8 Games that Let You Be an Evil Bastard

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

A superhero game that ends up in space narrated by Jane Austin is "boring"?! If brilliant little nods to Edgar Allan Poe are boring, I want much more of that...

That's the thing though; Saints Row isn't a superhero series. It started off as a street-gang Grand Theft Auto style game.

 

[DoPo]

I loved how evil you could be in SR2, and that SR3 and 4 are just, well... boring by comparison.

Ironically, SR3 involved starting a War with the US government and possibly blowing up a skyscraper in the middle of a crowded city with a stolen bomb. You know, things we'd normally associate with terrorism. There's also the whole taking human trafficked women and forcing them to either work for you as prostitutes or sending them back to the people you freed them from. However, SR3 has so much wacky shit that nobody really notices how dark the plot actually is.

I actually just replayed SR3 a day ago and I agree. It's wacky which somehow means the dark stuff gets a pass. In addition to what you said, one of the missions is to arrange "accidents" for wrestlers. By remote controlling their cars, making them unwillingly go on a murder spree in town and finally staging a "suicide". Why? Just so they don't participate in a wrestling tournament. Why? Just so you get to participate. Why? In order to defeat Killbane and remove his mask. Yep, you commit acts of terrorism and frame it on innocent people, so you get to punch somebody in a ring and take off his mask.

There is also the thing where you kill the inhabitants of an entire district of the city by unleashing a biological weapon. And that's by accident. You accidentally commit mass murder and make an entire island uninhabitable. I guess it's not really the same as intentionally doing it, but it is still literally criminal negligence.

SR2 by comparison does have the Boss cause actual intentional evils, but on a smaller scale. For example, I did cringe at what happens with Maero - it is really messed up, but that's not to say that SR3 is all fun and games. It just happens that the bad stuff is glossed over by people.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

That's the thing though; Saints Row isn't a superhero series. It started off as a street-gang Grand Theft Auto style game.

Could anyone in their right mind try to claim SRIV wasn't smarter and more creative, though (as Yahtzee, I think, put it; it takes great care to appear that care-less)? The general perception is that SR merely started as another GTA clone and by 3 - and certainly IV - finally found its own path.

I gather SR2 was pretty good, but surely its evolution represents a net gain for gaming as a whole, 'cause there's nothing else quite like SRIV.

 

[Dalisclock]

I loved how evil you could be in SR2, and that SR3 and 4 are just, well... boring by comparison.

Ironically, SR3 involved starting a War with the US government and possibly blowing up a skyscraper in the middle of a crowded city with a stolen bomb. You know, things we'd normally associate with terrorism. There's also the whole taking human trafficked women and forcing them to either work for you as prostitutes or sending them back to the people you freed them from. However, SR3 has so much wacky shit that nobody really notices how dark the plot actually is.

I actually just replayed SR3 a day ago and I agree. It's wacky which somehow means the dark stuff gets a pass. In addition to what you said, one of the missions is to arrange "accidents" for wrestlers. By remote controlling their cars, making them unwillingly go on a murder spree in town and finally staging a "suicide". Why? Just so they don't participate in a wrestling tournament. Why? Just so you get to participate. Why? In order to defeat Killbane and remove his mask. Yep, you commit acts of terrorism and frame it on innocent people, so you get to punch somebody in a ring and take off his mask.

There is also the thing where you kill the inhabitants of an entire district of the city by unleashing a biological weapon. And that's by accident. You accidentally commit mass murder and make an entire island uninhabitable. I guess it's not really the same as intentionally doing it, but it is still literally criminal negligence.

SR2 by comparison does have the Boss cause actual intentional evils, but on a smaller scale. For example, I did cringe at what happens with Maero - it is really messed up, but that's not to say that SR3 is all fun and games. It just happens that the bad stuff is glossed over by people.

Yeah, the whole thing with Angel is just kinda weird. He gets you to jump through a lot of really skeevy and mostly stupid hoops for him and never really does anything for you in return. Then he pretty much insists you abandon your friends to die so you can kill someone who you've already humiliated and defeated(and is leaving town to boot).

Ironically, the thing with the zombies in SR3 appears to be a result of the falling debris from the plane crashing on top of the chemical tanks on that island, which are clearly marked ULTOR. Yeah, it's already been established in SR2 and Red Faction that ULTOR is kinda evil(or at very least, doesn't care who gets hurt so they can profit), but considering how often the "SAINTS-ULTOR MEDIA GROUP" is mentioned, it's implied that the Saints are either owners or allied with ULTOR. Which makes the boss responsible for the zombie outbreak in more ways then one. Yet again, this is glossed over so they could do a one mission change of gameplay.

The "Kill Killbane" ending really does make me feel that if SR2 was the rise of the Boss as a villain, SR3 was the rise of the boss as a Super-Villain.