The chocolate flavoured milk at the bottom of the bowl of Coco Pops. That Girls Aloud song you turn up when everyone’s out. Pamela Anderson’s boobs. All things you know you should feel bad about liking. You should be more mature, you should know better. If your girlfriend or mum asked you if you like any of those things, you’d snort in mock-disgust and say “I don’t think so” in a tone which suggests that these things are the sole reserve of Daily Star-reading morons, the type of people whose brain-village is entirely populated by leprosy-ridden peasants.

And yet, you and I both know that if your doorbell rang and there stood Pammy herself, holding a copy of “Sound of the Underground” and asking you to drink Mickey the Monkey milkshake out of her over-inflated cleavage, you’d think all your filthy Christmases’ had come at once.

Which slightly laboured milieu of mixed metaphors leads us onto the point of this review. The first Saints Row game could quite easily fit onto the end of this list. It wasn’t bad at all, and yet, mainly due to its overt similarities to (read: blatant thievery from) the Grand Theft Auto series, it was dismissed as nothing more than a mild diversion, a stopgap while we all waited for the next instalment of Rockstar’s magnum opus.

With Saints Row 2, however, Volition have stepped out of GTA’s shadow to deliver a game that is worlds apart from the adventures of Niko Bellic. That’s not to say it’s better, heck no. Just…different. Let’s put it this way, which is a better film; Michael Mann’s Heat, a modern crime classic, or Under Siege, a film about an ex-Navy Seal caterer. Exactly.

But sometimes you don’t want to sit and watch a film with any sort of sub-text. You don’t want to appreciate fine acting and tight, stylish direction. You just want to watch things blow up.

This rather simplistic analogy adequately sums up the differences between GTA IV and SR2. The city of Stillwater is packed full of big, dumb fun.

SR2 improves on the original’s formula in typical sequel fashion; bigger, better, MORE. You are thrust into the action right from the offset, with the very first mission involving a prison break-out encompassing cars, boats, helicopters and really, really big machine guns. You know, subtle like. Compare this with the now standard first few missions of any GTA game, which generally involve walking to a car, getting into the car, then driving the car to a destination, then realising the entertaining dialogue and impressive scenery has just about stopped you from feeling patronised that you have started every GTA game in this exact same fashion since DMA’s top-down original. So, for any of those left cold by Liberty City’s grey-hued pseudo-sobriety, SR2’s opening is the equivalent of a flaming sambuca for breakfast.

Unfortunately, this impressive opening set-piece also immediately strips bare one of SR2’s most irritating and persistent flaws; technical inadequacy. A very large chunk of this first section is marred by some fairly serious slow-down, rendering the latter part of the mission jerky and difficult to play. That is not to say that it ruins it completely; in fact it is a testament to the sheer playability of SR2 that it is still a hugely enjoyable opening.

Nevertheless, if you’re easily frustrated, SR2 will certainly turn the air around your Xbox blue every so often. Lots of games have glitches, but these are some of the worst we’ve seen on this generation of consoles. Unless you’re the pernickety kind, you won’t mind things like the fact that if you park with the driver side door next to a wall, you frequently teleport out of the car in the blink of an eye. In fact graphical anomalies like this can make things easier at times, and are commonplace in games of this ilk. What you may well mind though, are the fairly frequent lock-outs the game suffers, irritatingly causing you to have to restart the console. The autosave function after missions does reduce this trauma somewhat, but it is still very aggravating if and when it occurs.

Don’t let this put you off though, as SR2 is an extremely entertaining bit of software. Although we’re loath to keep on with the GTA comparisons, the best point of reference for the tone of SR2 is somewhere in the evolutionary chain between Vice City and San Andreas.

So too the size of the sandbox. Stillwater is a large play area without being too overblown, managing to find the happy medium between over-familiar environments and long-winded cross-country treks. Given the fair size of the virtual city, being able to save anywhere is a huge blessing, meaning no more arduous trips to and from safe houses after every minor accomplishment. And there are many, many accomplishments to be sought out in this environment.

