Chozon1 wrote:Thanks for that wonderful imagery.
What do you know of Saints Row?
I ask, because rare is the game I know nothing about, yet Saints Row seems to have escaped my cat-like vision.
Saints Row? Ugh. I hated that game. Okay... the best I can describe it is GTA without the soul.
Each GTA game is incredibly satirical, has amazing and memorable characters, and generally a lot of personality and charm. That's the GTA magic. Saints Row doesn't. Though the character creation system is detailed, you often end up with ugly caricatures of what real people look like. The graphics are overly shiny, the clothing designs and character designs completely uninspired. And you put that character into a game world with a bunch of other characters, many of whom are distorted stereotypes of types of people and ethnicities, a world that is not distinctive at all (at least, in Saints Row 1... I refuse to play the second), but is, instead, a bit of a knockoff of a few cities that the GTA games have taken place in.
Granted, there is a ton to do. But most of that stuff is deliberately obscene, sexual and violent, not funny, even though that's exactly what the developers were shooting for.
The story shows a gang losing its ground, and desperately trying to gain it back, fighting the other gangs back from their turf and ultimately expanding. Great, cliched, whatever. It's kind of dumb, and ends up being pretty pointless.
I've seen a lot of games that present really bleak views of the world, but this one takes the cake. There is no redeeming quality to the main character here, no good present in the world. Everyone is presented as corrupt. The world itself seems to exist only to satisfy an urge to do what is wrong, but also to create as much chaos as possible in the game world. It seems, however, that this is what a certain segment of people love most about the GTA games, because they cannot seem to take the games for anything more than a sandbox game, and that is who Saints Row--and its sequel--are trying to appeal to. And it's pretty sad, because even if it did introduce some pretty cool innovations, it left them in a mire of things designed to be sleazy and get sad, lonely teenage boys to see digital nudity or hear the raunchiest jokes possible.
That's... basically what I think of it. And also what it is.
