Saints Row 2 vs Gta IV. Fun vs realism

Hello everyone. Today I want to discuss a topic about two famous open world video games: Grand theft Auto and Saints Row.

Mainly...(drumroll) Saints Row 2 and Grand theft Auto 4.

Two great games. Yet, they are different.

Just recently I took the time to beat the main mission of Saints row 2 again, and I want to talk about the superiority of Saints row 2.

So what is the main objective of these two games?

Gta IV features 88 main missions + 46 missions from the dlc's

Saints row 2 features around 41 missions plus several dlc missions

Gta IV focuses on the main story and very little on the side activity.

Saints row 2 focuses a LOT on the side activity and offers great bonuses for completing challenges.

Now since this post is most about my opinion I will not waste time: Saints Row 2 was a better game for me. Sure, I, (like everyone else) was baffled by the open world of Liberty city, and the story was intriguing. However, after you beat the main mission there was practically nothing more for you to do. You could race for a short while, bring in cars for money, but the game itself never let you to chill out. The "realistic physics" ruined the fun in the driving experience and your health meter became your worst enemy.  Sure, dating and the internet was fun, but the lack of car customization and lack of the ability to buy property made Gta IV a dull game where your money couldn't be spend.

So what can I say about Saints Row 2? Since I have beaten it before, this time I did not listen to a single minute of the storyline. But that's good. It didn't ruin the game for me. What did made me happy was the mini mission activities like: the fuzz (you play as a cop and do fun stuff like stop ninjas and pirates from fighting each other), Septic Avenger (you spray properties with shit) and tons of other fun stuff. Car, home customization gave me a feeling of importance to get money.

The missions themselves were also better then Gta IV's. The fact that you could choose which mission to do at any point gave the player a lot of choice how he wants to advance. Either destroy an enemy faction instantaneously, or take every gang slowly apart. The missions involved a lot of destruction and innovative, non repetitive content. Sabotaging enemy gangs was the main objective, but sometimes you also had to save your gang members.

Both games could have certain flaws. But we have to look at it this way: the development of a video game takes a LOT of time and money, so sadly, a video game can't have everything put in it.  Gta IV brought great realism, but sacrificed extra content, Saints Row 2 brought in tons of fun content, but had to limit itself with the length of all the given content like the missions (which is not a big issue. I think the length was perfect, it didn't got boring)

All things said and done, I want to say that Saints Row 2 is much better then Gta IV. Just the fact that I wanted to still play a completed game proves that it has a lot after the main mission value, Gta IV sadly didn't.

I also wanted to compare Saints row 3, but sadly I did not manage to play it for a longer time to correctly evaluate it.
But I do know, that if you haven't played SR 2 or Gta IV yet, then you need to go for SR2.
It's no surprise SR2 is often called San Andreas 2.