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.
Several months ago Sony revealed their vision of the future with their announcement of the Playstation 4. They talked a lot about semi-interesting social features, weird and wacky things that most people probably won't care about, and how much easier it will be for developers of all kinds to make games for their system. They also showed a decent amount of gameplay footage, real gameplay that was not pre-rendered, including footage from a brand new IP. At the time reactions to Sony's conference was mixed. Some people were optimistic, many were unimpressed. The conclusion that I think a lot of people came to was that we will wait and see what this all means for games.
Today Microsoft held their own conference, and I wanted to talk about my immediate thoughts. Full disclosure: I've owned every Sony console ever released, and none of the Microsoft consoles. While I'm not the Sony fanboy I once was, it would be naive to claim I didn't still have some bias.
Firstly on a superficial level; Microsoft actually showed their console. So we are fully aware now how sleek it is, and how much room it will take up on your shelf next to the equally large Kinect 2.0. Also, it's called the Xbox One. Why? I know laughing at console names has kind of become the thing to do these days, but still... Playstation 4 is safe, it's unimaginative. Xbox One is confusing and doesn't really seem to be based on anything. So what do we call the original Xbox now? The original Xbox? Xbox fat? XLBox? For that matter, what snappy name do we use for this new console? XOne? XBO? XBone? Yea, let's go with XBone. Anyways, I digress.
On the whole, I would say Microsoft's console started out strong--ish. Very quickly I got the impression of a console which transforms your living room. It acts as the gateway to all the media you need, and in this capacity it seems like an intriguing device. However at the same time, it's an embodiment of the ADD society we live in. Being able to instantly flip between media with a voice command is undoubtedly cool. However pressing the input button on my remote isn't particularly troublesome. Being able to open up a secondary application on the side of the screen is quite nifty. However if I'm going to control it with my phone, why not just run said application on my phone to begin with? Not to mention, how do all these media features function if I don't have cable? Or I don't have Xbox live gold? Or Netflix? Or... INTERNET.
After that whole shebang was out of the gate, Microsoft's conference took a real nosedive though. From that point there was little to see other than how awesome sports are, unrelated interviews with Athletes, a Halo TV series, a partnership with the NFL, and gameplay footage of the next (multiplatform) Call of Duty, which wasn't actually gameplay footage. The talk of actual video games was surprisingly minimal, even more so than was the case in Sony's conference. As a result of all of this, a lot of people are decrying the console as nothing but a media box aimed at fratboys and casuals. What's more, it has been confirmed that there will be an activation fee for playing used games. Of course this also comes with the claim that users will be able to trade and sell games through the console, which is intriguing, but the used games thing seems to have caused enough rage that people don't read far enough to see the reselling games bit.
The immediate reaction to this reveal seems to be the internet freaking out, because their favorite console has turned into a media box aimed at frat boys. At first I was right there with this viewpoint, but I don't think I am any more. Sure, the demographic has changed so that I'm not a part of it any more. Dudebros and casuals probably make up the majority of the market these days, so it makes business sense to me. What does being a part of that demographic do for me, anyways? Why do I care if I'm being marketed towards? There will be video games right? Sure, we will certainly see what's up at E3. If anything the biggest problem here is that the demographic that watched this live presentation is likely the core gamers and not the dudebros. Now, the core gamers feel scorned. Sony's stock is apparently soaring, and a significant number of people are leaning towards the PS4 now.
In the end of the day, all I care about are the video games. Sure, Microsoft's presentation didn't do anything for me, but they have to sell their product. In today's market where virtually every title is multi-platform, it's exclusive titles that sell consoles, and I was promised 8 new exclusive IPs at E3. Features are cool. PS4 has features that are aimed at playing video games. XBone has features that are aimed at media consumption and general use. At this point we haven't an inkling as to which box will have the best library of games, and that is ultimately all I care about. Even in terms of usability and features, there is still a lot to be seen. Microsoft's conference was a small disaster, but this battle isn't done by a long shot. The internet just has to remember that the people watching the reveal live are not representative of the other billions of people on the planet.
I do have to admit though. It's incredibly disappointing that the most interesting part of the entire presentation, the segment they used to cap off the entire thing, was about Call of Duty. Which, beyond just being Call of Duty, is a multi-platform title.
Before I say a single thing (aside from the things that I just said) I want to make it perfectly clear that this post has absolutely nothing to do with the board game of the same name. Now with that said, let's start this thing off... *ahem* Have you ever played Dance Dance Revolution? Perhaps you've played one of those PC incarnates of the game whereupon you use the keyboard rather than a dance pad. If somehow you have no idea what I'm talking about, the gist of it is this: There is a song playing, and in the meantime arrows will be slowly sliding down the screen. When they reach a line on the bottom of the screen, you have to press the appropriate arrow, and this is all done in time to the music. It's very similar to Guitar Hero, but without the strumming. Anyways, have you ever thought "you know what this game needs? A storyline, character growth and an RPG style battle system!" Chance are you haven't, but that's ok, because someone apparently has. That's pretty much what Sequence is. The question is of course, do these things actually work together? Or does it create some sort of abomination of genres? Read on and I'll tell you!
Upon reading the title of this article, I would imagine that most people would be somewhat confused as to it's meaning, but with luck, they would also be intrigued. The names themselves actually go a long way to speak to the spirit of their contents, but now I am getting ahead of myself. What I will be discussing here today are two indie games, spawned from the minds of Zeboyd Games. Both are available on Steam as well as Xbox Live for the ridiculously low price of $3. In fact I was personally able to grab them both bundled together for $3 on Steam - a deal that may not still be available, but truth be told, part of me wishes I had reason to give these folks more money anyways. The games are very similar mechanically, with Breath of Death VII: The Beginning being released on April 22, 2010 and Cthulhu Saves the World falling on December 10th of the same year. What in the world could these Ephemeral Titles contain however? Well gentle reader, read on to find out.
