Saints Row : The Third

Yeah, thanks for the feedback Jamezinho. I guess I will just finish the story mode and move it on.
I've just played some more of it. The animations in shoot-outs are incredibly poor and I just shot a policeman in the head and he screamed and started firing back at me! haha

You know, what really is surprising is to see how this game got 95 out of 100 by many "respectable" reviewers. It got 100 score on the US Playstation official magazine! This guys are taking the piss aren't they??
But overall it's surprising to see how well it has been received, I saw it getting 82 overall in Metacritic.
I think it's rather unfair if you see games developed by Rockstar getting similar scores. When you play them through, you know those guys put in the hours and really took care of details. Some games like Red Dead, for me they're works of art, almost flawless. And when you see games that are clearly faulty as SR3, it makes you think just how rigged this whole gaming industry and media is. I don't take reviews too seriously these days anymore.

This game is clearly not well developed and no finishing touches were put in there. Sometimes it reminds me of those really bad and glitchy Spiderman titles from Activision that were designed only to cash in together with its actual movie.

Another thing that I hate (but this may be personal) is how the camera rotates, especially when I'm driving motorcycles. It gets to the point where I feel dizzy! This game is definitely not for me

Pes4lyfe, I know what you mean and man I miss those GTA days. Vice City and San Andreas are right up there with the best games I've played and, while at that, I had some good laughs with those games - plus they had those celebrities doing awesome voice overs - Ray Liotta, and then James Woods as that crazy government boss on San Andreas and Samuel Jackson as officer Ten Penny are among my favourites. It's a shame they didn't cast some heavyweights as those guys to do GTA4. And in GTA4, I kinda missed the craziness of some missions - the element of absurdity was reduced. But maybe that was a good thing, a game shouldn't get much crazier than San Andreas, that was the perfect amount.
Having said that, I still loved GTA4 and its expansions (Gay Tony and the Lost & Damned) and, in my case, I actually liked the driving a lot.

I agree with everything you said, Rentboy.

Those review scores are a joke. I wasn't aware it was being rated that highly. Any reviewer giving this game 95-100% scores are clearly being bunged or just bat shit crazy. For me SR3 is a 7/10 game - worth a play but very shallow once the initial novelties wear off. SR2 was the more enjoyable game - simply more fun in a better designed environment.

I listen to a few gaming podcasts and people were raving about the game for the first couple of weeks and then fell out of love with it very quickly, much like I did. To be honest I only picked up SR3 once it was down to about half price and only because I enjoyed SR2 so much. Going by the promo videos I was a little skeptical about SR3 and the direction it was taking.

Like you said, GTA: Vice City, San Andreas and Read Dead Redemption are the finest examples of this genre. Rockstar just go the extra mile to create authentic, atmospheric environments that are a pleasure to be in and keep the player coming back for more. Exploring a new GTA game is one of the best feelings in gaming for me. Then you have the stories, scripts and voice acting which is a cut above anything in Saints Row.

I'd quite happily take an HD remake of Vice City and San Andreas. Both games nailed the feeling of the cities and the era and I loved the freedom of SA with the three cities and countryside to explore.

GTA4 was still a great game but lost a bit of the fun of the previous two. However the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC recovered the game somewhat and put some of the old-school fun back into the experience.

SR3 was a good 8 or 8.5 for me. Fun right from the start to the finish. To put it into another context, I've never finished a GTA game for some reason.

Jamezinho said:

I agree with everything you said, Rentboy.

Those review scores are a joke. I wasn't aware it was being rated that highly. Any reviewer giving this game 95-100% scores are clearly being bunged or just bat shit crazy. For me SR3 is a 7/10 game - worth a play but very shallow once the initial novelties wear off. SR2 was the more enjoyable game - simply more fun in a better designed environment.

I listen to a few gaming podcasts and people were raving about the game for the first couple of weeks and then fell out of love with it very quickly, much like I did. To be honest I only picked up SR3 once it was down to about half price and only because I enjoyed SR2 so much. Going by the promo videos I was a little skeptical about SR3 and the direction it was taking.

Like you said, GTA: Vice City, San Andreas and Read Dead Redemption are the finest examples of this genre. Rockstar just go the extra mile to create authentic, atmospheric environments that are a pleasure to be in and keep the player coming back for more. Exploring a new GTA game is one of the best feelings in gaming for me. Then you have the stories, scripts and voice acting which is a cut above anything in Saints Row.

I'd quite happily take an HD remake of Vice City and San Andreas. Both games nailed the feeling of the cities and the era and I loved the freedom of SA with the three cities and countryside to explore.

GTA4 was still a great game but lost a bit of the fun of the previous two. However the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC recovered the game somewhat and put some of the old-school fun back into the experience.

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SA and VC HD remake would be cool but on PC u have HD texture packs for high reoslution which I have played so I guess it would just be same as that? Would be cool to convert that to release on the PSn though and intergate a new save point system as I notice one thing I hate when I replay old GTA games is that you have to go back to safehouse after each mission to save your game and if you die there is no checkpoint. So overall a lot of travelling is involved.

I have Sr2 and Sr3. Barely played SR2 the graphics look really poor. But its the better game? I will try it out again then?

pes4lyfe said:

I have Sr2 and Sr3. Barely played SR2 the graphics look really poor. But its the better game? I will try it out again then?

