Saints Row 4

[TychoCelchuuu]

They don't start you off on the same foot - GTA starts you off in Liberty City and Saint's Row 3 starts you off in Steelport or wherever the fuck. GTA starts you off with cars that are more fun to drive, guns that are more fun to shoot, sunsets that are more fun to watch, walls that are more fun to hop, and people that are more fun to punch. GTA nails atmosphere in a way almost no other game series does. San Andreas feels more like California than almost anything else I've ever watched, played, or read. Saint's Row 3 doesn't have any of that. It has janky feeling guns, boring cars, a city I could not give a shit about, movement mechanics that didn't grab me, and pedestrians that I felt no reason to mess with.

[Brannigan]

Do not agree on the guns bit at all.

[Frenetic Pony]

Bah! You're all wrong, Saints Row 1 was the best and it has only gone downhill in linear line, at least from the perspective of interesting gameplay.

 

While the "wackiness" factor has been amped up, and certainly 2's character creation stuff (which has continued) was fun, the actual activities and moment to moment gameplay feels like it's gone significantly downhill. Doing the robbery activity in one, where you had to take a bunch of fully physiced boxes from as store, into you car, and then drive them to a place while being chased by the cops was great!

 

I remember robbing one place, doing the whole hostage thing, which means you have to hold them at gunpoint till they open the safe, and piling all the boxes I could carry into a pickup. Then suddenly the police were on me, which meant I had to drive like a madman, which spilt the boxes all over the road. I had to go back and pick them up to put them back in while shooting at the cops, but they battered my pickup which gave out before reaching the dropoff. So I had to steal a new car, while still shooting at the cops again, get the boxes transferred into the new trunk, which wasn't big enough, and then drive 3 more blocks carefully with my remaining boxes while the cops were still chasing me.

 

It was hilarious and great fun, all from a little side activity. It was fantastic in feeling and mechanics. Everything from the car surfing, which wasn't a formal thing, to how the weapons worked, to the fact that you could chase down a car by running fast enough, to your terminator like health regen was fantastically fun from a mechanical perspective. As the series has gone on they've traded all that for being wacky from a presentation perspective. "Oh look, you're shooting a million dudes in a big bobble head, isn't that so weird!" And the silly wrestling melee moves and etc. have all traded being hilarious and neat from a substantive, gameplay perspective to one of being a "hilarious" in your face, flashy visual one; which isn't as fun to me. I vastly preferred when car surfing was an informal thing when where you were just messing with the physics rather than the mini "game" that gave you points and actually had less dynamics too it.

 

There's two things that it brings to mind. Games like Just Cause 2 and Red Faction Guerilla give you the tools and an environment, and just sort of let you go for it. Saints Row has actually limited all its tools into giving you that "crazy OMG DUDE LOOK AT THAT!" experience "easier" at the cost of losing much of the unexpected things that can happen; and in its deliberately forcing you to have these "OMG CRAZY!" Moments, it also, for me, saps their appeal. When it happens because of the game mechanics coming together for that one moment it's more like something I accomplished, whereas with Saints Row it's something that the devs have done for me.

[DoomMunky]

Well said, Frenetic Pony. 

[Twig]

It has janky feeling guns, boring cars, movement mechanics that didn't grab me.

Except all of that is virtually identical to GTA at minute zero.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Well seeing as these are subjective opinions I don't think it's possible to say that Saint's Row is the same as GTA - clearly it wasn't for me. I don't think we're going to get very far into explaining why I didn't like Saint's Row if you deny that I experienced what I did when I played it. The conversation is going to dead end pretty quickly.

[Twig]

Seems that way, don't it.

[twmac]

Frenetic  - I totally see what you mean about Saints Row The Third's implementation. The game does not really make you earn it, the set pieces and moments are presented to you on a silver platter but man, what delights each of them feel like. I love games that make me feel like I am having to work but SR3 just flies in the face of all that by just inundating me with ever escalating nonsense. For a game to recognise what most people want from a sandbox game (explosions, nonsense) and embrace that in an ever escalating series of madness is something I cherished. I actually went back and placed up to the moment where you first meet the naked Russian Oleg and I felt like the game was still so playful and silly that I was willing to let all authorial control rest in the developers hands.

 

Tycho - I can almost see what you mean about the cars in SR3, in that they all pretty much handle the same with only minor tweaks for the very big or very small vehicles. It does not feel rewarding to seek out a good car as it will only have a impact on the game. Likewise, your car instantly becomes more powerful than anything else on the road with you able to knock dumpster trucks out of the way with a hatchback. It ties in with what the developers are trying to do - streamline the experience so that you are never really struggling or getting frustrated so as to tie into the sociopathic power fantasy that the game's narrative is pushing. Though to offer GTA as the counterpoint to this is something that I am going to have to complete disagree with.

 

Most of the cars in GTA handle like fresh dog shit on a wet, linoleum floor. Forever slipping out from under you and generally making the world traversal a chore in the way that just isn't interesting. The shooting mechanics have been nothing but an abomination, GTA IV went some way towards fixing that with the free aim stuff but I just never got comfortable with it and getting a bead on anything or anyone was tiresome. I dreaded playing any of the side missions or getting a phone call to have to deal with anyone, that and the story missions were basically a massive joke. It is like Rockstar never got past designing missions for the PlayStation in their rigid structure. By this I mean that they go beyond the hand holding of SR3 and get into the Far Cry 3 level of strong arming you into exactly what they tell you to or else you can expect a Game Over screen.

