This is a game with a strange take on reincarnation and secret societies. This isn't Jensen's worst game, but it's close. That said, it's better than most of the stories that adventure games are built upon. There's a lot of guesswork involved with the core minigame, as the in game cues for it are a bit vague. A lot has been made about the graphics, but it's not really all that bad. It's more the art style, the models are relatively detailed but the texturing has an animated look to it, that may turn some people off. The animation is bizarre. The walking animations make everyone walk with a bow legged limp, and the heads crane at weird angles all the time they move giving everyone a creepy broken neck appearance. I'd liken the movements to shambling zombies. The music's well played, but it recycles some of the Gabriel Knight piano music and doesn't always fit. Not as much as Grey Matter, but there's definitely some recycling in the soundtrack. The game design is your typical point and click affair, but suffers from a quirk that punishes the player. I know this isn't the only game to have it but it's annoying. It puts out objects that are quire obviously meant to be inventory items, but won't let you pick them up until the game wants you to, requiring a bit of doubling back. Even more annoying is that the character taunts you with "maybe later," "I don't need that right now," "I don't want to carry that around. I'll come back if I need it later." Finally, and this is very important. SAVE OFTEN. The game has a pause bug that happens on occasion, where you'd perform an action or transition and take a minute or two pause. Rarely but unpredictably, it won't come back. The last 3rd of the game is less forgiving than the first parts. There are some death traps and one dialog sequence where the wrong choices lead to a dead end making it impossible to continue. There's no autosave, so you have to save often or lose your progress.
The game has the most realistic feel of the series, and it's not just the FMV. In addition to the story, your interactions with the characters and environment make you truly feel like a tourist in Germany. It feels real. The puzzles are mostly logical and are built into your surroundings, so nothing feels out of place. The exception being a awkward sequence at the end. It's too bad that the windows version doesn't seem to get along well with modern versions of Windows (though I understand the issue is more with Quicktime than windows). The DOS version works fine through DOSBox for the most part, but if I remember right, the image and sound quality is a bit better under the windows version.
It's an excellent remake, no doubt, and very faithful to the original (which I still have on CD). Graphics are the most obvious, switching out the original game's 2D sprites and background paintings with polygonal environments. You're still using a 2D interface, but the characters move more naturally, with greater detail and the graphics scale better at different resolutions. A definite step up. The interface is similar to the original, but with slight differences. I'm not really sure which is easier to use as both have some weaknesses and frustrations. Both are fine and work for a point and click adventure. The original UI felt more intuitive and responsive, but that might just be a subjective trick of mind. Where the game falls down is in the voice acting and music. The original game's score was far more powerful and I had hoped they would use the same music. In some areas, they redid the music using the same score, and in others, they just replaced the music with a dull generic instrumental. I guess they ran into rights issues or something. Not even the GK theme was rearranged and made worse. It lacks has the orchestral punch it should. The voice acting in the 20th anniversary remake is a huge disappointment. Where there was some criticism on release about Tim Curry's overly exaggerated Cajun drawl, it actually wasn't too bad and never broke and they had well known and experienced actors. Whoever they got to voice GK in the remake keeps slipping in and out of a British accent and comes off as stiff and flat even when it stays in character. Most of the other remake performances are equally as flat and lifeless. The only voice that matches the original in quality of the voice and the acting is the narrator. The Jamaican female narrator is spot on. It's a good recreation, but the original is better in all but graphics.
It has a great story to it, worthy of the first two games. The graphics, and world detail are on par with the best adventures and easily that of the first two. Chapter 1 is very well polished, and was a great start to the game that would make any fan of the series believe all was right with the game world, with only a few continuity errors to mar the experience. The problems arise as they release successive chapters. Later chapters are nowhere near as polished, with glitches and performance problems that make the game chug even on a system that meets the "recommended" specs and with all settings turned down to minimal. The performance hit is particularly noticeable in the large, outside city levels which are major components of chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 1 had smaller locations and fewer, but equally detailed world elements in those locations with a more linear narrative. Chapters 2 and 3 have large city hub locations, and chapter 3 even tries to be less linear and guided than the previous ones. That ambition in design is admirable, but it seems that they either released the chapters without much optimization, or they didn't do as good a job at designing the levels to hide the engine's limitations as they did in chapter 1.
Looks like it might have been an ok GTA3 clone at some point, but the GOG version is a jittery mess. On a system that can handle 2015's AAA titles without any problems at medium to high settings, the GOG version of Saints Row 2 is totally unplayable. The framerate fluctuates all over the place, even during cut scenes, so the game varies from annoying to totally unplayable. Not worth the money or the time to download it.
It has the POTENTIAL to be a very good game. However, it just isn't. I'm guessing all the 5* reviews on here have to be from people who reviewed it after only the first level, when there's a lot of exploration and not a lot of combat. At that point, the game's shortcomings don't become apparent. On the plus side, the general concept, story, character design, graphics are all there. It has the feel of a good console adventure game, with jRPG type characters. On negative? The game doesn't handle the camera positioning and control orientation very well, especially in tight spaces. Later in the game, you'll be crawling through factories and doing a lot of combat against tougher foes. Some that won't take any damage unless taken by surprise. The problem is that the game has a nasty habit of rearranging the camera orientation multiple times or totally spazzing out in tight quarters. This is a pain because you'd be running away or carefully maneuvering a minefield one minute and suddenly find the camera angle and your travel direction reversed -- right back at the invulnerable enemies or into a bunch of mines or a laser field. At other times, when there's a wall anywhere near your character, the camera appears to reposition itself inside the wall and get stuck there -- granting you a view of grey or tan nothing and jumbled polygons and no way to see what's going on. Sometimes this corrects itself, or you can use the "compass" or "camera" view to compensate. Often, the only way is to restart from the last save and hope it goes better the next time. None of this is an issue in the early levels because it's all exploration and relatively open spaces, with no sneaking, traps or invulnerable enemies. Later in the game, however, this is a serious bug. It's a good game, right up until you get half way, then it's all frustration.
