gift you with unlimited ammunition for either your shotgun, automatic rifle or (if you're lucky) rocket launcher and challenges you to cause as much property damage as possible within a certain time limit. Offing group of pedestrians, shooting passing drivers through their windshields and blowing up cars - then watching said vehicles spit out their flaming doors, fenders and occupants - is as satisfying as it is hilarious.
You'll probably find the latter portion of the campaign a bit tedious; you'll likely have picked out your few favorite mission styles and played them to death by the latter stages of the game, but the reputation meter must be filled. Expect on 20 to 25 hours of story-based gameplay, even after the thrill is gone.
Once you've completed the story, however, Saints Row offers several multiplayer modes for up to 12 players. Sadly, however, the potential for open-world multiplayer action goes largely unfulfilled, as most of the modes pit the teams against each other on small, custom maps that give you no opportunity to run free in Stilwater. Only "Blinged Out Ride," in which your team attempts to collect money in order to upgrade and transport its car around the map before the opposition does, even lets a handful of players pile into a car and go to war with human enemies.
Still, Saints Row gets almost everything right that its fellow contenders for the Grand Theft Auto throne could not. It looks good, plays great, offers plenty to do and it's even funny at times - though in a much cruder way than GTA's more sly, subversively socially relevant sense of humor. While no one may ever crack the GTA Coca-Cola code, Saints Row proves that there's plenty of room in the market for the Pepsis of the world too.
