Around this time last year, I played through Saints Row the Third, a game with some strokes of brilliance, and some less than ideal aspects. SR3 was something of a flagship that took the series from being a cult hit, to a wild and ridiculous mainstream success. People decided they were a fan of a Grand Theft Auto style game that didn't take itself seriously at all. Then came the DLC. Then the game's published THQ went bankrupt. Placed in a decidedly strange situation wherin you have a wildly successful franchise, but a publisher who has gone broke, Saints Row developers Volition were put in a pretty awkward place. The result is that what was once intended to be a huge DLC expansion ended up being the standalone Saints Row IV. Some people were thrilled, some people were skeptical. Most just wanted more Professor Genki. As ever though, the question is, is the game any good?
So let's start at the beginning. The story of the last 3 Saints Row games follows the growth of the Third Street Saints from a down and out street gang, to somehow becoming a mainstream media empire. In SR4's opening sequences you become President of the United States, witness Earth be destroyed, get placed into a Matrix-like simulation, acquire super powers, and plot the downfall of the alien overlord Zinyak. And yet, this is all done as a tutorial. Sure, it makes sense to introduce the plot through gameplay, but this stuff should be epic. How do you make defending The White House from aliens boring? Make it a tutorial that doesn't have much to do with the game at all. How do we introduce an open world game? Clearly with a hallway shooter segment. Oh by the way, about that shooting? This game is about super powers, so don't sweat it too much. Now here, have a boring, needlessly protracted turret segment.
Unfortunately, that's really the story of Saints Row IV. It inherits everything from Saints Row the Third, and the new is constantly at odds with the old. Saints Row the Third was about jacking cars, driving in the oncoming lane, shooting rival gangs with ridiculous missions, and doing silly activities. All of that is still in Saints Row IV, but what's the point? Why use guns when you can throw fireballs? Why steal cars when you can run faster on foot? That's cute, you can vault over fences... or you could jump 500 feet in the air, dive into the ground and nuke the fence into oblivion. Don't get me wrong, the super powers are definitely fun, there's no doubt., but being tacked onto an existing engine makes them feel significantly more clunky than in say, inFamous. At least until they throw you into a mission where you are without them. It's like they needed to do that occasionally just to justify guns even existing. At least they are pretty good about providing you with crazy vehicles or power armor to use part way through these segments so you don't miss your powers too much.
As far as the game flow, things feel a lot less coherent than Saints Row the Third, too. You can cruise around Cyber Steelport and do many of the same or similar activities as in real Steelport. Except now there is this whole quest system. Many of the games' quests involve exiting the simulation and talking to a crew member on your ship in the real world. Which seems to me like it doesn't really accomplish much aside from adding travel and loading time to your task. Sure there's a story/atmosphere/otherlameexcuse reason to do it, but let's be real here. Saints Row IV's story is not trying very hard, it's barely there. This game is about being the super powered president. I guess you could say it's making some kind of statement about escapism, but I really don't care. It's just another example of the world with super powers being at odds with the world without. I want to stay in the simulation and run up buildings, don't make me work so hard to get to the fun parts. It seems an odd thing to do, considering a big part of Saints Row the Third's appeal was always making the player feel like they are doing something worthwhile with their time.
As for the non-story quests, most of them simply involve doing the various activities strewn about Cyber Steelport. On one hand, this is pretty cool, because it means you have a little extra incentive/reward for doing said activities. Except I completed most of them before even getting the respective quests. As a result, the activities felt kind of soulless and unrewarding. Then I got a bit farther in the story, and unlocked a slew of rewards all at once. It just seems to me that the way the game is paced out is all over the place. You start out in a painfully linear/lengthy tutorial, pining for the open world. Then you get it, and are given a world with a million tasks and no incentives. Then you go back to the real world to do some story missions, and are rewarded with incentives in the cyber world. Surely at the very least, they should have restricted what activities you can do at the start a little more, and let the player narrow their focus a little.
What I will say about Saints Row IV though, is that when it get it right, it does it in style. The game is absolutely littered with delicious nerdy references. They feel out of place in a franchise that started as a gritty GTA clone, but I'll not say no to a tongue-in-cheek Metal Gear Solid segment. What's more, Volition once again flex's it's ability to create moments that are absolutely perfect for certain 80's songs. Those moments where you can just rock out and be awesome to a song that fits the moment perfectly.. Well they are absolutely stunning. Really, that's what this game is all about. It's about being awesome, being silly, being nerdy and being ridiculous. Saints Row IV definitely does all of this, but I would personally argue that Saints Row the Third did it better. I think it comes down to expectations. Saints Row the Third has tons of crazy in it, but it has a lot of the typical stuff, too. In contrast, Saints Row IV is thoroughly ridiculous from start to finish, and when everything is crazy, nothing is. The absurdity is still amusing, but not as much as it could have been.