The story missions are generally well put together and entertaining, even if sometimes the developers do artificially ramp up the difficulty somewhat. Apart from the main missions and enemy strongholds, the game includes a whole host of varied activities and “diversions”, ranging from the inspired to the bizarre (although in the case of some tasks - such as the returning “Insurance Fraud” from SR1 - the two are not mutually exclusive). Yes, Stillwater is the place to go if you want to be rewarded for running through the streets stark naked, protecting celebrities by throwing deranged fans into helicopter rotor blades, or spraying faeces over posh suburban McMansions. For the more traditional inner-city mob moss, there are the standard drug-dealing, pimping, hitman and chop-shop side-missions, to name but a few. You’re never more than a few seconds away from any one of these malicious misdeeds, and because of this SR2 is one of those games that is equally entertaining whether you want a quick 10 minute blast or an up-til-4am marathon session.

It’s a shame then that while most of these activities are fine as mini-games, after a few levels repetition quickly sets in. Less killer, more filler (or should that be “killa” and “filla”?). Ironic then that for a game that offers such a wealth of different activities, lack of variety sometimes spoils the party. Having said that, there are far more hits than misses, and if you choose to play just a couple of levels of each activity at a time, then you should avoid hitting the boredom wall. Like our old Nan always said, everything in moderation.

Speaking of which, one thing which SR2 has toned down since it’s predecessor is the amount of embarrassing Tim Westwood-esque gangsta-isms. Like a surly teenager blossoming into a moderately less surly 20-year old, Saints Row now seems slightly more comfortable in its own skin. Where the street-slang was previously self-conscious to the point of distraction, this time around it’s actually part of the game’s charm, rather than just a pointlessly “hip” attempt at being urban, yo.

This also applies to the cut-scenes, which are much improved over those of the first instalment. Where SR1 relied upon numerous (semi) big-name stars to unconvincingly deliver cheesy dialogue (presumably lowering themselves for a nice-sized paycheque), the voice acting in SR2 is generally delivered with gusto, and gels nicely with the slickly produced cinematics. There’s an extra layer of polish here that bumps SR2 up a notch from its predecessor.

This extra sheen also extends to the gameplay itself, where the imaginative player can find some truly original ways to express their murderous creativity. Why just shoot someone when you can wrench a pay phone out of the ground, beat someone to death with it and pick up the loose change while you’re at it? There are other tweaks that prove useful too, such as the new ability to grab your enemy for use as a human shield. While this may seem like one of those fads that will appear in numerous games for the next year or so, in SR2 it is genuinely effective, and provides another tool for gamers to improvise carnage with.

For sheer OTT outrageousness, SR2 is hard to beat; we can’t think of any other sandbox game that offers you an unlockable pimped-out combine harvester to cruise around town in. It’s too exaggerated and cartoonish for the gleefully un-PC antics to cause much offence, but F-words, exploding heads, drugs, strippers and (if you are so inclined) pimp-slapping old ladies means if The Daily Mail have a quiet week anytime soon then no doubt Volition will be deemed responsible for any incident of happy-slapping or hit-and-runs that may occur. Then again, with the ridiculously over-the-top rag-doll physics on display here, even being hit by a speeding juggernaut is a laughing matter. The crazy physics create some hilarious moments, often inadvertently.

SR2 is a game that lets you do things at your own pace. Explore the city, do side-missions or stick to the story, freedom seems to be paramount in Stillwater; no “bridges closed due to storm warnings” here. Thankfully this smorgasbord of criminality manages to stay just on the right side of “too much, too soon”, not by limiting your activities but, conversely, by making sure there is too much for you to do to take it all in at once. This is no doubt music to the ears for those with short attention spans.

Speaking of music and short attention spans, the radio stations are repetitive to say the least. There are some great tunes on offer, but a fair amount of pap as well, and if there’s one thing that’s not really improved from the first game, it’s this. Perhaps we’ve been too spoilt in the past by Rockstar’s whopping licensing budget, but too many of the songs here merge into each other in a blur of anonymity. The skate-rock, dance and hip-hop stations all feature far too many bland and interchangeable songs, which isn’t a huge problem on the whole but does leave you skipping stations all too frequently in search of some suitable drive-by tuneage.

However, this is a flaw that only serves to highlight the overall quality of the package Volition are slinging. This is not a tattered nickel bag of stepped-on seeds and stems; it’s a G-Pack of that raw uncut white, mo’ fo’.

For sheer, adrenaline-fuelled entertainment, this game is hard to beat. So, whether you love or hate GTA IV, whether you previously dismissed Saints Row as a tired wannabe, or if you simply long for the “glory days” of Vice City, Saints Row 2 is well worth your entertainment dollar.