Saints Row 2 arrived in October 2008 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a Microsoft Windows version following in January 2009 and a Linux release much later in April 2016. Volition developed it. THQ published it. It is the sequel to 2006’s Saints Row and the second entry in the series, and it is the game where the franchise stopped being an also-ran and became something with its own pulse.
Trailer, via gamingbits.
Waking Up in Stilwater
The premise is a jailbreak and a revenge story at once. Five years after the yacht explosion that closed the first game, the player’s custom character wakes from a coma in the infirmary of Stilwater’s maximum security prison, having undergone extensive plastic surgery. Carlos Mendoza — voiced by Joe Camareno — is the brother of a former Saint, and he springs the Boss from custody.
What the Boss finds outside is a city that moved on. The 3rd Street Saints are disbanded. Most members were arrested by Troy Bradshaw, voiced by Michael Rapaport, an undercover cop who infiltrated the gang as a lieutenant and has since become chief of police, using his influence to protect the imprisoned Saints.
Three new outfits have carved up Stilwater in the Saints’ absence:
- The Brotherhood, a metalhead gang running guns
- The Sons of Samedi, a Haitian Vodou gang that produces and sells drugs
- The Ronin, a Japanese bosozoku gang built on gambling and porn
Above all of them sits the Ultor Corporation, which redeveloped the Saints’ old Saint’s Row district into a pristine commercial and residential area — and has further plans for the city.
The Boss and the Lieutenants
The player rebuilds from nothing. The Boss escapes with Carlos, then frees former lieutenant Johnny Gat, voiced by Daniel Dae Kim, from his trial. From there the Boss recruits Carlos, Gat’s acquaintances Pierce Washington (Arif S. Kinchen) and Shaundi (Eliza Dushku) as lieutenants, and sets up a new headquarters in a hotel wrecked by an earthquake.
The player takes the title of “The Boss” and declares war on the three gangs, assigning Gat, Carlos, Pierce and Shaundi to dig into each rival. Carlos takes the Brotherhood, led by Maero. That structure — four lieutenants, three enemy gangs, one corporation — is the spine of the campaign, and it holds.
The Boss is customizable, and the voice cast reflects that: Charles Shaughnessy, Kenn Michael, Alex Mendoza, Katie Semine, G. K. Bowes and Rebecca Sanabria all recorded the lead role.
Respect, Minigames and Side Work
Saints Row 2 is an open-world action game played from a third-person perspective. Its world is Stilwater, expanded from the first game with new locations and split across two main islands. You move on foot or by vehicle.
Missions do not unlock on a straight line. They cost “Respect” points, a currency you earn by finishing minigames and side-missions. Completing missions drives progression, but you can do them at your own pace. Fail one and you can retry instantly. Checkpoints save progress inside each mission, and missions can be replayed from locations in the world.
The side content is where the game’s sense of humor lives. You can roam, shop, and run the minigames and side-missions, or simply cause havoc in Stilwater and eat the violent response from the authorities. You can recruit friendly gang members to fight alongside you. A mobile phone handles calls to friends and businesses — and cheat codes, though entering cheats disables Xbox 360 achievements.
Vehicles matter. You drive cars that are stolen, bought or unlocked, and you also get boats and watercraft, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and motorcycles. A cruise control system works on land and sea vehicles. Waypoints on the pause-screen map draw a GPS route to your destination, and you can hail a taxicab and pay a fee to skip across the city.
Two Players in One City
The online multiplayer mode lets two players explore Stilwater together while working through missions and activities. Larger groups can take on a range of cooperative and competitive modes. It is not the reason to buy Saints Row 2, but it is a real second way to play rather than a bolt-on.
A mobile tie-in game, developed by G5 Entertainment, also shipped in October 2008. It shares a release window with the console versions and little else.
What Saints Row 2 Gets Right
The strongest thing here is the shift in who you are. In the first game you were a recruit climbing a gang. In Saints Row 2 you are the leader, and the game lets you act like it — assigning lieutenants, choosing targets, setting the terms. That change gives the campaign a different weight.
Stilwater itself is the other win. Splitting the map into two main islands and layering in new locations gives the city more room to breathe than the original had, and the Ultor redevelopment gives the setting a visible divide: gleaming commercial blocks sitting on top of the neighborhoods the Saints lost.
The Respect system is the smartest structural choice. Gating story missions behind side content could have been a chore. Instead it pushes players into the minigames, which is where the comedy and the sandbox chaos actually pay off. You are not grinding. You are being nudged into the best parts of the game.
The tone is a deliberate mix — action, comedy, open-world sandbox — and it commits. A game that puts a Vodou drug gang, a metalhead gun-running crew and a bosozoku gambling outfit in the same city is not hedging.
Where It Slips
The seams show. The Respect gate cuts both ways: players who want the story and nothing else will resent being told to go earn it first. That is a design bet, and it will not land for everyone.
The plot leans on a coma, a jailbreak and a revenge list, which is functional rather than fresh. Carlos, Pierce, Shaundi and Gat are defined largely by which gang they are pointed at. The premise does the work the writing should.
And the technical side is uneven. Saints Row 2 launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2008, with the Microsoft Windows version not arriving until January 2009. The PC release in particular has a reputation for roughness. That gap between platforms is worth knowing before you pick one.
The Score
Saints Row 2 is the moment the series found its own voice instead of borrowing one. The open world is bigger and stranger than the first game’s, the Respect economy pushes players toward the content that actually shows off the sandbox, and the promotion to gang leader changes how the whole campaign feels. The story is thin and the platform ports are uneven, but neither is enough to sink it.
The paper’s ranking of the series’ early run puts it at the top:
- Saints Row 2 (2008) — the one that found the voice
- Saints Row (2006) — the proof of concept
In this paper’s view, it is the strongest of that early run — the game that made Volition’s franchise worth arguing about on its own terms rather than as a comparison. Against the open-world field of 2008, it holds up as one of the more confident entries, and the comedy has aged better than most of its contemporaries’ self-seriousness.
The clearest case for Saints Row 2 is simple: it knows exactly what it is, and it never apologizes for it.
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