So I suppose this is a long winded way of saying that Saints Row IV is a decent game, but has a lot of issues. I would say that while Saints Row the Third was a consistently good game, Saints Row IV consistently rocks back and forth between being amazing and being pretty mediocre. Considering the rocky publisher issues Volition experienced during development, it's not entirely surprising that it would end up being a little spotty in places. After all, this was a game that was never intended to be a sequel. I kind of wonder if it shouldn't have stayed as an expansion, it seems to me that a lot of complaints would evaporate had that been the case. In the end of the day though, I did have an overall good time with the game, and I will look forward to any future Saints Row IP. The next time I want to play with super powers though, I'm definitely going to play a game that was built from the ground up with them in mind.
A couple weeks back I made a post about The Little Things in Saints Row the Third. I talked about some of the little things the game does to keep the player interested in the game. Well, I've now played most of what Saints Row the Third has to offer. I've completed all the story and DLC missions, and am sitting at 85% completion. Unfortunately looking at the game from this side of things paints a little bit of a different picture. So now that I'm situated where I am, I wanted to return to the topic to talk a bit about how the wonderful little systems in Saints Row work (or don't) in the "end game".
One of the things that I talked at length about in the aforementioned post, was the game's respect system. It did a very good job of making even the most mundane tasks both fun and productive by awarding you "Respect" for doing zany things. This is still true, but it's not something that lasts forever. As you could probably surmise, there is a maximum level of Respect that you can reach. Respect is used to unlock the ability to purchase upgrade, not to purchase the upgrades themselves. Therefore, once you reach max Respect level, Respect is no longer useful. Not unsurprising, but it's amazing how much less fun everything is when you finally catch that carrot on a stick. I would say that perhaps Respect should have been used to buy upgrades, but the way money works in this game is important to it's feel. Without purchasing upgrades money wouldn't have a whole lot of use, so it's hard to say which would be better.
Unfortunately however, the problems with the game's Respect system arise even before you hit Respect level 50. As you can probably surmise, as your level increases you need more Respect to achieve each successive level. The issue is that many of the "zany things" that incentivize the little actions in the game (getting headshots, chain kills, driving in the oncoming lane) don't award that much Respect. As your respect level goes up, the point to doing these small but fun things goes away. It becomes more efficient to just get from point to point as quickly as possible, because when you get there you will be greeted by big booms and lots of mission completion Respect. Certainly if you can drive in the oncoming lane to get to your destination, some Respect is better than none. It ultimately feels fruitless though, and it takes a lot of the fun out of the experience of romping about the city. The game becomes about achieving objectives almost exclusively. I would say that perhaps Respect acquisition/requirements should be balanced differently. In the end of the day though, they made getting high respect levels accessible for any play style, which is probably more important.
So that's all kind of unfortunate. It's not that unexpected though. Obviously you can't keep getting Respect forever, and obviously it shouldn't be balanced such that driving in the oncoming lane for a couple hours will get you to level 50 before you finish the first story mission. However I would say that what is more disappointing is the actual upgrades that it unlocks. The game does a really good job of making each Respect level matter. Pretty much every single level unlocks some awesome things that are legitimately quite desirable. Too much so, in fact. As your Respect level gets really high, things start to get a little bit too ridiculous. Now, ridiculous is kind of what Saints Row does. It's really cool having explosive pistols, incendiary SMGs, infinite run time, etc. The problem is when you start unlocking instant reloads, infinite ammo, and damage immunity.
See what it comes down to here is that all of the fun has just been removed from the game. I don't get any real reward for doing anything (other than increasing that completion %), and doing most things is just boring. What's the fun in doing some big gang fight when I can use an automatic weapon without having to ever reload or worry about ammo, and I am completely immune to damage? Tense gang fights are fun. Upgrades likes 20% damage reduction from bullets are good, and pretty essential. Gang fights where I can stand in one spot and kill everything in sight with not a care in the world is just boring. Games are not fun if you can't lose, or at least have some form of failure state. It's cool when you are awesome, but Saints Row the Third took it too far. I would say that upgrades like immunity to fire, instant reload and no ragdoll from explosions are all good. They are adequately absurd, but you still have to worry about your ammo and health.
Now that's not to say there is no fun left in the game. Plenty of the side missions involve challenges that are unrelated to your upgrades. How quickly you reload has little bearing on how good you are at driving a cyber motorcycle around fire. However the fact of the matter is I find it hard to motivate myself to continue playing the game now that I have achieved grand overlord status. If I could go back in time and un-buy that upgrade, I actually would. It's seems like a no-brainer to pick up such a powerful upgrade, but I would trade damage immunity for a fun game every time. Saints Row the Third was definitely fun while it lasted, but they should have stuck with 75% damage resistance.
One of the games that I have been looking to pick up for quite a while now is Saints Row the Third. Word has been that it's a completely crazy off the wall wacky game, and that is something that is very much up my alley. So during the recently concluded Steam Fall Sale I finally picked it up, and I've been playing it quite a bit over the past few days. Today I wanted talk a bit about some of the little things I've found that the game does well. I feel I should point out that this is not a review, a comparison or anything else. The short story is that I find the game to be quite enjoyable. I really don't have the depth of experience with sandboxey games to say these are things other games do not do, though. I simply want to talk about some of the little things Saints Row the Third does that are subtle, but great.
