Saints Row: The Third - Page 3

Last save file indicates 26 hours...played this non-stop over the past couple of days. Quick tip, if you find yourself annoyed with some of the minigames you can buy a onetime perk to automatically unlock all challenges/properties for any neighborhood - comes in handy to bypass one of the annoying heli-ramage/defend-the-car missions - save it for when you need it. The other mini-games, with upgraded guns/health you can power through. I'd guess 9-11 hours comprised my playthrough of just the story bits.

Going back to Skyrim now; but have the sandbox itch calling me to the new Assassin's Creed.

ETA: Of course right now I feel like a butt for calling out Whitehead/Rivellio on their reviews and they haven't been around these parts in an age to stand for their claims Jake cited...be nice to have them back on the boards, and Fett too.
Edited by mongycore - 11/28/11 at 11:35am

Finished the story last night. I still say the game is a disappointment but as you get into the storyline, such as it is, you do get a sense of the nonsense they are really going for with this game and I keep thinking that my strong manful love for SR2's overall tone and flavor is hampering my enjoyment of SR3 overall because it is simply not the sequel I would have wanted, which doesn't make for a very fair criticism of the game itself. Yes you can still hang the gutted customization options around the game's neck but other than that, it is trying to be something of a different experience from SR2. Once STAG shows up with their superweapons, the game kinda comes into its own and I think I will love the sound the VTOL makes when you switch to flight mode til the day I die.

 

The most objective I can be here is to say that SR3 should give the next gen of sandbox game designers a lot of cool ideas to play with. Imagine a Mercenaries 3 with some of the hardware here. Or a true superhero/villain sandbox game with more SR than Prototype or InFamous. Or something else I'm not even picturing in my head at this point. Maybe even that truer sequel to SR2 that I still want.

I haven't finished this, but I'm loving it.  Out of curiousity, what else would you have wanted from a sequel to SR2?  I mean, is it really that you can't stack clothes on top of each other?

It kinda ends abruptly, and in a weird meta way.

I really should play some more story missions in this at some point.  So far I've been content to screw around a lot and play a bunch of the activities.  Last night I managed to get my tricked out scooter into the elevator of the Saints HQ and found out it would actually let me take it with me to the top.  So I promptly drove it around the pool to the helipad and sped off the roof using nitrous.  I landed on the street below with no problems whatsoever.

 

Of course later I got a full-on motorcycle up top and just missed landing a reverse flip, instead wiping out in hilarious and awesome fashion.  I even got a near miss on the car that just happened to be driving by.

"Wait a minute. These hoes ain't hoes!"

 

Yes, almost every moment of this game is in bad taste, but I enjoyed it. The Tiger Car and Genki games are cool, but I wish they'd expanded on the activities a little more, or at least kept the fun bits from SR2 - especially considering that a bulk of the middle act is spent introducing you to the diversions via missions. Snatch and Insurance Fraud still blow, and I don't think I want to go back to Escort, either.

 

Still, the genuine story missions are terrific, especially the TRON-inspired VR invasion with a nod to Zork. It felt short as hell, but for a game that's longer then ten hours, I guess that's a compliment.

Oh man, I LOVE Insurance Fraud.  Maybe I just like the goofy physics or something, but I have a lot of fun with that activity.

 

The only activity that I've really missed are the Fuzz ones from SR2.  I liked pretending to be a cop and beating up people for a fake TV show.  I think it is the one side activity from SR2 that would fit best with SR3's sensibilities, but it isn't here. Oh well.  At least the different varieties of mayhem are still fun.

I LOVED fuzz, and I also really liked Septic Avenger.

 

Three games in, and I still have no clue what the LB/RB (LS) touch ragdoll buttons are supposed to do in Insurance Fraud. I'm glad they make those activities perfectly avoidable.

The only way I could do any good in Insurance Fraud is to play it like Burnout Paradise. Once you've maximized the adreneline meter, I just go down the road hopping from car to car not paying attention to any of the bonus zones. Handles exactly the same way as it would if you were positioning yourself to nail Burnout's Multiplier buses.

All the other mini-games, aside from Mayhem, are ass. Fuck them if they kept Septic Avenger/Fuzz as upcoming DLC's.

So last night, I just finished the mission where you unlock the Sonic Boom, where you also (Spoiler for those who care)

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

 

I know it's cliched, but I love this game.

Re. Layering - it was fucking with the new engine so they decided to skip it to improve performance. They did the right thing, no point wandering around at 10fps for the sake of having whatever socks you want.

