Rest in Peace you crazy THQ fellows: Saint's Row 3

I talked about this last year when I was playing through Just Cause 2: I've never played a GTA game. I can't recall if I mentioned that GTA came out on PC back when I was a youngun with a friend who tried to sell me on it. I'm still not sure why he successfully got me into Master of Orion and X-Com, but not GTA or Fallout. It's a mystery for the ages. Mind you, GTA was a top down game that was a bit of a letdown from Carmageddon. I don't know if they came out at the same time, but Carmageddon was way more interesting. You know, because I love murder. He played the shit out of both of them though...

His sister was very pretty. I considered making a misogynistic comment here to help set the mood for talking about Saint's Row 3, but the game is into some sort of bizarro land where the very concept of misogyny or misandry fail to deliver enough punch to what the game is like. Saint's Row 3 is nonchalant and almost inoffensive in its vile tendencies, simply for lack of anything connecting to real life response. There should be some level of revulsion to using a stripper as a human shield before throwing her into the pool and taunting her, but the game is so far gone into clown college territory your brain just can't make the connection. Like you know those words should hold meaning but the game is just one big crazy bear show.

This game hates humanity. Loathes it. Even if you play very tightly, drive safe around civilians and refuse to kill cops, they'll end up dead. A burst of gang warfare sees traffic around you freak out, with passing grannies plowed over by desperate fools who spin their car 360 degrees before moonwalking into a curb that six people happened to be standing on. Hell, sometimes you can just see traffic screw itself up without any input from you. Someone will walk into a car, a body will go flying, people will panic and then there's just death everywhere.

this it not ever going to be mature

Once you get away from the ridiculousness of its parade of buffoonery the real game lies beneath and ... Actually, that game is pretty good. For an effort that is tied very intimately to the death of a publisher and its years of excess, Saint's Row 3 is neither desperate or ugly. It's an attractive game, a mad men murder simulator, in which you take your sharp dressed gangster and plow into a cadre of opposing thugs in a garbage truck before leaping out from your flaming wreckage to benny hill your way into the distance. In theory you can dress your guy or gal in whatever outfit you like, but I just can't get over the idea of dressing as some sauve motherfucker as I barrel through city streets with barely any idea what I'm doing before t-boning a truck in traffic and dying in the resulting three car pile up explosion. Death and carnage follow in your wake, leading me to feel like you should dress for a funeral, because holy fuck people die.

And once the heavy weapons come out? Only the dead can know peace from this circus. Murder time fun time, indeed.

this image sums the game up more than words ever could

I'd end up comparing this game to Just Cause 2 a bunch if I didn't realize it's likely derivative of the same games JC2 itself is derivative of. Games I, mind you, haven't played. To compare what little I think is fair to compare, JC2 is more about the larger island and getting around that larger island to do big damage. SR3 is tighter and more focused, though it feels like it trades some of the totally insane elements of JC2 for other, more insane elements. The driving is better in SR3 and the city feels more like a real city, with gorgeous little details and cute little rural areas. Don't get me wrong, I think at a distance JC2 is a nicer looking game, but up close SR3 destroys it.

I read complaining about SR3 being a bit watered down and 'too wacky' compared to SR2. I wish I could compare the two, but SR2 is a "bad port" that requires way too much effort to get running. I believe the problem stems from CPU clock time, and my older computer actually had the right cpu clock for it, but this one doesn't and I'm just not inclined. I've also read complaints the game's customization system isn't very good, which is ... Odd to me. It's already ridiculous. Did SR2 have even more levels of ridiculousness? How much dress up time do I need?

You are pushed into clothing stores (Which you buy to earn in game money) constantly, as it's one of the main ways to drop off gang or police alerts. You are then offered a chance to buy new clothing, which the game rewards you for doing with a small amount of "respect" bonus. Respect being used to open up your abilities as you gain levels in it. Anyway, you find yourself playing dress up all the time and after hours of playing the game I'm always finding a new sauve outfit to set up. Though I do admit, I think Zero Punctuation complained you couldn't customize your socks and I legitimately wish I could customize my socks. Seriously, socks. Socks in the sequel. Make it happen, Volition.

ok maybe the driving mrs tiger stuff puts it over the top

As for wacky, I really have no idea. JC2 was played pretty straight and it still feels ridiculous. How do you not make these games ridiculous? Even spared all the nonsense and dildos and other crap, nothing in the game is more absurd than engaging in gang warfare in a public street. Turn off the ninjas, take away the strippers and the half naked dudes and still nothing is ever as silly as watching two gang vehicles racing to run me over, colliding in the middle of the street and knocking debris into bystanders. Corpses flying through the air while my character tries to pat himself down as he's screaming about how fire is in fact hot. A third car ramps off the second flaming vehicle and explodes midair. Yeah this is really serious stuff here guys.