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SR2 graphics looked poor at the time of release. But get beyond that and there is a very fun game to be enjoyed. Like I said before, SR2 has a better balance to me.

Yeah I liked 2 far More than 3.

Jamezinho said:

Like you said, GTA: Vice City, San Andreas and Read Dead Redemption are the finest examples of this genre. Rockstar just go the extra mile to create authentic, atmospheric environments that are a pleasure to be in and keep the player coming back for more. Exploring a new GTA game is one of the best feelings in gaming for me. Then you have the stories, scripts and voice acting which is a cut above anything in Saints Row.

GTA4 was still a great game but lost a bit of the fun of the previous two. However the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC recovered the game somewhat and put some of the old-school fun back into the experience.

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That. Exactly! The atmosphere created by Rockstar in those games goes below the radar for the average gamer. Many people will neglect the importance of proper sound effects and soundtrack (not only the cool radios with songs of a decade, but the actual musical score), voice overs and small details such as the TV shows that we could watch on GTA4 (Republican Space Rangers )
I mean, that's almost a world within a world.

That and the characters' depth - GTA4 may have been a little step back in this respect, but then Rockstar created probably their best character yet in John Marston.

I think the character customization present in SR3, as cool as it may look at first glance, further contributes to it being poorly developed in the story. Or maybe THQ, already knowing just how shallow their main character was, implemented this comprehensive customization system to diverge attention from the problem. But the fact is, there's zero empathy when I'm playing SR3, and many other games which didn't really care to develop much into this area.

But of course that is only my opinion, as I like more mature games with really well written scripts and characters. Maybe I'm just too old for stuff like SR3

Oh, and the Gay Tony expansion, it's totally a "back to origins" game because of the craziness of its missions and characters that exaggerate the archetypes of modern society - Gay Tony himself is a box full of surprises

Gay TOny was more fun but having recently tried GTA3 and comparedto GTA4. I still think the ''realistic'' rigid car driving in GTA4 dulls the game down.

GTA on PS2 car physics was total arcade and OTT. It made it more pick up n play fun...apart from the sports car most cars where horrendus to drive in gta4. I cant even recall sports cars handlign but at least they were fast.

Rentboy said:

I think the character customization present in SR3, as cool as it may look at first glance, further contributes to it being poorly developed in the story. Or maybe THQ, already knowing just how shallow their main character was, implemented this comprehensive customization system to diverge attention from the problem. But the fact is, there's zero empathy when I'm playing SR3, and many other games which didn't really care to develop much into this area.

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The character customisation is a double-edged sword, for sure. Being able to create my own custom character is great - and the feature is really well done in SR - but I think I prefer the GTA/RDR model whereby I'm given a character to play as, normally with a complicated back-story which unravels itself through the game. So yeah, you're right, Saints Row can never develop the same kind of attachment to the lead character - and hence the deep stories of GTA/RDR - when it is fully customisable.

I still haven't finished this, would you guys believe it?

Well now I changed my opinion slightly about this game. I still think it's nowhere near getting top marks from reviewers, mind you. I would rate this somewhere between 70-78/100.

I still think the developers were careless with many elements, the game is too glitch-prone and the animations in the shootouts are a joke - I can't stand it anymore when I shoot at enemies in their torso and all they do is twist and turn in a "drunken" motion. I think this is extremely poor for a game that was relying so heavily in gunfire action.

Having said that, the game kinda grows on you when you're concentrating only in the missions of the story mode - not that there's a solid plot there or anything - but it's fairly good fun. And it must be fun playing those missions on CoOp with a mate.

Oh and that "Z" Pimp fella with the auto-tune voice cracks me up

Do you guys know where that came from? At this point, I'm assuming they ripped this idea off somewhere else, given that so many other elements were stolen from other games and films (even "The Hangover" film!)

Zimos? Yeah I found him quite funny too. Not sure if he is based on anyone in particular but I thought the voice was a piss take of all the music artists who heavily rely on autotune rather than talent.

Yep, that one. Zimos.
That's a total piss take on the likes of T-Pain. He's the funniest character in this game by far.

I finished the story last night (trying to catch up on a back log from Christmas!)
Definitely agree about the shooting being frustrating. Emptying a full clip into one person only for them to ballet around the screen isn't very realistic...

Quite liked the over-the-top elements, although some of the weapons are a bit daft even for SR. The story of the Saints being a big brand started off well, but seemed to tail off towards the end (ok, from the middle!). I much preferred the previous themes of having to build up an empire though.

Rentboy said:

Yep, that one. Zimos.
That's a total piss take on the likes of T-Pain. He's the funniest character in this game by far.

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Zimos uses a throat mic, in the form of a flashy gold cane. I thought of the T-Pain reference as well when he first speaks (though that isn't the first thing that gets your attention)!

I didn't recognise some of the voices as being famous until the other day either.
I'll spoiler it just in case...

I haven't got a clue who T-Pain is. Not my kind of music (or perhaps I'm just getting old!) but yeah, Zimos is definitely inspired by autotune addicted artists.

Also didn't know about the spoiler Jamesy.