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The respect bar is the purple bar in the lower right. Currently we're about halfway to the next respect level. Doing most things in the game will make it go up - everything from driving in the oncoming traffic lane to completing activities. Each time the bar fills, a counter next to the gauge increments. That counter is how many missions we can do.

Naturally this makes Saints Row 2 a game where you want to front load as many side activities as possible. Once you pass x99, the counter rolls over to infinite. It's not hard to reach infinite, either.



So first things first, I want to find a specific type of vehicle. They're really common around where we are - the Suburbs district.



Target located!



This is the Nordberg, an SUV designed to look like the Ford Bronco that OJ Simpson drove while leading the LAPD on a high speed chase.

You can start the hostage diversion any time you jack a car that has passengers. All you have to do is drive around until the timer runs out. The trick is, you can't stop or the hostages will flee.



Oh and you have a permanent police wanted level for as long as you're doing the diversion. So you're driving around, dodging PIT attempts and SWAT van roadblocks.





I wasn't kidding about the SWAT van roadblocks, either. They start coming out at 3 stars.



This is why I love the Nordberg as a general-use car. It has a decent top speed that's not too fast, it has enough weight to not get knocked around, and it maneuvers decently even at its top end.



Once the timer runs down, come to a stop and you get money from the hostages and some extra respect. There's an unlock for taking 10 hostages that I'll be showing off eventually.



On my way to go stick the Nordberg in the garage, this random lady pulls me out of the car...



And then walks off.



So I taught her that I didn't appreciate her interfering in private business.



This is my favorite feature from the Saints Row series. Putting the Nordberg in our garage means that it's ours for the rest of the game! We can retrieve it from any garage we own at any time we want. Even if the car gets blown up, we can just pay a trivial repair fee and have it back to pristine condition.



A few streets over, there's a race activity. Usually I hate races in open world games, but I recently learned that you only need to come in third or better to get the unlocks.



The AI also follows the roads. There's nothing saying that you have to, as long as you hit all the checkpoints. So you can cut off huge chunks of the race if you know which corners to cut.



So just enjoy a few shots of the race.







My lead was so large that I got Austin Powers'd for a good 20 seconds and still came in first.



Sadly it does not mark the race as complete. So we'll just need to remember that for later.

Before we go unlock several of the chop shop lists, we're going to first change our look because I actually hate this head bandana.



I really like the look of the floppy hat. And while I was tempted to put the SA grenade on the front, I ultimately decided against it.



A new hat and some jeans are good enough for On the Rag, the name of the store I visited.



Next up is On Thin Ice, an expensive jewelry store.

I get a temporary jacket from the Impressions store, which levels up our style rank. Now we get 5% more respect from the two biggest contributors!



The last clothing stop of the day is Branded.



The purple dress shirt looks nice while still looking casual.



Hiking boots too.



The blue wrapped shirt adds some much-needed color diversity to her outfit. And now that we're finally properly dressed... let's go steal some cars!



The blue question mark diamond roughly in the middle of the map, next to the sunglasses-wearing star, is the closest chop shop.

I don't think the game actually intended for you to start this chop shop before meeting Shaundi. Oh well.



These are all listed as being found here on the north island. Though you can find several of these almost anywhere in the city.



Each successive car on the list is worth more than the one that came before it. So you can call 911, order an ambulance, kill the responding paramedic, and steal the car for a one-time influx of $3500. Not too shabby!



For no real reason, let's grab a Compton first. The game says they're found in the museum district. So let's mosey on over that way...



You can see the district name in the upper left. So we'll hang around there and see what pops up.



Is that a sports car?



The Attrazione is the fastest car in the game. I'm not sure why it spawned when we were puttering around in a shitty Subaru-esque hatchback.





Let's see... we have two cribs - Aisha's place (thanks to Gentlemen of the Row) and the Red Light District Apartment. The RLD Apartment is technically closer, so let's head down that way. There's a bunch of cribs for sale, but we have $2300 and that's not even enough to get in the door of some of these places.



One thing I will give Saints Row 3 and 4 is they make use of the pressure sensitivity on the triggers. In this game, you hold A to go forward and X to go backward. So you have no choice but to drive like an absolute maniac. Given the Attrazione is an Italian Supercar... yeah. We're gonna crash a lot.



It weighs like it's made of tinfoil and papier mache. Being lightly nudged by a taxi we drove past is enough to send it spiraling out of control.



This thing is probably

fast to use for traveling around or just generally fucking around. But one of the chop shop lists needs one. So we'll just hang onto it all the same.



We no sooner get in a random car when... take a look at the lower left corner. Do you see those yellow cars on the minimap?



One thing I sincerely love is that if you're tracking a car for the chop shop lists, the game will show you when they spawn nearby. You can get a surprising number of them in the Red Light District.



We also don't need to bring the cars back to the garage we got the list from - any of the five chop shop garages will do! They're spread pretty evenly throughout the city, so we're never too far from one.



And unlike Saints Row 3 and 4, our reward is not based on the car's condition when we deliver it.

We'll deliver the Attrazione later. Doing so will remove it from our garage, however. But given how badly it drives while I'm recording that's not necessarily a bad thing. I much prefer "slower" cars that actually hug the road and control decently anyway.



Magma, if I'm not misremembering, is notoriously hard to find in the Projects despite that being the listed location. It's more likely to spawn near the Ultor Dome instead.



We've been, however briefly, to the Projects. In fact, you can see the Sloppy Seconds we visited in the last update on the map if you know where to look. (It's near the large gray oval.)



If you know what the other cars on your lists look like, you can sometimes spot them driving around. The map will only track the one you're

looking for. But there's no reason we can't just hop out and steal this ambulance for a quick profit.



Naturally, the cops don't take well to us stealing something like this. And so we get three immediate stars.



Thankfully I know this city fairly well and drive right to the nearby chop shop.

Down the alley we find a spray can marker.



Interacting with it starts a minigame where we need to "color" in between the lines.



It's not hard, but it is a little fiddly.



One down, forty-nine to go. And naturally each tag gives you a different type of gang "hate." So don't dawdle while spraying, because each second pisses off whoever you're tagging over.





I swear I didn't even intend to pick up another chop shop car. I just wanted something to drive around in!



This is an activity I don't expect I'm going to go out of my way to get.





You have to hit the stunt jumps just right and with enough speed to trigger the cutscene. This Brotherhood truck apparently isn't good enough to pull it off. Oh well. Also I think that jump might be something you can only trigger in a later mission.





Another chop shop car delivered! As you can see, this is a really easy way to make a lot of money quickly in the early game.





And now let's actually move on to something different. I can't really justify this in a narrative way. So just enjoy these out of character screenshots of a kind of tedious diversion.





If you enter fine aiming mode and aim at random pedestrians on the street, you start the "mugging" minigame.



They eventually run away and drop money for you while they do so!



And you need to...







...mug a bunch of people...





...to get...







...all the unlocks.



It's seriously a really high number. (50)



Finally after mugging people for over 15 straight in-real-life minutes...



We get the unlock I'm after. I'll probably never call her, but hey. Now we can. The wiki claims you get this at 50 muggings, but I'm not so sure. GOTR might move the unlocks around, because you're supposed to get a traffic cone hat at 30, but I did not get that. Oh well, who cares. If I need to get 20 more, then I can grind that out in a few minutes.



With the sun setting (I assume) let's go see what Gat wanted.