No other open-world game so desperately wanted to be Grand Theft Auto as Saints Row. So how do you deal with the fact that, for all its little innovations, it simply wasn’t as good or taken as seriously? Easy. You pretend you always wanted to be ridiculous anyway. So it goes for Saints Row 2, which aims to be more ludicrous, exaggerated and overblown than its predecessor. The result is a game that looks to be, in every sense, comic.

But don’t get the wrong impression: Saints Row 2 isn’t a stupid game. Quite the opposite: it’s one of the most coldly calculated products that will see release this year. Its world has been designed as a ‘hood’ with ‘hoes’ and ‘cribs’ waiting to be ‘pimped’ because that is what the men holding the purse strings thinks a particular target demographic wants. And these origins are obvious in every aspect.

On to the new features, then. Taunts can be aimed at anyone, and range from giving the finger to various other hand gestures, pointing at your crotch, and actually teabagging other characters. Your crib can be customized by buying various accoutrements including pool tables and, yes, a stripper on a pole, as well as various overarching themes, one of which is ‘classy’, a label it amusingly fails to justify in any reasonable sense.

The character customization is extensive to say the least, and unlike the original allows female avatars – although it’s difficult to see how they comfortably fit into this particularly male-skewed world. At least the customization is significantly improved over the original in the sense that your creations are more likely to resemble humans rather than sideshow attractions.

In terms of the key mechanics, combat remains free-aim, although an over-the-shoulder mode has been added for those precision moments, assuring that the plentiful enemies soon fall like skittles. Another new addition is the ability to take foes hostage, and use them as either a bullet shield or a projectile weapon (on this evidence, in another scenario your avatar could be a champion javelin thrower).

Throughout, though, the game shows itself to be in a horribly buggy condition – and this with only a few months of development left in the bag. On one occasion, taking someone hostage simply results in enemies freezing in place until they’re taken out with headshots. On another, a fleeing civilian somehow summons the thigh strength to jump a cliff face as high as a house in order to escape our reign of terror. On yet another, jacking a car sees our avatar throw out the occupant, a doppelgänger mysteriously remaining in the seat as we climb in. There’s a tendency to wink at this kind of thing – it’ll all be tidied up nicely, right? But the original Saints Row was notoriously buggy, which hardly fosters confidence in Volition’s ability to deliver something more robust this time out.

The 3D engine, meanwhile, sometimes groans under the weight of what’s going on, even with cars and scenery popping into view from nowhere. GTAIV may not be technically perfect, but its graphical fidelity is worlds beyond Saints Row 2’s.

When the original game appeared, of course, there was no Xbox 360 Grand Theft Auto. This year, Volition’s game will not have that luxury, and will have to work harder for a slice of the pie. Its enormous explosions may not be enough.

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