 

Sorry for that to end up as a bit of an anti-GTA rant but, like I said, I could kind of see where you are coming from in your dislike of some of SR3's mechanics but I feel like viewing GTA as the better alternative is backwards as Rockstar have been so static in that regard when there are so many improvements they need to make.

[lumberbaron]

Wow, this turned into a GTA v. Saints Row thing very, very quickly.

[youmeyou]

That's not really a huge surprise. Seeing as Saints Row 3 is essentially a response to the more serious direction the GTA series has taken as of IV.

[twmac]

Yeah, sorry. I was trying to address the arguments being made on the game's own (de)merits. Then Tycho brought up GTA as though this is what is to be expected of this style of game and I am very much opposed to this as I really don't like GTA, so I ranted a bit.

[Dewar]

I disliked the car driving and shooting in GTA4. I liked the shooting in SR3, but still didn't care for the cars much. The main thing that struck me about the differences in gameplay is that GTA4 seems a lot less willing to give you any leeway in a way that made the somewhat clunky controls extra frustrating. I felt like I was always getting killed or failing missions because I took just a second too long to get something done, where SR3 seemed willing to just let it slide to make the game more fun. You can take a few more bullets, less obstacles bring you to a dead halt during chases, and time limits to get tasks done seemed plenty long. Considering I was frustrated as hell with GTA4 by the time I was done, that extra leeway made all the difference to me, but I can see where others would think that leeway just made the game feel sloppy.

 

Story and mood wise, both did their stick very well, one just was dead serious, the other has a 5 foot dildo sword.

[Twig]

the other has a 5 foot dildo sword.

While true, I feel like that's a misrepresentation of the entire game. It's unfortunate that it even exists, because I've had several friends refuse to play it, under the assumption that the entire game was just dumb poop and dick jokes, until I badgered them about it enough to just PLAY IT NOW, at which point they agreed it was a really fun and funny game. Obviously the poop and dick jokes do exist, but they play like fifth fiddle to what actually makes the game great.

[Max Ernst]

Saints Row is a weird series because the entire game looks and feels like it is made out of plastic. I appreciate their dedication to the absurd, but ugly, ugly art makes the world uninteresting to live in. The jokes were often awful (dildos and dicks and breasts) and the game felt soul-less. It felt like every unfunny person on Reddit who make gross rage comics wrote the script, as every joke is tacky, pandering horseshit. Sex in itself, or even sexual fetishes, aren't funny. Even their 'joke game mechanics' (shoot people out of your car, being a pimp) are either banally juvenile or uninspired trash.

 

That said, I did like the soundtrack. I love that Tim and Eric were DJs. I appreciate that they tried to close the dissonance that comes from playing GTA (death has reverence in the story but between missions the protagonist kills pedestrians with flippancy) by making everything insane. I just wish the game knew how to do the absurd a little better and without the sterility.

 

But I am super fascinated by the fact this game is coming out so soon, particularly given THQ's meltdown. An open world city game isn't exactly an easy thing to just churn out.

[DoomMunky]

I got distracted by the city takeover stuff in SR3, and it's frustratingly opaque enough that I stopped playing. Why can't I take over this district of the city? Have I not advanced far enough in the story? Not found the right person/thing/trigger to activate the takeover? Is it a higher level sidequest I've gotta unlock, too? 

 

I'm also generally a fan of more free-form mayhem (Far Cry 2 was a great mixture of directed and free-form encounters, as is Stalker: Call of Pripyat), so the story stuff felt, well, sorta beside the point. I hate cutscenes, even if my guy does have an awesome British voice and a ridiculous purple vest and platform shoes. 

 

Love the character customization. I loved how attached I got to a certain look; I would change the way he looked and go 'no no no' and change it back. : )

[Brannigan]

cutscenes-wise, it never got old that my character had the zombie voice so he just mumbled, but every character acted like they knew exactly what I said. Though I never finished the game because I'm terrible like that.

[Murdoc]

Zombie voice is the only way I could imagine playing Saints Row... the dialog wasn't great to begin with, but zombie voice made it so awesome/tolerable.

[Reyturner]

 

I'm in.

[elmuerte]

I wonder if Johnny Gat has a comeback

[melmer]

So, i played about 2 hours of Saints Row 3 last night... what a load of shit. i expected better, but what i got was a dead soulless game world and a billion bullet sponge enemies. i will not be loading it up again, son i am disappoint.

 

Additionally Review are coming in for SR4, Danielle gave it a 9 over on polygon, Edge, Destructoid, Eurogamer. Apparently, it's fixed the soullessnessness, probably would've been better if i skipped 3 entirely. But its too late now, i have a bad taste in my mouth and i will most likely never play this

[Dewar]

Since Saint's Row the Third got similar reviews (84 on metacritic) I wouldn't expect a good review to indicate they fixed what's bothering you about the third one.

[mikemariano]

Keith David is in this game as "Vice President Keith David."

 

Can Vanaman dunk on Keith David?

[Twig]

SOULLESS.

 

You're dead on the inside.

[melmer]

I wondered what that smell was

[Dewar]

I scored this from Green Man Gaming for $40, so yay. Hopefully it runs all right on my computer.