Saint's Row The Third

[juv3nal]

So I picked this up recently. Although it clearly isn't going to have the longevity of a Skyrim, I'm having a ton of fun with it. It's stupid but in the best sense of the word.

Some examples (mild spoilers):

1) The intro does the Star Wars text crawl but set to the 2001 Thus Spoke Zarathustra theme.

2) Where some games ramp you up in terms of weapons (to be fair SRTT does too), by the time you have access to the open world, you already have a missile launching predator drone thing.

3) Early on you get a headquarters place with a helipad in the penthouse of this skyscraper. Not having unlocked any helis yet, I saunter over to the helipad and peer over the edge and decide to save my game and leap off the edge just to check out the view going down (despite it leading to my inevitable doom). Instead, when I jump, a message prompts me to open my parachute (which I was not aware I was wearing) by pushing a button. Not only that, when I open that up, another prompt tells me to push a button to set a basejump target which gives me bonus respect points if I can stick the landing.

4) There is a side mission where you get to gun down mascots/furries.

5) Whereas some games might do this for a couple of bars, SRTT goes and does the whole song just for kicks:

EA5sWhUCiCo

[Brannigan]

I've played this a bit as well. I decided to make a crazy person with the zombie voice so he just rambles incoherently and everyone totally understands him, and the singing along part was awesome with that.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992895476/screenshot/632983753075180232/?tab=public

[juv3nal]

I keep thinking of rad things about this game:

if you hold down sprint when you do your carjack thing, your guy (or gal...or furry mascot thing of indeterminate gender) will do a flying drop kick and enter the car by smashing in the front windshield if directionally appropriate, kicking the previous occupant out in the process.

Also, the higher level upgrades (which I don't have yet) can make you immune to bullets and give infinite ammo for the various weapon types. They're not cheat codes (because the game ALSO has those), they're just the consequence of an ammo/damage capacity upgrading system taken to it's natural, logical conclusion.

So yeah. This game is rad.

[miffy495]

WANT. SO. MUCH.

...just waiting for the required funds to purchase it.

[Gwardinen]

I've played this a bit as well. I decided to make a crazy person with the zombie voice so he just rambles incoherently and everyone totally understands him, and the singing along part was awesome with that.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992895476/screenshot/632983753075180232/?tab=public

I never considered that the zombie voice would exist in cutscenes and everyone would just go along with it. That's hilarious.

Also, your character's face looks almost creepily like the portrayal of Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton from Man on the Moon.

[Brannigan]

I was thinking he was a well groomed and manicured ron jeremy, but i think you're right.

[twmac]

Have been thoroughly enjoying the game also.

Beat it in about 15 hours for a review on AR, there were a few bits that made me a little uncomfortable.

Did a sort of mock advert for Saint Row and put it in the Plug your Shit section:

So yeah, enjoying the game a lot.

My personal favourite level was setting up for the Murder Brawl match.

[Roderick]

Also, your character's face looks almost creepily like the portrayal of Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton from Man on the Moon.

You mean Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton from Man on the Moon.

[Gwardinen]

You mean Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton from Man on the Moon.

Yeah, that's what I meant by "portrayal of Andy Kaufman". I just couldn't bear to put another name in that sentence. At one point in the film you actually get Paul Giamatti playing Bob Zmuda playing Jim Carrey's version of Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton, if I remember correctly.

[elmuerte]

And in the end, during the ending credits you will see Jim Carry playing Paul Giamatti playing an Andy Kaufman impression of Jim Carry.

[Roderick]

Except it wasn't, because the camera pans to reveal Paul Giamatti actually in the audience. Who is Tony Clifton‽

[miffy495]

Man, total digression, but I really want to see that movie again. I liked it a lot when I saw it in high school.

[elmuerte]

Except it wasn't, because the camera pans to reveal Paul Giamatti actually in the audience. Who is Tony Clifton‽

Some say it was Bob Zmuda who played Tony Clifton in that scene in the movie.

[juv3nal]

So I'd been playing for more than 10 hours before I realized that if you hold down sprint and then do a melee attack there are a series of badass wrestling move attacks. They are rad.

viA46dt8QOs

Once I found out about those, I spend about an hour just using them on anybody within running distance like a total maniac (i.e. not for the purpose of progressing towards any activity/mission). If you have a decent amount of health/regen/damage reduction, you almost don't need to even shoot other than against a brute or the armed vehicles.

[Murdoc]

I decided to pick this up as some of the ideas sounded pretty unique to a game and I have mixed thoughts.

It feels a bit sloppy all around, like if some of the missions were better executed I'd be having more fun since I some of the highlight moments have a really fun idea behind them.

