As with the first game, Saints Row 2 utilizes a respect system that doesn't allow gang missions to be undertaken until you've garnered enough respect, however Volition has also added diversions to the mix. Diversions range from simple things like driving on the wrong side of the road and powersliding around corners to more taxing efforts like picking a fight with any other rival gang members you see walking around. Shoot a gang member from within your car and the game will ask you if you want to take on the drive-by diversion where you roll up on groups of rival gang members and take them out within the time period with only kills from within the vehicle counting. Jack a car with a passenger in it and you'll be asked to take on the Hostage diversion. Find a rival gang's tag and you can spray paint over it while the threat level from the other gang increases and you're penalized for painting outside of the lines. Alternatively, you can skip diversions altogether and instead travel to the many, many activities on your map for some games of drug trafficking, snatch, car racing and driving around the town spraying sewage on people.

You'll also get respect for being particularly efficient in taking out gang members, so once you get a mission against a rival gang, head shots and nut shots will ensure that your respect meter keeps filling up. The diversions and activities combine in such a way that other than needing to complete a few activities for the first gang mission, once you get rolling in main story missions, you'll rarely need to spend extra time to complete activities to gain respect. You'll still want to though as the game has upped the unlockable ante by providing more unlockables as you progress through activities and diversions. Each activity has six levels with an unlockable awarded for completing level three and level six. The activity and diversion system works well and there are so many activities that if you're not thrilled with the one you're on, simply driving for thirty seconds will reveal another one that's more to your liking.

Speaking of the driving, it's fairly loose and while the different cars handle differently none of them seem to have any real weight to them. You'll bounce around the road, popping off of other cars and taking an obscene amount of damage before your smoking hood tells you it's time to vacate the vehicle. The helicopter controls are similarly loose leading to some unfortunate meetings between your rotor blades and the nearby buildings. The driving is certainly manageable, but if you were looking for the cake walk street races of GTA IV, then look elsewhere. New to the driving is the ability to turn on cruise control, just the thing for all of those drive-by's.

Combat is tight and responsive with the health regeneration system allowing for you to take much more damage than you deal out. You can store up to four health items along with an impressive array of melee items, pistols, shotguns, explosives, rifles and other death dealing agents. Ammo seemed a bit scarce, making for a lot of trips to the ammo store, however given that you'll get more respect for head shots, taking the time to aim rather than running around doing your best impression of a bullet hose will reward you in both saved ammo and gained respect. You can take hostages to be used as bullet shields to reduce the damage you receive and either execute them once you're finished with them or throw them across the room for more respect. If you do find yourself taking too many hits, the mid-mission saves ensure that you don't have to start the mission over from the very beginning.

If running around the city and causing mayhem by yourself is fun, then causing mayhem with another person must be twice as fun. Saints Row 2 ships with full game, drop-in, drop-out co-op that means that you can do every mission, every activity and every diversion with another person. When another person joins your game, you have the option to take on whatever missions the host has unlocked as well as any activities or diversions they stumble upon. In co-op the game's well done, cinematic cut scenes are still present with each player seeing their character in the cut scene. The missions are scaled upwards for co-op with more enemies and AI that reacts to two people being in the mix, however there's nothing that says that the two of you have to stick together. Best of all, any mission progress, respect and money obtained in a co-op game carries over to your single player game. This may mean that you end up playing missions out of order, but it's a small price to pay for the joy that is two people using rocket launchers to defend a car from marauding gang members.

Even co-op has diversions in the form of a one on one deathmatch where the weapons change with each round and a game called "Cat and Mouse" where one person is in a sports car and one person is in an attack chopper. The driver of the sports car gets points for surviving and the attack chopper gets points for blowing up the sports car. Once the round ends, the players change positions and the violence commences. Getting out of the diversion is as simple as pressing down on the d-pad twice and you're back to tearing up Stillwater. The co-op diversions are just that, a fun diversion, however they're not substantial enough to spend an entire evening taking on, unlike the main co-op mode. Causing mayhem with another person is just plain fun, whether you're taking on a story mission or simply shooting down every police chopper that comes your way in an effort to get your notoriety pegged at the top.