When playing co-op, you’ll be able to go through the single player campaign like normal. There are changes to some missions and activities though allowing for a more joint experience. For example, with the trailblazing activity I described earlier where I rode an ATV with a flame suit, one person drives the ATV while the other sits on the back and tosses Molotov Cocktails around causing more havoc. The roles at what each person does switches up though adding some variety and not having one person stuck at one job.
The host will designate the difficulty and the amount of story completed but anyone can join anyone else’s game. I’ll give an example of how a difference in story completion is handled. Say one person is 75% done with a game and a person that’s only 10% through jumps in. Now all the inventory from the saved game that both people choose carries into the co-op experience so you’ll have access to anything you have picked up until that point that’s specific for each player. Now let’s say the person farther ahead chooses a mission that the 10% person hasn’t gotten yet. Both will be able to complete the mission without any problems and progress in that mission will be saved on both machines. Now when the person who’s farther behind finally catches up to that mission he finished with the other, an option will appear allowing you to skip the mission since you already completed it cooperatively. That’s a great feature and it lets people go through the game quicker but not have to do it linearly if they are playing co-op.
There are two modes unique to co-op though that was shown and it happens when one player kills the other. The player that dies can initiate two co-op only modes called Death Tag and Cat and Mouse. Death Tag is a straight deathmatch between the two players to see who is the best and allows you to earn money for winning. Cat and Mouse puts one player in a helicopter and another in a sports car. The car’s job is to touch all the checkpoints on the road while the helicopter’s job is to destroy the car. The winner is whoever achieves their objectives first and roles are reversed for each round. If I am not mistaken, each co-op only activity goes to three rounds and can be canceled at anytime. It’s a nice little side thing you can do but don’t have to if you don’t want to.
When one player goes down, the other player has 30 second to get to the downed player and revive him. It’s a feature that’s appearing a lot in lately seen in a recent title like Castle Crashers and of course Gears of War.
Now going through the story in co-op will let you grab both single player and multiplayer achievements at the same time. All cut scenes will involve your own created character and you can even skip the cut scene provided that the other player agrees to it as well.
I played the PS3 version for this portion of the event and I have to say playing co-op adds so much more fun to Saints Row 2. It’s not to say single player isn’t fun but having a competent ally really adds a lot more to the experience. It’s definitely a feature that I am really happy to see and it looks like it’s really polished as well with much thought into making it play well. Yes there are also other multiplayer features which will be detailed later but the co-op feature in Saints Row 2 really sold it for me. By the way, SIXAXIS is used on the PS3 for controlling planes, helicopters, and boats but can be turned off.
With the 99% finished build I played, I did run into a few bugs here and there. There are still some AI issues where they would get stuck in an area while trying to get to me. I had one problem where I was riding on a motorcycle and slammed into a highway sign with lights underneath. The motorcycle got stuck under the lights and when I tried to climb back on it seemed like I clipped through the ground as all I saw were grey polygons. After a little finagling I was able to finally get myself back up onto the street. Another thing I saw was one of the enemies was running on a pile of trash and I couldn’t hit him. He didn’t fire back either but all my bullets would just cause puffs of smoke on him. Finally the enemy was able to free himself from the trash and eventually I was able to kill him. A few other small issues were also seen but nothing else that seems to be a showstopper. The game never crashed on me though so that’s a definite plus for the build.
Coming away from this event by THQ, I really liked what Saints Row 2 had to offer and I think it’s a really solid and polished third person open world action game. There’s plenty to do and plays well while offering a large variety of activities to participate in. Expect a full review of the game when the final product is out.
Finally, I like to thank Craig of THQ, Scott of Volition, and the others responsible for being such wonderful hosts.
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