The story structure is pretty simple, but it does cross it up a little and try to develop the characters here or there. Most of them are just simple archetypes, but they're expressive and well done so who cares. I feel like it mostly gets its character moments in as its briefing you for the next mission or as sort of a debrief thing. It has a plot, moreso than JC2 did, though I think probably less than GTA4 or other games in that vein. I actually like the characters as they are. It's cute how the game color codes all the gangs and all your homies (as the game calls them) are done up in regal purple. The story itself seriously feels like they're just throwing everything at the Saints and they just roll with it. Adversaries that seemed important are continually, ridiculously replaced and upstaged by increasing nonsense. The game embraces its madness and deals it out like it is delighted to do so. There is a ton of content around the story missions to keep you from blasting through them, but as you do them you're constantly baffled by how many more references, jokes and simple oddities it is willing to throw out at you. You ride a TRON cycle. There's a text adventure. You fight zombies. You wrestle. You infiltrate a sex club at the behest of a pimp. You're nude at the time. You use terrorist tactics to fight one group, detonating car bombs in the street before ... Well, I'll leave it at that. The game does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and delights in doing it.

I watched a thing about the death of THQ and how Saint's Row 3's success sort of negatively reinforced their misdeeds in producing triple A games, but SR:3 really does feel like a legitimate AAA title. Yeah I know that games with four hour campaigns represent what people "consider" AAA, but I honestly feel like games so short and with so little actual content they'd count as demos don't feel all that epic to me. SR:3 is seriously long and filled to the brim, even if much of that filling is strip clubs, fart jokes, hitting old people by accident and god I am so bad at flying planes oh nooooooo.

Inversely the game's mission structure is a ... Lopsided. Missions are sometimes quite interesting, and sometimes you run into one of two things: Either A, you fall out of or somehow leave the "mission space", which makes no sense given how the game runs its scenarios or you B, run into a bug with the Y button. Y being a button that does nearly everything, from opening doors, to getting into vehicles, to getting out of vehicles and ... You can start to see the issues. I don't mind dying to my own stupid mess ups or picking a bad place to have a firefight, but dying to being unable to tell what my idiot is doing after I hit Y is really frustrating. Can I get into the tank? No? Can you tell me that? Am I getting into this jet? Can you tell me if not? Trying to open a door and the Y button instead takes a human shield, or struggling to get through the weird stunlock of snipers is just irritating.

Ninjas and zombies, but I wasn't able to get pirates

The engine also has weird issues with enemy weapons. Like weird, weird issues with how aiming works. Snipers in helicopters are some sort of slow meticulous hitscan weaponeers that you can't shake. It's ... actually, really surreal. It's hard to express but you find yourself moving in this weird snake dance to dodge a shot that often never comes. They're nerfed by the fact they don't do much damage, so you just push through the "pain" when you're trying to shoot them. The game's difficulty is pretty weird. You can be knee deep in the dead, only to miss out on your regeneration cycle and suddenly find yourself killed. Or you can hold out for hours against hundreds of enemies. Or, like I said, your guy just runs in circles instead of getting into the plane.

Outside of the missions and brief "answer your cell phone" scenarios, there are also activities and collectibles. Activites are mostly introduced by missions and extend out the content developed for the missions. I like most of them and as I got better at the game or figured out their tricks I liked most of them more. You can get around town to those activies in a variety of vehicles and a little into the game can get most of them delivered to you, which is a nice touch. The delivery is quick and easy, though it is a little buggy and has an undisplayed cooldown. The vehicle handling, like I said, is good and crisp. Honestly the driving feels more natural than the combat, but you probably spend more time getting around than fighting.

