Zero Punctuation: Saints Row: The Third

[CaspianRoach]

I tried to play SR2, I really did, but it was horrible. Awful port with silly controls, bad graphics, horrible car handling and insanely boring first hour of the game. Maybe it gets better later on but I just dozed off and alt-f4'd.
SR3 on the other hand has way better writing, insanely polished PC port, really tight vehicle physics (arcade-y but not too much) and a very pretty caucasian female preset :3 She looks fantastic in everything I make her wear! I might be in love or I just like dress-ups.

I think this is what games should be: silly and fun. The other part of videogames that is 'cinematic' and 'realistic' should just be called "interactive movie".

 

[GonzoGamer]

It's a shame that it wasn't as good as Saint's Row 2. It's another example of "trying-to-hard" syndrome.

I wouldn't say that exactly.
While they tried too hard with the whole "theatre of the absurd" thing in this one, they seemed to not try very hard at all with anything else in the game.
The map is smaller, much more 2 dimensional, and really missing character & easter eggs. There's a smaller amount of side missions and random activities. As pointed out in the review: there's less customization and options.

There are a few story missions that were much better than anything in the last one but all of the other story missions were side missions with cutscenes or just cutscenes: yes, you go to location, watch cutscene, and mission accomplished.

It's no surprise Yahtzee didn't like this one as much as the last.

 

[albinoterrorist]

Well, this time it won't fly. One, if it doesn't matter, he could have gone nit-pick something that does, and two, I spend most of my game in third person.

So yes, as an opinion, it's okay, and I disagree with it, but it can't be an objective criticism.

I think he was making more the Tabula Rasa (see it, it's old but good enough) point.

That it's pointless spending hours tweaking every last bit of face, when you're going to just step out and shove a helmet over it five minutes later.

In Saints Row, the clothes offer no physical benefits, and so there is no drive to wear one thing over another beyond personal preference - you aren't forced into one set of gear, and can (for instance) go all the way through the game with a completely exposed face (among other things) at no penalty.

What he wants, as I understand it, is customisation when there's freedom to choose what you want - saying customisation is essentially pointless when every player will eventually end up with the same, dull suit of armour because it's statistically best.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Mmm, Angry Joe had pretty much the same position, though it seems he and Yahtzee are in the minority on this one among critics.

There's a difference between what most websites/critics do and what guys like Yahtzee, Joe, and even Jim Sterling do. So many reviewers look at games in a vacuum (decent graphics + solid gameplay + any story at all = 9.0) in an effort to feign objectivity, while others look at games in a greater context (within the series, gaming, or entertainment in general) and judge it accordingly.

If you rip games like Uncharted 3, Skyward Sword, and even Saints Row 3 out of their context, it's easy to just say "wow, it's pretty, and it's fun, so therefore it deserves a 10!" But other people step back and say "I've seen this before, and it's not really that innovative, and these features have been removed/tacked-on, and thus it's not terribly remarkable in these regards. 7.5." 7.5 of course still being a good score for an above-average game, but not one that is perfect in the greater context.

Granted, this assumes that you read reviews with half a brain in your head, and don't break down and cry when someone has a different opinion than you on the internet...

 

[4173]

Since when is dropping helicopters on people a bad way to travel? Just Cause 2 was all about throwing vehicles into things (as a travel method).

 

[nyysjan]

Yahtzee is, if anything, way too kind to the game.

 

[Belaam]

Pretty much what everyone else says.

No idea why they couldn't copy and paste the character creator and clothing options over from SR2. If you have a feature people like, why in the world would you have less of it in your next game? I find this particularly odd in light of the fact that the game itself makes a huge deal of uploading your created and dressed characters to their website to show off. "Hey, look, we have a fraction of the options we had before!"

The ease of getting bonuses is definitely an issue. The missile launching drone is given to you for no real reason on like your third mission of the game. I got the ability to have gang members deliver attack helicopters or tanks to me wherever I am before I have gained control of even a single neighborhood.

Also... on all my countless play-throughs, I've gotten really used to Eliza Dushku as Shaundi. I would rather they had killed the character off (or just a throw away line that she's hiding out somewhere) than be jolted everytime she talks and another voice comes out. That Shaundi seems to have a wildly different personality now just adds to the fury.

TL;DR the game removes several excellent things from the last game.

 

[Therumancer]

I think this review summarizes things perfectly.

The only bit I'd mention is that it's not an issue of having a "Helicopter Wizard", just because The Syndicate freezes your assets doesn't mean your literally reduced to pauperdom, you still have all the resources that you did from Saint's Row 2, it's just that you control one city and your in a differant one. They do show Pierce (who wasn't on the original plane) showing up with the Saint's reinforcements which makes a degree of sense, your not literally taking the city over from the lowest rungs of society this time....

