Better than the best...?

I've been known to spend the odd bit of spare time playing video games. Back in the primary school days I used to spend many an hour turning wizards into cats in Kings Quest III and destroying the Russians in Civilization. I graduated to secondary school and so it was only fitting that I should make the move to Civilization II. Rayman was another massive time-sucker in high school, with its family-friendly "it's ok to punch people" violence and lush atmospheric soundtrack.
More recently I have found myself craving the higher difficulty settings of Bungie's Halo and Halo 2 and a borderline-dangerous addiction to Bethesda Softworks' Morrowind has seen another 100-and-something hours of my life gone.
As great as these games were and still are, there was never one game that stood out. No game that was worthy enough of the honour of being my favourite game. Until last year that is. Enter Grand Theft Auto IV.

Sure, I had played the previous installments in the series - I can remember many an afternoon in my Year 12 Information Systems class engaged in four-way multiplayer deathmatches with mates in the original GTA. When Rockstar Games made the first two installments in the series free to download (which they still are and more than worth a look) I had no hesitation in promptly aquiring GTA2 and playing it through to the end. I have also played GTA3 and GTA: Vice City on Xbox and loved every minute of them.
But nothing that I had seen before prepared me for the epic tour de force that is Grand Theft Auto IV. It is a superb first-person shooter with a truly memorable cover system, it is a top-notch driving simulator with hyperrealistic car modelling and crash physics, it has a rich and detailed storyline that really hooks the gamer and it has well directed and choreographed cut-scenes with fantastic cinematography. The amount of detail that has gone into the production of the game is quite staggering and more than once I found myself shaking my head in amazement and how much care had been taken to create a truly memorable gaming experience. I could go on for hours about how good the game is but why don't we leave it to the experts?
The game cost $100 million to produce, making it the most expensive video game ever made. Luckily for Rockstar Games it also happens to be the greatest game of all time.

So imagine my surprise when I picked up Volition, Inc.'s Saints Row 2 for $40 at JB Hi-Fi earlier this month. On first blush the two games are remarkably similar. They are both massively immersive open-world games about a gangsta making it to the top. Both games feature a multitude of vehicles, weapons, missions and mini-games, truly earning the title "sandbox". After playing Saints Row 2 for a while though, the difference between the games becomes far more clear. Where GTAIV is more focused on gritty life-like realism, Saints Row 2 takes a more over-the-top sort of feel. The driving has more of an arcade-style feel to it, the selection of weapons is almost comical at times and overall the game doesn't take itself too seriously. Here's what the Good Game guys had to say about Saints Row 2.

Having spent a fair bit of time with the lovely folks of Stillwater, I have come to the rather pleasant realisation that Saints Row 2 might just be a better game than GTAIV.
For example, I can't remember anything in GTAIV as hilariously entertaining as Saints Row 2's Insurance Fraud diversion - a mini-game wherein your aim is to injure yourself as much as possible by throwing yourself in front of cars, off bridges and so on.
Sure, SR2 might not be as visually impressive as GTA4 but what it lacks in aesthetics it more than makes up for with its endless ways of keeping the player entertained - check out the character customization options to see what I mean.

But at the end of the day it doesn't matter if Saints Row 2 is a better game than Grand Theft Auto IV. What matters is that I'm utterly addicted and the only way of breaking that addiction is to achieve 100% completion in the game. So, if you'll excuse me, Stillwater awaits...