"Pompous" comments regardless, there's a reason why Volition, the developers of Saints Row, are feeling so confident even if they delayed the release of the upcoming Saints Row 2 to steer clear of the GTA IV effect. Having played through Rockstar's epic twice and enjoyed every minute of it, I needed another sandbox hit of some description between now and the release of the much-touted DLC and so decided to opt for the budget Saints Row, a title I had been previously sceptical of. My reaction is "wow".

Now pardon me if you've heard similar comments elsewhere (especially from Glassadam's brilliantly honest blog), but it seems that, with GTA IV, for every advancement Rockstar made it came at the expense of a familiar gameplay characteristic from the earlier games in the series: indeed IV created a magnificent, unforgettable, realistic environment - at the cost of sacrificing the over the top fun of San Andreas; the emphasis on the new Euphoria physics and animation engine ended up slowing down the "gunplay" fun fans had come to love from previous GTA's when, say, frantically shooting rockets on a 5 star wanted level.

Whether this choice to focus on realism will become a staple in future games in the series is debatable: from what I've seen, fans seem to be split down the middle as to how great GTA IV actually is. Some say it's a masterpiece, others feel disappointed (and then there's the talk of it being "overrated"!) - I must admit that after playing Saints Row my opinion has, with the benefit of hindsight, gone from strongly in support of the former but is now beginning to slide, ever so slowly, towards somewhere in the middle.
 
By making fun of the side quests in GTA IV as opposed to what will be available in Saints Row 2, Volition have, and it pains me to say this given my love for pretty much all of Rockstar's releases, got quite a good case here. Whilst I loved being able to take my friends bowling, visiting the comedy club, and doing tasks like finding the vehicles for Brucie and Steve and the random character missions, all these are made to feel rather un-GTA'ish next to even just the insurance fraud activity in Row, a crazily inventive side quest straight out of the Rockstar manual. I even thought to myself, "GTA's been out-GTA'd here".

There's no denying that Saints Row is, to put it nicely, 'inspired' by GTA, San Andreas in particular, but Volition made a game that's just pure fun and doesn't take itself at all seriously, whereas Rockstar, seemingly content with their achievements to date, opted to maybe take themselves too seriously. It says something when, after going from jet packs and parachutes and Area 51 in GTA:SA, doing the final mission in GTA IV and jumping from a moving vehicle onto a helicopter just seemed so out of place...implausible. Unrealistic! Comical even! But isn't that the GTA we know?
 
Story-wise, GTA IV's plot was outstanding and beats Saints Row's hands down, no question, but that's just the thing: Row knows that it's all a joke, a satire of GTA itself possibly; whereas GTA IV, even though it knows it's still a GTA game, is this time preoccupied with being a "realistic" version of it's own satire, if that makes any sense.

San Andreas was, for many, the pinnacle of the series where players were able to act out the most ridiculous and unrealistic events possible, from ramping off the grand canyon to customising CJ into an obese, half naked fella who went around killing people with a massive pink dildo. Rockstar surely realised the fun players had in these options, but decided to go for a change of pace; a fresh start to reset the series. An amazing achievement GTA IV is, certainly, but a real fan-divider too. As Glassadam pointed out, character customisations were stripped almost entirely when compared to San Andreas, and yet Saints Row simply expanded on this and many of the other fun aspects that made the previous GTA "that special [something]" and came up with a winner.

For a game that came out exactly two years before GTA IV it may show its age now, especially after playing the latter, but Saints Row added features to the sandbox genre that were almost completely overlooked and uncredited when the hype for IV came flooding in: waypoints on the map, being able to fly out of your windscreen in a head-on crash, getting drunk, online play, and even a mobile phone - albeit not implemented in-game but there nonetheless...features that were added by Rockstar and contributed greatly to the success of their game. Now, God forbid, I'm not saying Rockstar copied Saints Rows ideas as, after all, to put it more nastily this time round, Saints Row 'rips off' the entire concept of its existence from Rockstar to begin with, but certainly these were seen as welcome additions and taken aboard as appropriate?
  So where now for Rockstar? They've set a high benchmark in the design of future sandbox games but in choosing to go down the path of ultra realism (resulting the omission of planes and remote-controlled explosive cars but including a non-functional carnival: all this in the name of realism seems very harsh indeed), is there any coming back being "wacky" again? Or is that too much of an admission of error? Will they stick to their guns and be as innovative and different as they can be from their imitators, Saints Row included?

Volition may well have the upper hand when it comes to the fun factor (if not marketing budget), especially if Rockstar has decided to cull the over the top nature of GTA that made GTA the phenomenon it is today, giving future Row sequels the incentive to go down the opposite route: to be as ridiculously fun and crazy as they can be, maybe even more so, however unoriginal in concept. It seems as if Saints Row fans know exactly what they will be getting when 2 comes out at the end of the year...for GTA fans, what comes next is as mysterious to us as what that DLC will end up being.