The vibe is also intended to be somewhat less desperate as a result, I think part of the point isn't just that the Saint's sold out, but that at their core they really hadn't. The syndicate thought they would be victims, but really this is kind of a walk in the park for these guys since it's just rehashing what they have already done twice in their home city of Steelport already. The atmosphere being kind of one of them showing these crazy things going and the general "yup, I've got this" which does show a degree of evolution in the characters and the situation.

Speaking for myself I had thought that the logical (well sort of) thing to do with the series would have been to tie things in with their other franchise... "Red Faction". Ultor is present in both games, and well.. we know about the relationship between The Saints and Ultor.

If they were going to get crazy with it, they could do a silly/serious vibe out of things with the Saints (or rather their Ultor descendants) say trying to control all of the drugs, prostitution, and smuggling of minerals coming out of Mars as well. Sort of like "Grand Theft Total Recall" or whatever. It would take some good writing, but a science fiction take on the whole crime-game could be.. interesting. I personally wondered if "Gangstas In Space" might have been implying something similar.

The problem is that with Saint's Row you've already got these guys controlling their own city state (now two of them) like a modern Al Capone... where do you go from there, at least within the same era?

I've mentioned similar things before (back when I finished SR2 in fact).

 

[cassiebearRAWR]

FYI, the correct word for "person who identifies as something other than man or woman" is genderqueer, not transsexual. Transsexuals generally live and identify strictly as men/male or women/female... just opposite whatever they were born as.

The More You Know!

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Ha. A Fifty-Cent reference. I totally called it yesterday in another thread.

 

[Wolfwind]

Hit the nail on the head he did.

At least, that's pretty much how I felt about The 3rd.

There were things that I do feel were improved over Saints 2. I liked that forgive and forget was replaced by your properties, and I liked the upgrade system since rep in Saints 2 became pretty useless considering you could complete 2 or 3 activity locations and have enough rep to play through the entire game, with nothing to do with the rest of it.

Still, 3rd did feel like a step backwards in a lot of departments too.

 

[Falseprophet]

So yes, as an opinion, it's okay, and I disagree with it, but it can't be an objective criticism.

By definition, criticism is never objective. I think you mean "consistent".

 

[Kian2]

So too many nose sliders is a bad thing, but not letting you pick the angle on the bowler hat is wrong too?

 

[Lalo Lomeli]

i played this, and i liked it. I haven't played Saint rows 2, so I can buy that, and still feel like I'm upgrading to a fuller game with more coherency and customization.

 

[daxterx2005]

I just love how yahtzee says "twat" it makes me laugh every time.

 

[putowtin]

It's a shame that it wasn't as good as Saint's Row 2. It's another example of "trying-to-hard" syndrome.

and too many fingers in the pie, seriously five development teams?!

 

[Yopaz]

The Problem with SR3 is they tried to reinvent the wheel, when SR2 had a perfectly good thing going. Had they merely expanded on that this game would have turned out much better.

Yeah. I would have been perfectly OK with seeing Saints Row 2 with slightly better graphics, better PC controls (which is the only improvement Saints Row 3 had), new story elements and a new city that actually felt new.

However the character customization didn't need any changes, I loved it the way it was in Saints Row 2.

 

[Vausch]

There's a bowler hat available...as part of an on-disc DLC pack. I WISH I was kidding.

What if... they're holding ALL the previous customisations for ransom as DLC?!

That character customisation removal sounds rather sad. I liked having a character with the same skinny frame as me. I was hoping they'd add an Irish accent so I could truly insert myself into the game but it sounds like I'd be disappointed.

 

[l3o2828]

So let me get this straight:

Extra Punctuation: Skyrim - "Goddammit there are too many options for character customization!"

Zero Punctuation: Saints Row: The Third - "Goddammit there aren't enough options with the clothes!"

It looks a little odd to complain about there being less options when a few days earlier (or later, depending on when the video was made) you went on about how there's "almost too many options" somewhere else.

They aren't the same kind of game really, and it is all about balance, if you strip a sandbox game out of options it becomes boring after a while, and if you give a character way too many options they'll get lost, and most likely the game will be impossible to balance properly.
Besides in Skyrim your hard work that was put on creating a character is swiftly made mute by al the armor you wear, while in saints row 3, a third person game you don't have enough options to look the way you would want to.
I would certainly strip down Skyrim's character customisation instead of the Saints row one, because later actually has some bloody point.

 

[Hazy]

I must belong to the minority of people who thought this game was better than Saint's Row 2 in every single way.

My only complaint:

Game needs way more Zimos.