Saints Row 3

[Garfield And Friends]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-02-saints-row-3-due-this-autumn

Yeah! The second one was a triumph of stupid fun over po-faced 'realism'. If Saints Row 3 is merely a slicker, more technically accomplished version of the last one, I'll be happy. More brilliantly silly side activities please!

[VegaLA]

Shoot. I've hardly bitten into the last SR game due to the fact I want to play it from top to bottom with a Co-op buddy.
Still, sounds like I have a few months to go.

[The Region Legion]

Hope they can stabilise the PC version this time - it's not as bad as everyone says but is still an obvious port job. Ah, who am I kidding, they won't.

[Slaaaaabs]

Hope they can stabilise the PC version this time - it's not as bad as everyone says but is still an obvious port job. Ah, who am I kidding, they won't.

It was a fucking mess. How the clockspeed=game speed bug got through I have no idea.

[Famous Mortimer]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-02-saints-row-3-due-this-autumn

Yeah! The second one was a triumph of stupid fun over po-faced 'realism'. If Saints Row 3 is merely a slicker, more technically accomplished version of the last one, I'll be happy. More brilliantly silly side activities please!

I really didn't like SR 1, it just felt like a bad version of whatever GTA game was out at the time. Is 2 worth playing still?

[Fry]

Everyone suggests it is, but I only played it after GTA4 and in comparison it was kind of ugly, clunky and unweildy. I could never stick it for long enough to get more than about an hour in.

[Garfield And Friends]

I really didn't like SR 1, it just felt like a bad version of whatever GTA game was out at the time. Is 2 worth playing still?

Deffo. The missions are fun, and just messing around in Stilwater is hugely enjoyable too.

[chand]

Everyone suggests it is, but I only played it after GTA4 and in comparison it was kind of ugly, clunky and unweildy. I could never stick it for long enough to get more than about an hour in.

I thought SR2 was bollocks as well, I really couldn't give a piss about wacky haircuts and giving your character a hilarious voice which he uses to repeat the same shit over and over. The shooting felt boring, the driving unsatisfying, and so no amount of self-consciously FUN!!!!!! missions could persuade me to join the "Oh, Saint's Row 2 is the true successor to the irreverent early GTA titles after GTA got Too Serious" club. For all the wanking about how much freer and more FUN it was than GTA, it still tasked you with tedious shit like buying clothes and you have to do grinding for different factions before it lets you progress the story. You even had to fanny around going to in-game stores to unlock the fucking music.

Just Cause 2 was shit too, but at least it had the grapple gimmick to tide you over for 10 minutes of arseing around before you go for your next lonely wank.

[The Region Legion]

It doesn't force you do any of those things. The radio is perfectly fine whether you buy the in-game CDs or not (in fact, I'm fairly certain the CDs only allow you to create your own playlist from the tracks, those tracks still play on the in game radio), you don't NEED to buy clothes really - I think there's some kind of respect-o-meter that is mildly adjusted if you do but your in game actions will pretty much cover that up to maximum anyway. As for "grinding for different factions", I'm not sure I understand. You do realise that IS the story mode, right?

[Little Hoover]

I found SR2 goes too far in the opposite direction to GTA4. It's great to have more fun crazy missions, but when the first mission involves you escaping prison, and firing rockets at a series of helicopters from a boat, it's hard to know where else the game can go from there, it's gone out all guns blazing from the start and it so it can't really build from there. GTA4 at least has some sense of dramatic structure and it can make a fairly mundane mission feel so much more epic than flying a jet and shooting the entire world does in Saints Row, it's just a cartoon world where nothing really seems to have any meaning. Yeah it's fun in short bursts, but I never felt sucked into it in the way I did with GTA4.

And it's pretty clunkily designed as well.

[mobias]

The problem I find with all these GTA clones is that on a technical level GTA sets the bar so high all of them just seem, to varying degrees, to be rubbish in comparison. I'm playing through Just Cause 2 at the moment and although the core gameplay can seem at times more fun than GTAIV nothing else is done anywhere near as well. That's why I've stayed clear of Saints Row 2. From the outset I know I'd just be comparing it to something which I know is simply much better. I find that happens quite a lot in gaming. One games developer will come along and do something really well and then others will follow along in its wake trying desperately hard to achieve what someone else did much better. I suppose it happens a lot in movies too.       

[papalaz4444244]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-02-saints-row-3-due-this-autumn

Yeah! The second one was a triumph of stupid fun over po-faced 'realism'. If Saints Row 3 is merely a slicker, more technically accomplished version of the last one, I'll be happy. More brilliantly silly side activities please!

Yeah! Loved SR2. Great fun modding your vehicles and then sticking them in your garage for use ANY time. I loved how it was basically the same place as SR but logically expanded due to the passage of time. Often you'd be driving through a familar district then be suddenly thrown off by a new freeway onramp or new buildings, or an entire new development.

I might play through it again now I know there is another due out.

[The Region Legion]

Saints Row (1 & 2) just had more variety to me. GTA4 was exclusively driving from point A to point B with a variety of unlikeable characters. Sometimes you would have to kill people at point B, but more often than not you'd have to play some shit mini-game instead. Even compared to the original GTA games, instead of your side missions being wayyyyyy too long Ambulance, Fire Truck, Cop Car and Taxi mission (of which the first two were removed from GTA4, along with the fun perks that you'd get for completing any of them) you were killing pimps and stealing his ho's, protecting a drug dealer doing his rounds, throwing yourself in front of traffic for the insurance claims, acting as Hitman with targets you had to find in particular districts at certain times instead of being pointed directly to them.... Not only that, but you could return to those mini-games at whatever level you last completed, unlike GTA that forced you do to all 12 extremely boring levels in one go and if you died or ran out of time at level 11 then fuck you and your wasted time.

One sore point for me in SR2 is the multiplayer - they copied GTA4's absolutely shit multiplayer mode instead of sticking to SR1's fantastic setup, with player formed gangs and the best multiplayer mode I've ever played - Blinged Out Ride - in which you have to compete with the other team to upgrade your car 4 times by collecting money from kills and gold chain drops. Great fun.

I'm looking forward to SR3 far more than any future GTA games, and you should too.

[chand]

I'm looking forward to SR3 far more than any future GTA games, and you should too.

Oh yeah, that was the other thing; people who liked Saint's Row 2 seemed incapable of doing it without sounding like a cunt.

[The Region Legion]

Oh yeah, that was the other thing; people who liked Saint's Row 2 seemed incapable of doing it without sounding like a cunt.

Oh yeah, and people who liked GTA4 tend to be tightassed little bitches who take everything extremely seriously.