The third game in the ever-expanding and ridiculous story of the once humble but now Ludicrous Third Street Saints.
and there over the top leader who seems to be getting more nutty and yet more desensitised to the world around him. She has little care for most of the Destruction she causes. She seems unfazed by the ever-expanding desolation of a criminal Empire. And yet he cares for his friends. All of this done with a personalised character that shouldn't have any personality.
I've always liked that about the Saints Row series. They're able to make your character, your blank slate of a person who can look like just about anything, seem like their own unique individual.
and depending on which voice you choose for your character you can end up with different little outcomes for your personalized conversations.
As for the gameplay it's fairly solid. The Gunplay is surprisingly accurate, the driving mechanics are very arcade in style.
They work well and they can take a lot of damage but the turning radius always feels incredibly large and you feel as if you're not really controlling the vehicle. the main story missions are mainly entertaining revolving around the same plot of go to location shoot enemy go to other location rinse-and-repeat sometimes of a bit of variety stuck in 4 Fun the side activities are okay to play once but get mindlessly boring after a while. This becomes all the more problematic when they're the same activities that have been on Saints Row since the first game. And at this point are just incredibly tedious.
The story is. Okay. It almost feels like they had five different stories planed out and decided to just shove them all in this game at once. You start the game fighting a group known as 'The Syndicate' with this Belgian guy who you think's going to be the main antagonist but he's kill killed relatively quick. Then it devolves to this other guy known as killbane who's just a big brut of a man which reminds me of Maero from Saints Row 2 or Joseph Price from Saints Row one, it's been done.
Then there's a hyper military organization that gets introduced later on that becomes the real antagonist not unlike the ultor corporation in Saints Row 2.
The whole story works out just fine but it feels like it was a bit rushed. Much like the environment itself the new city is incredibly generic and although I kind of like the architecture and love the semi Metropolis vibe it gives off, the whole thing just seems empty.
It's the devil in the details.
This game despite its polish and overall performance lacks so many of the small unique little corks that made Saints Row 2 so amusing. But alas I could spend all day blathering on about how I prefer the second game to the 3rd. And that's Unbecoming as I don't believe the third game is all that bad. I just kind of wish that they took a little bit more time and maybe introduced it with some of the mechanics from the fourth game and just made one solid game as opposed to okay games.
Ultimately this game feels more like a reboots than a continuation of what Saints Row 2 was doing. The characters all acts very differently, it looks incredibly different (a lot of is down to the new engine) and the overall theme and atmosphere had changed too. It also just felt a little too quick to the punch with how much power you could acquire.
which is a little interesting as when you start the game you're incredibly underpowered. All the rival gangs have fairly powerful weapons and they can destroy you within a matter of moments if you let them. God help you if a bruise shows up you pretty much can't take those things head-on. But as the game goes on you become so powerful that everything becomes trivial and if you max out your skill tree you become literally invincible and at this point the game ceases to have any challenge whatsoever. And you can level yourself up pretty quickly if you want to. Especially if you get a game with a DLC and already have an attack helicopter or aeroplane at your disposal you can just sit around and Destroy gang members are about an hour and a half and get so many upgrades that it becomes almost impossible for any of them to fight you.
It also just feels really unrealistic. Which I know is a stupid thing to say with the Saints Row games but with the first two games you started out in the world that kind of resembles reality and then as time went on you started to fight more ridiculous things. In Saints Row 2 you have to break out of a prison that's run by average guards you see Ultor as the Ultimate Enemy but you don't really interact with them until halfway through the story. And even then there's the massive Corporation at the end of the day. Then Saints Row 3 and we're introduced to this super secret Syndicate gang who no body's heard of and yet has armed men walking the streets of a major city dressed in the most ridiculous clothing.
It's a massive Redken and it doesn't really make a lot of sense with the previous games. How can anybody take an elderly Japanese man seriously who runs a Yakuza Style gang when there are neon anime girls running around another city throwing giant hammers at you. The whole thing just seems kind of nonsensical.
I mean, look at Ultor in the second game. We have to build up to how powerful they are, you get introduced to them bit by bit and you discovered just how influential they were in the city. And as you play the game they start to acquire more property, they buy up radio stations, owned new buildings, start pushing soldiers in certain unique areas. They actually become a more powerful presence in the game as you play gradually. But The Syndicate is the opposite. There this super-powered gang that can run everything but ultimately falls apart after three missions.
I just kind of wish they had spent more time to developing the game. maybe alter some of the older side quest and make em more entertaining or make new ones all together.
Put some more mini details into your world. I love the idea of Steelport. It's this very generic looking East Coast American city with all these 1930s to 1940s buildings with an occasional hyper-modern skyscraper. With tons of weird and insane industrialised architecture.
It's like somebody took Boston and Detroit (with a dash of Vegas) and mix them together.
And it could have been a fantastic City. But unfortunately the whole thing so underdeveloped that you can't really tell anything apart. If I didn't have GPS in this game I wouldn't be able to find anything. And once again I know where most things are in the older Saints Row game without having to rely on a map. Because it's outline was designed better and it has a unique look to it depending on where you go.
Conclusion: A fun game with repetitive side quests and sadly minimalized customisation*. You look a bit more plastic even you should but then you're all Hollywood celebrity so that kind of makes sense. It doesn't matter what I think the game's been out for years. It's already sold all its copies and nobody cares anymore. I'm just rambling on for the sake of rambling on because well; That's what I do.
Also the guy that plays Johnny Gat is only in the game for 30 minutes. I'm not bad that he's not there because he not that amazing of a character to start with. But I heard the guy got one of the top Billings for his voice work. That's ridiculous.
*Compared to its predecessor. It's customisations actually pretty good compared to most games. But at the end of the day I could decide an individual colours for my tie in Saints Row 2. Where as in this game you can make a generic colour for your tie or sometimes your tie would match with one of your other clothing choices.
They took out some features and minimalize the customisation. Although one positive for this game is that most of the clothing fits your character better. Everything in Saints Row 2 was kind of wrapped around your character as if they were wearing latex. And maybe that's okay if you like to have a conventionally skinny body but I always go for fat middle-aged Brut looking men. Or Sometimes women. The fact is I like to have fun or amusing looking characters.
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