 

Re. Not being able to replay missions - the number of bugs encountered when they tried it was over 8000 and there wasn't time to fix it. This is mainly due to the eniviornmental changes that occur (blowing up the skyscraper, destroying/raising the bridges, increased/reduced gang presences, *THAT* island where the plane crashes). The guys behind the SR2 Gentlemen of the Row PC mod are trying to fix it and have confirmed Volition's reasoning for leaving it out is legit as they're struggling to get it working too but are hopeful.

 

Re. The Ho Boat's 'sell them/keep them' - yes, it's can be uncomfortable but i) for what it's worth, if you choose the latter Zimos goes on to unionize all Steelport's working girls; ii) the Boss is a fucking psychopath who does horrible things to plenty of people over the course of the three games. It's ridiculous to expect a vicious crime boss to be some kind of idealised 'Oh, they're a lovely boy/girl really, only hurt people who 'ad it coming and they loves their mum' 'nice' gangster figure.

 

Personally, my main problems are the Johnny Gat situation; the combination of that, trading up from a dope habit to a coke habit and the new VA leaving Shaundi pretty much insufferable for the entire game; some jarring/unclear storytelling (if you don't blow up the skyscraper and they don't tell you you're going to *dead person's* funeral, the way the Safeword mission starts, etc), the loss of Fuzz and the fact the antagonists are all rather weak and underdeveloped compared to the Brotherhood/Sons of Samedi.

 

Oh and the Boss going soft, though I guess it gets a pass as it's clearly a running theme of the story, coming up at both the start and in the final choice.

The whole time I was waiting for Johnny Gat to make his triumphant, third-act-twisty return. Three games in as a major character, and Gat gets GOT off camera? His cameo appearance in the Hollywood ending casts doubt on the entire SR3 plot being 'canonical' reality, but when the insufferable Shaundi mentions attending Gat's funeral, I was puzzled. I kept feeling like I missed a cutscene somewhere. Apparently I did, as I kept the skyscraper rather than destroy it.

 

Not that plot intricacies or characters areimportant in the SR universe. The game itself even admits as much. "Who gives a shit about Pierce," indeed.

Hm, so if you blow up the tower they go into greater detail about that particular subplot?  I'll have to replay this again making all the other choices. 

 

And yeah, I agree with Trevor, plot isn't the reason to play Saint's Row.  Personally, I think this one is a little weaker than SR2, but I'm still having a ton of fun with it.

He'll come back as a villian in Saints Row 4.

 

I went back and replayed it the other night but I didn't get a cutscene for Gat's funeral, I was a bit annoyed.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5056-Saints-Row-The-Third

 

Said it all much better than I did in my own review. I never quite put my finger on the "Saints are now celebrities" parallel either, though it is so fucking obvious and hilariously problematic for this game.

In case anybody cares, it is absolutely possible to take a police car up the elevator in the Saints HQ.  However, once at the top, it becomes stuck inside the elevator, and you have to take it back down or blow it to get out.  The case is the same for a full size van.  I still haven't tried the tiny Smart car equivalent yet, so I'm not sure if anything larger than a motorcycle will actually drive out of the elevator. 

 

I want to put a car in the swimming pool, dammit!

Ok, so the problem is the reduced customization options and that the game is too wacky.  Eh, I don't know what to tell you other than that GTA5 is coming out soon, they're trending toward less wacky.  I'm spending about as much time with this as I did with Saint's Row 2, and I'm loving it. 

To clarify, if you blow up the building, you don't get a funeral scene, it's literally just a line at the end of watching the place crumble saying "let's go bury Johnny", which at least helps explain what's happening in the Return to Steelport cut-scene immediately after but no, it doesn't go into any detail. Others have said it was obvious because you're in a hearse but fuck that, how many hearses do you see driving around that are purple? I thought they were just out for a leisurely drive back home in their Saintsmobiles...

Not as in love with this game as everyone seemed to be. But scoring the final mission with Bonnie Tyler? The absolute best decision that any human has ever made.

Yes.  That episode made me feel like a BAMF.  Probably because I was impervious to bullets the whole time.

Stuff like the Bonnie Tyler thing was awesome. This game is only disappointing because of those flashes of brilliance here and there. Without that, it's just a second rate game that isn't worth lamenting.

