Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed

Seeing as it's been more than six months since the game hit the shelves, you might have expected Volition to beef up Saints Row 2 rather more substantially than it has with this lightweight serving of DLC.

You also might have expected more content for your cash - Ultor Exposed carries a price tag of 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80), or GBP 7.99 on PSN. The hard sell is that you get to play with (or rather, alongside) US porn star Tera Patrick in three new campaign missions. It's headline-grabbing rather than crotch-grabbing stuff, and shockingly each mission can be romped through in around ten minutes. Ker-ching.

There's little to recommend about Ultor Exposed - even to players who agreed with Rob's exuberant assessment (9/10) back in October. As with many of Saints Row 2's campaign missions, the story arc feels like a by-the-numbers exercise in every sense.

Apart from wondering how Ms Patrick ended up as an ex-microbiologist working for low-life gangsters, it's a struggle to care why she's got a grudge against the Ultor Corporation. Instead you'll dive headlong into more drivin' and shootin' mayhem with nary a pause. That's why we're here, clearly.

The problem is the missions fall into dreaded openworld cliche from minute one. These sort of things may look great in edited trailers, but when it comes to actually playing the game it's the same old scene. Drive there. Shoot those guys. Drive after that truck. Shoot it. The ten minutes required to play the entire opening mission includes the time it takes to watch the cut-scene. Pulse-raising this is not.

The second mission's even shorter. Unless you feel compelled to crank up the difficulty level, just seven minutes of your life will be taken up by chasing after a truck and shooting it repeatedly. After that you hop in the back for a bit of regulation on-rails shooting gallery nonsense, where an endless supply of helicopters and manic police cars line-up to be blown-up by your big gun with infinite ammo.

I would apologise for the spoilers, but anyone who has played either of the Saints Row games (or GTA-style openworld games in general for that matter) won't be surprised by the scenario. Any attempt by the developer to come up with anything remotely new is conspicuous by its absence.

By the third and final mission, you're losing the will to live. Drive to a hilltop. Shoot the nasty AI-deficient men in the face. Shoot the most hapless helicopters in the history of videogames out of the sky with a machine gun while they rain missiles on you.

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