To use a movie analogy: SR is Escape from New York. It's cheesy, it's fun, you'll laugh and get a kick out of it. GTA is The Godfather. Well, thought out, well put together and filled with memorable characters.
I never played through the expansions, but I can't think of a single truly memorable character in
Grand Theft Auto IV outside of maybe Little Jacob. Roman's throughline is NIKO MAH CAHSIN BEEG AMERICAN TITTIES. I can't remember a single thing about the Irish family or the Italian mobsters or anyone else in the game. And, as I said, there's a huge disconnect between plot and game. In the cutscenes, Niko mopes around about his past and how he abhors killing now and he's trying to make a new life and all that, but in gameplay, he's a
god damned psychopath. GTA is at its best when its characters embrace the kind of game it is, which is why
Vice City will always be my favorite of the series: Tommy Vercetti is a bugnuts crazy asshole.
And that's why I prefer
Saints Row 2. Like Vercetti, the Boss is just a megalomaniac psycho who says, "Go raid a rival gang's drug factory? Fuck it, sounds like fun." The game completely embraces its over-the-top premise and runs with it.
I'm not saying
Grand Theft Auto IV is a
bad game. It's just very different from
Saints Row 2, which feels more like the GTAs of the previous generation and gives you plenty of things to do. In
GTAIV, the only thing to really do is the main plot, or go hunting for a hundred fucking pigeons.
Although I wouldn't recommend playing the original
Saints Row over
GTAIV. SR1 is really pretty good for a 2006 sandbox game, but the sequel improves upon it in basically every conceivable way. It's not a
huge quality gap (for example, there's really no reason whatsoever to play
Just Cause when
Just Cause 2 exists), but the original is definitely an inferior game experience.
what's with all the Roman hate here? I loved the moron.
