Yeah but which company's curve is getting upwardly steeper and which company's is getting downwardly so?

Yeah, totally. It's similar to the Moog Cookbook thing, where the instrument is the selling point rather than the music. It's also ridiculous to assume that this is something new and daring - Kind Of Bloop may have the attention now, but let's not forget how many fantastic classical and jazz renditions had been created on the SID in the C64's golden age, complete with Tomita-like re-interpretations. I'm thinking Shaun Southern's Toccata and Fugue in Hero Of The Golden Talisman and the spot-on Fur Elise from Jet Set Willy 2. Beyond commercial games, there were huge amounts of SID renditions banged out by various demosceners, all with deadly seriousness (although I've heard enough terrible cover versions of 80s chart hits on the SID to last me a lifetime).

I have to say that when I read this article in Edge, all I could think about was what a spectacularly depressing waste of money this is. I'm probably one of few mentalists these days that absolutely loathes pretentious-yet-deriviative orchestral soundtracks in games but I'd love to know exactly how much this recording actually cost. I'm sure that along with the costs of making cutscenes, it means less money gets spent on refining actual gameplay in favour of what is, essentially, needless window dressing.

Sorry Tina, but I see absolutely no difference in merit between the stories of GTA IV and Saints Row 2. GTA's story is just as shallow, deriviative and exploitative as SR2's, only SR2 isn't trying to justify its amorality with its silly tales. It really doesn't need to - it's quite clearly a ludicrous cartoon, which is why I find objections to its content baffling. Almost like berating a child for being a child, really.

I find it pretty stunning that anyone would take SR2's base humour as contemptible - it's all very predictible and utterly inconsequential, really. All you have to do is ignore that you find distasteful, after all. To me, SR2 is nothing but a cartoon parody of GTA's attempt at justifying its seediness and amorality as some kind of adult, artistic endeavour - so SR2's blatant stereotyping and outlandish lack of taste and tact fit perfectly. There's nothing any more offensive than the average episode of South Park in there.

But, this all misses a critical point about Saints Row 2. Given the sheer amount of content, allowance for what a player will actually want to do in its world and the consideration given to minimising chores and donkey work, SR2 is pretty much a shining beacon of how to do GTA-style gaming and, for my money, completely trounces Rockstar's effort in every single area aside looks and those hideous bug-bears of modern games, cinematic 'characterisation' and 'narrative'.

It's a crying shame that Edge chose to completely ignore that fact in its review. SR2 rights so many of GTA IV's design wrongs that any childish, base presentation of character and narrative is - and should be - easily overlooked and forgiven.