I was inspired by Sarumarine's blog to try writing about Saint's Row: the Third. Hope someone finds it interesting.
In designing my character, I wanted to start out with a girl and went from the default, to a matrix clone, to my modern day normal girl. I also changed it to a british guy with reptile eyes at one point. I wanted to imagine the world as something different based around my character. For my latest one, my character is just a normal person but has become so bored of life she created the Saints Row world of Steelport through her imagination and slowly gets more and more ingrained in the world, which explains your level of health, attack style, and upgrades.
But that's too much about me and not enough about the game.
Two journeys through the madness: A story of Toilets, Zombies, and Ninjas
I try not to buy new games. There's always a GOTY or Special edition coming and I often don't have the cash. I had managed to avoid buying most of the newer games during the Steam Sale and wasn't planning on buying Saints Row. After a month into the year of the apocalypse I decided I was bored enough to buy one game off ebay. In the end after seeing all the footage, I wanted a game that was fun enough to fulfill my free time.
I haven't played the first Saints Row, and I hated the respect=new mission system of the second(I gave up right after I hired Shaundi and Pierce). From the beginning of the third game I realized this was an upgrade in everything but the basic feel of combat and driving mechanics. The combat and driving both feel like they were stripped right out of SR2, although Driving is better overall.
In contrast I've played all the GTA games(including the PSP ports) and funnily enough I hated San Andreas the most for being less of a game and more of a toybox. Some people are gonna hate me for this, but I hated how the world was huge and never felt tightly pulled together and things like some of the ridiculous physics glitches and jetpacks made it feel ridiculous in contrast to it's somewhat serious story. Overall it felt like the open world was fighting against it rather than helping it.
Which incidentally was the reason why I was so excited for SR3. Now that I've played it however, it's not quite what I expected.
Missions Missions Missions
The Story itself is decent but mostly a way to introduce you to new activities and set you up for jokes. The first level sets you up for a cinematic style with scripted moments, destructible environments and shifting battle grounds. It never reaches that cinematic height, instead choosing to revel in ridiculous set ups for levels such as
there are missions that try to be unique, but it feels like with all the stuff the developer forced into the open world they didn't have room for more.
Weirdly, the story itself is extremely melancholy, despite the nature of the game. The story can be dumbed down to a revenge plot as
this causes Shaundi to be pissed off for the rest of the game, not to mention one of the two endings is dark as hell. Other than the dreary plot, the characters keep it ridiculous and humour filled from mission to mission with little quips that help to solidify the feeling of the game against the plot.
During many of the missions, you get cutscenes with a whole bunch of motion blur and effects thrown on. At first I thought they were prerendered, but after seeing they actually change based on your character made them one of my favorite parts of the game. The Cutscenes themselves are usually just characters talking or action sequences but they're extremely well made and filled to the brim with Saints Row style.
Cell Phones are the key to life
Probably the best thing in the game is your cell phone. Other than changing your clothes, gang, weapon upgrades, and car upgrades, you can do everything else on your phone. Need money? Phone. Blew up your VTOL and need a new one? Phone. Want to become invincible? Phone. Your phone is the one stop shop to everything in the game, despite it being really just a menu.
Speaking of money transactions the game has a similar gang territory system to San Andreas. But instead of constantly fighting, you either buy a place, perform a side mission or fight a small gang. The more you do the more money you make. It's a clever incentive to make you want to finish everything as early as you can to reap the benifits over time. Even better you don't have to defend the areas. Instead there's an optional wave based survival mode which informs you where to go randomly. It happens often enough it feels good enough to go, but rare enough that it doesn't get tiring.
With Freedom to do anything, what do you do?
To get to the best part of the game, is to really just start it up. You can fight anyone, listen to classical music while taking down tanks in a mini cooper, or recreate Apocalypse Now in your local Park. Just looking at your Saints Book (Challenge list), there's a ridiculous amount to do before you're done. having said that, it's best to just run around causing mayhem and doing whatever you feel like at the moment. While I'm still waiting for the game that lets you recreate a normal life before breaking and turning into batman, this lets you do all the things you'd expect from a normal sandbox game plus wrestling moves.
It's hard to complain when you can call in a horde of zombies into the middle of a gang war, but I wish there was more. The rest of the missions never quite stand up to the graphical power of the first level and there are to many intro to the world levels compared to the rest of the missions. There are also some really annoying reappearing bugs in the game, such as one that denies human shields and takedowns after missions or being killed by getting in a car that's clipped into the ground. Hopefully the mission issues will be addressed in the DLC, although even with these issues Saints Row: The Third is still a great game.
I hope this interests people, if I messed up somewhere tell me in the comments.
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