Pretty glad something like this exists, but I can't help think if they dropped trying to make jokes and just executed on their humorous ideas it would be a better presentation. The open world side missions are fun once or twice, but get pretty old quickly. Causing havok doesn't seem exciting as it does in GTA because the world is already over the top and chaotic along with the feeling of being overpowered from day one.

The missions don't feel connected very well and the progression of what main story I have done seems pretty far between and not very fluid at all. I know I'm not playing for the story, but I really like their main missions the most, so having them connect and flow together a bit better would be nice. Also I am playing with zombie voice which makes the dialog less bad and the jokes less obvious, but I cannot imagine how the game plays out with an actual coherent protagonist as I am sure the game would be a lot harder to stomach.

I really like the over-the-top world and ideas in this though, I look forward to future sequels to see where it goes because right now it feels like an odd middle ground of their gangsta origins and crazy world of super villains. Maybe its just me, but it seems like the game would be more entertaining if it went into that crazy, campy, super villain territory more then trying to stick with a gang template.

But with that in mind, I've already kind of done that, which is just my choice, which is neat. I made a metallic gold skinned character from the get go and just playing the evolution of this knob-bag as his outfits gets more crazy and the vehicle customization all fits a the gold theme, so it is pretty amusing, so that option already sort of exists.

So like it, but kind of bored outside the main missions and wished most of them were better polished with some flow between them.... which is pretty vague and a lot to ask for.

Still amazed some of these ideas are in a commercial product, so just for that

[ThunderPeel2001]

I guess I'll post this in the Andy Kaufman thread, but... What's the dealio with Saint's Row? I always assumed it was a poor man's GTA, but it seems now like it might be a spoofy parody of GTA... Which is a lot more endearing sounding. Can someone sum it up in a sentence?

[Orv]

I guess I'll post this in the Andy Kaufman thread, but... What's the dealio with Saint's Row? I always assumed it was a poor man's GTA, but it seems now like it might be a spoofy parody of GTA... Which is a lot more endearing sounding. Can someone sum it up in a sentence?

Have you ever wanted to fly a hoverbike equipped with a chaingun, while stark naked, speaking like a zombie and followed around by a gang of ninjas with AK-47s?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Have you ever wanted to fly a hoverbike equipped with a chaingun, while stark naked, speaking like a zombie and followed around by a gang of ninjas with AK-47s?

Damn So it doesn't take itself too seriously then

[Orv]

Damn So it doesn't take itself too seriously then

Absolutely not. Irreverent gets tossed around a lot when talking about Saint's Row, and I think it's completely apt.

[miffy495]

If you imagine GTA San Andreas to be a splitting point for GTA, where they were focusing both on having a sprawling crime drama story and ridiculous shit like stealing a jetpack from Area 51, GTA IV is from the universe where they decided to focus on the story after that and Saint's Row is from the universe where they decided that the crazy shit should be dialed up to 11 and to hell with the story. The first game was a little unsure in that regard, the second was much more crazy as they seemed to find their flow, and now this third one seems like the pinnacle of fun times in a sandbox. I want it soooo bad, but am waiting for christmas break from school and possibly a sale. Shit though, this game. It's been top of my "must play" list for a while.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Interesting, thanks for the explanation!

[Garple]

This looks so idiosyncratic for being such a high-profile game.

[Lu]

Oh man, I never thought I would buy this, but I bought it for 15 euro's from slightly shady webstore g2play.net. Noticed it had co-op campaign mode, which I mentioned to a friend who then bought it too. Played it together and having a really good time with it. A lot of laughing and going "oh shit!". Seriously, throwing people headfirst into walls and off bridges shouldn't be this funny.

A lot of great little things I've enjoyed from the beginning parts.

The random fan who wanted an autograph in the bank

, and

when you get into the car with your mission buddy/guy/pal and he starts flicking through the channels coming across a song they both like and start singing along to it

, in particular.

Really glad I gave it a shot. 's great!

[miffy495]

So I've been playing the shit out of this since getting it and love it to pieces, but during the past week I've started getting unbelievably bad frame rates while doing nothing in particular. Apparently this is a known issue, and I'm updating my graphics card drivers to try and compensate as I write this, but given how much fun I've been having and how great everyone says the end of this game is I'm really saddened by this. It's been nearly unplayable and given how damn fun the game is that sucks. Anyone else have frame rate issues on the PC? What did you do about it? I'm pretty sure it's not my rig, as I played for 8 hours without issue before this crap started happening.

[Twig]

For a while I had a similar problem, and it was so bad that I literally could not shoot my pistols as fast as I clicked, and then my computer would start BOOP BOOP BOOPing at me because it couldn't handle all the inputs, or something? I don't know.

I turned the video settings down to "medium" overall, and the problem went away. Game got slightly uglier, but... hey whatever? It still runs better than GTAIV on the lowest settings. \: