Saints Row 2

1001 Video Games

Saints Row 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

German version

There are a number of changes in the German version. The Windows version requires a Steam verification and is region locked, i.e. an uncut version can't be activated when the player has a German IP address.

• The cutscenes were heavily cut, e.g. violent scenes, attacks on unarmed people and drug use. The screen goes to black with the text "Wir bitten um Verzeihung - sehr böse Dinge passieren hinter diesem schwarzen Bildschirm!" ("Many apologies - very bad things happen behind this black screen!"). The audio and subtitles are still there.
• All blood effects (except when shooting meat and in cutscenes) were removed.
• Ragdoll effects on people (except after explosions and when they are hit by a car) and corpses were removed.
• Killed enemies disappear almost instantly. This means the possibility to revive killed people with the defibrillator is also gone.
• There are no flames on burning people; only black smoke. They also don't scream.
• People only leave money behind if completely killed.
• The option to take a human shield was removed both for the player and for the AI. This affects some missions.
• During the fight club sequences, the finishing move quicktime events when an enemy reaches the bottom of his health were removed. Players have to finish off all enemies the hard way.
• Likewise the finishing moves with the katana were removed.
• The respect growth for performing combat moves like headshots was removed.
• Some activities were removed: the amok drive with a burning vehicle, Fuzz (wreak chaos for a TV reality show), vandalism (earning money by destroying property) and being the bodyguard of a celebrity. Because of this, some of the unlockables are not reachable for German players.
• The mini games Zombie Uprising (arcade) and drive-by were removed. During the pimping mini game, the screams of lust were removed.
• During the first main mission, the player has to kill a prison doctor to progress. This was removed in the German version.
• The cheats for getting the flame thrower, chainsaw and explosive charge were removed.
• The "Zombie Carlos" companion was removed.
• The texts in the German version differ from the German texts in the regular version, e.g. the game avoids the words "töten" ("kill") or "Nutte" ("hooker").
• Various "number of killed x" statistics were removed.
• Xbox 360 version: a few achievements, mostly related to missing game content, were removed and the gamerscore divided between other achievements.

A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

The Freezer

An infamous game-breaking bug is reported, but not entirely confirmed to exist, at least in the Xbox 360 and Windows releases of the game. It manifests as a large human silhouette (dubbed by fans as "The Freezer") appearing in unexpected places, which freezes the game and, in the case of the retail Xbox 360 release, reportedly permanently damages the game disc. This bug is most commonly seen when glitching out of the map while in the Zombie Uprising mini-game and then returning to the streets while the mini-game is still active. A fan named mrsaintsgodzilla21 explored the issue the most in this video, and while using a damaged Xbox 360 disc, he deduced in another video that the issue might be caused by distant pedestrian models spawning unnaturally.

Windows release

The Windows release of the game was ported by CD Projekt's then-localization branch, internally referred to as CD Projekt Black, and the result was a notoriously buggy experience. Fan projects have managed to fix some of the issues, chief among them being the Gentlemen of the Row mod by Mike "IdolNinja" Watson, who would later become Volition's community manager in 2014. The source code for the Windows version was considered lost in the THQ bankruptcy (since THQ supervised the port with little input from Volition), but Volition would eventually reclaim the code. A major patch project was started, but was mainly done by Watson and select modders in their free time. After Watson's death in 2021 and Volition's closure in 2023, status on the project is unknown.