Lastly the game has challenges, which are little meters of rewards for doing silly or obvious things. Driving in the wrong lane, nearly missing other cars, doing stunts and so on. Sometimes this pushes you to go do something and then you find yourself like, at the airport doing jumps off solar panels even though you don't need the rewards. It's still fun though, somehow. There are activities you may never encounter in a play through, including car surfing and streaking, probably more I didn't even notice.

it's not where you parked that matters. it's who

It isn't a perfect game and apparently it introduced the loathsome "season pass" DLC idea to the world, though maybe that's not quite true. Regardless I think I got SR3 in the THQ humble bundle, which turned out to be a pretty gosh darn amazing deal. Well, then I bought the THQ bundle this Christmas as well, so I guess I gave them money for it twice. Which is still a pretty amazing deal, and I'm looking forward to the next game in the series even if it's a while off before I get to play it. I don't know if I'd say this is a better game than Sonic Karts, though they're pretty different so it's hard to compare.

I'm also unsure if I'll ever pick up the DLC; unless there's an inexpensive way to pick up all of it at once it's ... Just irritating. I get that THQ was going under and was trying to spread it out as much as possible, and that's fine, but I really have no idea if the DLC is worth it or whatever. I know I'll definitely look into getting the sequel though, as they're apparently reusing this engine (which is fine) and just adding art assets and more content. I'm totally fine with that, I understand it's just extended out dlc, but who cares? A new city is enough to get another twenty plus out of this game easy. I could do with more radio stations as well.

Ok so to be a little philosophical for a moment, there's two very strong themes in this game. I'm not entirely sure if there's some sort of congealed authorial intent or just accidentally, but it's actually a little weird how hard SR3 hits on the two ideas.

he also eats a sandwich with his mask on

The first is one of absolute motivation. The main character, who feels surprisingly human given his ridiculous antics (might be the fact I picked a good voice actor? I don't know) and the fact he's a protagonist you just make up on the spot is totally about how we have to do this, I have to do this and then he keeps hammering that he's going to do everything to get his way. It's strange to say because you'd imagine that every game is like this right? The main character is always the go getter! But I think back to RAGE or Portal 2 or hell even Darksiders which has a walking tank in a hoodie for a main character and all those games could surprisingly learn a lesson from Saint's Row 3. I mean objectively, those games you all feels sort of strung along and in Rage especially your guy just does stuff eh well because eh what else you gonna do? I'm not quite sure what it is about SR3, given you're still pretty much being guided around by NPCs, you still feel like the hero and the leading role of the story.

Rage you feel like some idiot who just does what he's told. I know it's totally strange to talk about SR3's story telling methods but I was surprised to realize how much more engaged the protagonist felt. And I'm seriously not quite sure why. He just feels like a doer and a shaker while most modern protagonists feel like quest-given lumps. Maybe it just boils down to the fact that in spite of the fact you dress him and choose all his looks, he talks and yells and says things like I AM THE GREATEST. Seriously game developers, just add that line to your games from here on in. The next time I shoot a demon in the head, slay a dragon or drive a kart over someone, have the man, woman or hedgehog scream out I AM THE GREATEST. Help me out here. For science.

The other thing, also strange to think on, goes back to what I said at the start. If there's one thing SR3 is very strongly about, it is definitely how nihilistic, outright destructive and shallow life is, or at least their lives. Sure you get the fast cars and strippers and drugs and so on, but any moment of reflection and your main character is ... Not so much miserable as almost driven by what he's lost. He quips, he makes remarks, but there's on really telling exchange of dialogue where a "homie" replies to his "look at how well my never say die attitude works out" with "yeah all your friends are dead".

murder time fun time

Ouch. I've read complaining about how one of the main characters died at the start, but I think it really reinforces the bleakness of the theme. The city itself, as well, feels surprisingly empty or if not that then desolate. It's an industrial hellscape, with few signs of life. At a couple points there are drowned wrecks - One island just has a sunken jet, quite matter of factly, sticking out of the ocean. I don't know if the jet has THQ written on the side, but it probably should..

Again I don't really think any of this is intentional, nor am I presenting it as some pretentious analysis. The game is ridiculous and silly and incredibly violent, but there's this weird theme to it buried under the tits, violence, burning furries and other nonsense. Then when you go even deeper? More tits and violence. It's like the turtle thing, except the one turtle had a thought. For a game I spent $7 or something on to get in a pack, it really was well worth the money.