 

As for our difference of opinion, Wydren, it's not that I'm wrong or you're wrong but that we enjoy SR for different reasons and thus view the series' strengths differently. To you, it's easy to reduce my criticisms so that they sound petty or something. SR3 is a buggy game that could have used another couple of months of QA and on top of that, they gutted all the features that made SR2 so strong for someone like me. It may be that replacing it with a balls-to-the-sink whack quotient is a satisfactory replacement for some people but I for one think it's a fine line to walk (I am not one of those GTA-realism > Saints Row-whacky people, but thanks for playing) and SR2 actually bothered to walk it.

I wasn't trying to reduce your opinion to something petty, but that's really all I got from that Escapist review.  I mean, he specifically mentions not being able to pick his socks and the angle at which his hat sits (which I believe actually is something petty) and that the series ditches realism for wackiness.  Which it does, but I remember getting rewarded for spraying shit at buildings in Saint's Row 2, so let's not pretend that this game went too far all of a sudden.  I mean, Saint's Row 2 explained that your previously male character could now be a female by saying that the explosion at the end of the first one blew your balls off.  Is the third really that much less grounded in reality?  He also says that there's no context for some of the minigames, which I believed at first as well, but then I learned that through the storyline you do get videos showing you why you're driving a tiger around. 

 

If there's something specific, feel free to state it, but it sounds to me like the problem is that a lot of people were taken by surprise by how much fun Saint's Row 2 was, and when they were expecting it from Saint's Row 3 they viewed the lack of the surprise factor as a negative.  Maybe that's not it, but a whole lot of people keep saying that they want "more" from a Saint's Row game without stating exactly what the "more" is.  If you were a fan of Saint's Row 2, you really knew what to expect from this one.

So I finished up the district takeover stuff last night.  Every island is now at 100% control with every activity done, every property bought, and every instance of gang activity squashed.  I did pretty much all the activities in co-op, except for the final Trail Blazing activity.  That thing is a ridiculous jump in difficulty from Medium to Hard.  With how difficult that last one is, they should have called it "Insanely Hard So We Can Fuck You".  So, I just bought the damn district through my handy, dandy phone and moved on.

 

So now that I've got all the islands 100% taken over, maybe I should start doing the story missions again.  I think I left off somewhere in the middle of Act 2.

Do you get weapon unlocks or anything special when you 100% a district or an activity/minigame like in SR2?

Well, there's an achievement for each district and for each activity, but there aren't a ton of in-game things....or I just wasn't paying close enough attention.  I do know that I got a sweet looking sportscar and motorbike after completing the Decker territory.  They're all neon-glowy and kind of Tron looking.  Other than that, you unlock different types of gang members for finishing various activities and districts.  You only have a few different gang member types when you start out, but I think I've got almost a dozen different types now including mascots, strippers, hos, etc.

I don't know.  I might be missing something because there have been many times that I've hammered through the end reports to missions and activities instead of reading it all closely.

Like Polygon said, you unlock customization options for your gang.  Most of the weapon unlocks are done through the story or through the respect system.

My one complaint about this game is that there seems to be a lot of cool fun stuff in the DLC, but I'm not going to pay $2 a pop for a weapon and costume.  I know it's been discussed to death and it's the way the video game economy is moving, but I do hate that after spending $60 for a game they expect you to shell out more for stuff that they obviously had ready for release but decided to hold back.  I've got no problem paying for more missions and the like, but this is almost like the horse armor thing from Oblivion.

Soooooo........I did a bunch of story missions last night, and the ones for the Deckers are great! I especially loved the mission to take over their stronghold.  Also, the couple missions after STAG show up were a ton of fun.

Well, I'd get more specific (and have in prior posts and in my review) but, I mean, Yahtzee was VERY specific and you aren't taking that seriously which I kind of get. The point he's trying to make, and the point I'm making, is that the customization was a big deal in general and very detailed in the previous games. This element is drastically reduced in SR3. That is a pretty concrete thing, and a specific problem for some players. You see?

 

The "more" that players wanted from this game is evident to anyone who's played SR2. I'm surprised you don't seem to want to engage with the fact that SR3 simply has less content than its predecessor.

Holy crap does Saints Row The Third end well! While I appreciate the large destruction of the Daedalus ending, the other ending is much more satisfying for both gameplay and humor.  Besides, the Bonnie Tyler song playing over the end mission when you have to make the choice just goes much better with the "green" direction. 

