I hope you all realize that none of our bitching will matter because of the huge sales for this game. The sales numbers will be justification in the eyes of Rockstar that they did everything right.

Meh, fine. Give them your money. But when you're seeing Saints Row '09 and the yearly sequel after that, you'll know who you should have supported. Rockstar still has a chance to redeem themselves, but THQ can only go down...

Yeah big dissapointment for me, In SA I racked up about 150hrs gameplay and i didnt even finish it, that was just muckin about. In IV I finished the story (32 hrs) and haven't played since, theres nothing to do after stories complete. A big step back IMO ( its only the fanboys who think IV is better than SA). Hopefully V or whatever its called is better than IV

I agree. I am so sick of picking people up and going on dates. Boring.

I have begun to just completely ignore the social aspect of the game. I haven't gone on a social outing in quite some time. I actually feel like I'm forcing myself to play the game just to be able to say I finished it.

They've already gone wayyyy up.  They've added a ton of stuff in Saints Row 2 that it didn't have in Saints Row.  It's Rockstar who took a winning formula and obliterated it. I honestly have no idea what the hell they were thinking.  It doesn't take a genius to realize that your games sell based on diversity of gameplay and lots of freedom to do what you want.  What it does take is a moron to go through and strip out all that diversity and freedom and bottleneck players into the stupid main story.

I am thankful for one thing though... at least with GTAIV, all gamers now understand that reviews are just opinions.  We don't have to follow reviewers to enjoy our hobby.  We just have to play what we find to be fun.

I don't think that removing things from San Andreas was necessarily bad. I'm all for streamlining the experience if it's done right. I'll tell you one thing that I miss from GTA 3 that I think was lost in all of the games since (maybe it was in Vice City, can't remember). In GTA 3, you got some sort of reward for every 10 "packages" you found. For me that gave me incentive to look for them. I hate that in San Andreas and GTA 4 it's all or nothing for the collectibles. I know damn well that I won't find them all without cheating, so I don't even bother.

Still need to play it before I can decide.

I think with a game with such hype, it's hard to please everyone. I'm sorry, i wouldnt compare saint row with GTA yet, looking fun is hardly an excuse to bash the merit of a great game.

I expect Saint Row to be what Blitz was to Madden, FUN WITH NO SUBSTANCE  which equals to rental to me.

It was a good game, but I think San Andreas was a better.