Problem with Saints Row 2

valgomir

A thread about one of the best open-world games of all time... allegedly.

I bought it a few days ago and wanted to give it a try, but couldn't even get it to run. It would just play the intro, get to the first loading screen and crash at 60%.
Some googling gave me the solution: change the language.
Being a German, this wasn't really an issue. I prefer to play games in English, but changing the language in SR2 to German only changed the subtitles, not the audio. I can deal with that.
So after that, I started it again. Opening cutscene, character creation, so far so good.

Then I got to the gameplay part.
The game spawned me in the first room (infirmary of the jail or whatever) and asked me if I wanted to play the tutorial level.
This being the first time of me playing the game, I chose to do so. So I walked up to the door to the roof. The game prompted me to press E to kick open the door, I pressed it... and the game crashed.
I haven't been able to fix this so far.
Here's what I tried:
- restarting pc
- reinstalling DirectX 9 from game directory
- using windowed mode
- enabling and disabling every conceivable graphics option
- reinstalling game

So after all that I tried skipping the tutorial level, which worked, surprisingly.
I got out of the jail (with some framerate issues during the driving sections, which I expected. Bad port etc).
I beat some people up (which is not quite as fun in the censored, German version, but that doesn't bother me too much) and started the first mission (buy clothes).
In order to get to the store faster I stole a car, which turned out to be a huge mistake. Every time I hit anything that wouldn't budge (walls, phone poles etc) the game would crash.

Allegedly the "Gentlemen of the Row" mod fixes most of the game's bugs, but I also read that it wouldn't work with the German version.

Can anyone help me?
If no, just go ahead and talk about the game and how much fun you're having with it while I go and sit in the corner and cry play something else.

My PC specs:

Intel core i5 2.27 GHz
4 GB RAM
Win7 32 Bit
ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 (yes, it's a laptop, deal with it)

Edit:

The problem probably had to do with the German version... I downloaded the English version (cracked, obviously, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to play it) and now have no issues at all.