 

Saving Shaundi from the booby trapped statue while listening to I Need A Hero was an absolute blast, and then following it up with Gangstas in Space was a one-two punch of awesome.  The melodramatic music, the dramatic screams of anguish when friendlies went down all the way to the botched line at the end of the Gangstas in Space mission was hysterical, but it was even better with the zombie voice on.

Oh, I understand that it's got "less" content, but when that content is the ability to pick which socks go with your shoes and which neck tattoos you can get, can you really say that's what makes the game terrible?  I'm not taking that seriously because as far as gameplay goes it doesn't make much of a difference.  There are the minigames (yeah, some that you liked may be gone, there are some new ones, etc).  I would understand if the complaint is that you can't tackle each of the gangs individually (one thing I thought was missing), but even that's not that big a deal and it's not a complaint I've heard.  I'm not trying to be dismissive or a smart-ass, but really all I get from most of the complaints is that you can't pick a tie to go with your shirt.

 

Yeah, I prefer the "good guy" ending.  And yes, the song is more appropriate that way.

 

Edited because apparently quoting makes the hidden text visible.

The clothing layering doesn't bother me much.What does bother me and what did make a big difference is that the game just feels so much more contained and limited than part 2, both in terms of scope and the gameplay. There's not nearly enough variety here, and the world is too damn small and lifeless.

 

Seriously this game tries so damn hard to be insane and over-the-top. But after playing Just Cause 2-which is imo the absolute best sandbox game on the market-The Third just feels woefully inadequate in comparison.

Edited by Splitfocus - 12/23/11 at 8:43pm

But again, how is it that much different from Saint's Row 2?  Saint's Row 2 had missions, minigames, gang operations for territory, collectibles, stunt jumps, barnstorming, all in a city.  Saint's Row 3 has missions, minigames, gang operations, collectibles, stunt jumps, barnstorming, all in a city.  Was there some huge part of Saint's Row 2 that I missed out on? 

 

I can understand saying it's smaller and less varied than Just Cause 2.  My God, that gameworld was enourmungous.

Yeah, I think it really boils down to me being really fucking spoiled by Just Cause 2, to be honest..

 

Though I will say that, Saints 2 just had a lot more to offer than The Third, and the world of Stilwater felt much more artistically cohesive and alive than Steelport.

I know I'm starting to beat a dead horse here, but what exactly?  People keep saying this without being able to give a specific example other than socks, ties and neck tats.

You're not listening to anyone, Wyrdren. You keep talking about socks, ties, and neck tats so you can strawman the shit out of Yahtzee Croshaw, myself (you obviously haven't read the review I linked for you), and others.

I did read your review.  You mention the hair choices (which I'll give you), the car choices (which are just as varied as in SR2), and the tattoos (again, which I'll give you, but really?).  You also mention how you don't like that you have to use the phone and then drive to a location to start a mission instead of just driving to the location.  It's not that I'm not listening or trying to strawman any of you, I'm citing specific things you both mentioned.  If you feel that I'm trying to turn your argument into a strawman, maybe it's because your argument isn't as strong as you think it is. 

 

I mean, I can understand that it took some of the fun away for you, but to say that it makes the game way worse than SR2 is kind of absurd. 

Picked this up off Green Man Gaming during the Christmas sales, and have been loving the shit out of it. While I can see why some people are upset about there being less in the game than SR2, to me it makes it feel more focussed. All I ask this game to do is not make the activities too fiddly at higher levels - which is what put me off SR2 in the end - and I'll be playing this sucker right through. I don't know what it is about the design of the game, but this has some of the most enjoyable shooting I've played in a sandbox game.

One of the best games I have ever played - fantastic.  Little things like making the boss character more fun to play and less of a dick, and the whole concept of them being media stars.  Not to mention the awesome toys you get further on down the line and removing some of the more annoying things from the second game (having to play dress up all the time for example).

 

I'm definalty going to play it through again and choose the "other" ending but how could I not

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

 

hats of to the makers of this game it's damn near perfect.

I've been looking to play this online with someone to have a good fuckaround time, I've got the Professor Genke human canon so I'm sure there's some ridiculous stuff we can get up to.

 

I have it on PS3, add me, my name is the same as here. I'm totally not a dick :P

Took this screenshot yesterday. Thought you guys might enjoy it.

That's pretty bad ass man. I'll add you when I get back from work, but alas I don't have SR3 on PS3.

saints row 1 and 2 are way better then number 3 its shit the zombies are shit stag shit fucken shit game