Saints Row 2 is awfully friendly with the save games and checkpoints. Otherwise, I would probably just charge through this mission to get it done. But it's divided into stages, and whenever I fail, I just start back up at the last checkpoint with all my health and ammo restored. Easy enough.

I'm in a trailer park. I have to first find a map that designates the trailers I have to destroy. The map is the back room of an office, behind a short gunfight. After that, I get free satchel charges to play with. Plant them with the right trigger, pull the left trigger to detonate them. The first time I try to take out the trailers one at a time, I get killed by all the armed folks defending the trailer park, many of them more than happy to run over me with their pick-up trucks. The second time I try, I'm more careful to plant two charges at once and then detonate them at the same time. But as I get to the last trailer and come to a rise overlooking the entire neighborhood, I have a better idea. So I trigger a satchel charge at my feet to go back to the checkpoint.

This time I carefully work my way through the park, setting one satchel charge at a time, but not detonating it. There's a bit of cat-and-mouse among the trailers and scrap metal sculptures of spiders and snakes (these people are awfully artsy for white trash). After planting the last charge, I climb up the rise and look out over the scene. The sun is going down. Skyscrapers are twinkling in the distance. Pedestrians amble around the dirt paths. Sorry, pedestrians.

Each pull of the left trigger detonates a satchel charge. I fire them off in quick succession. The explosions start back near the office where I started, and they work their way through the idyll towards me, retracing my steps with a grand explosion at each waypoint, closer and closer to where I watch. …boom…boom…Boom…BOOM…BOOM.

Saints Row 2 isn't built from the nicest looking engine out there. It certainly pales in comparison to Grand Theft Auto IV. But I figure any game engine that can make me retry a mission just so I can sit on a hill and watch explosions in the sunset is getting the job done just fine.

Tomorrow: co-op deathmatch with a helicopter and a Lamborghini