Saints Row is a horrible joke. That’s the best way I could think of to describe it. And no, I don’t mean the kind of horrible joke like “oh, how tasteless; I’m not sure whether to vomit or sue.” I mean even its existence is ironic and twisted, like a convicted child molester trying to get an audience to laugh at jokes about Michael Jackson. The 360 never needed a “GTA-killer,” especially not one that duplicated the worst game of the franchise (San Andreas).
Saints Row has a couple things going for it, I will admit. It uses the Havok physics engine, like a lot of other games, but here it’s really well-utilized. You manage to blow a window out of a car, and then toss a grenade, which rolls across the hood of the vehicle before nesting between the driver and the passenger, and you’ll see a massive eruption of bits and pieces of all involved materials. And that’s pretty fun, but what is the goddamn point when all you can do to those broken-off bits of wreckage is shoot them or blow them away? It makes for some nice looking explosions, but there’s not really any more reason than that to have such involved physics. It’s never like the gameplay relies on realistic environmental reactions. The only reason I kept seeing the physics engine in play is because it’s the only fun part of the game. Buy grenades, blow a squad car away, and flee, sending dozens of pedestrians hurtling into the big blue skybox.
And that’s a pretty big disappointment from a game like this. They push ultimate realism, “do whatever you want” as a true (self-designed) gangster, recreate a massive city, and you get bored as all holy hell playing the game. Yeah, there are some sweet unlockables and decent achievements, but they’re the only good part of the online play. The single player campaign is ridiculous. The missions can be fairly creative, but from Saints Row, do you really expect any of them NOT to involve wielding a pistol? The whole “realistic setting” and recreation of a big environment is poorly implemented.
For example, obviously you’re in a fictional world from the very beginning. I don’t say this because the gangsta characters are capable of taking dozens of bullets and shrugging them off after swallowing a massive cheeseburger. And no, it’s not because you can drive a bulldozer through the financial district and fire your submachine gun into high-end jewelry stores without repercussion so long as you abstain from actual murder. It’s because, in all the duties my Mexican Al Capone was responsible for as a fresh recruit, before moving up to the top tier of the Saints’ military-ish ranks, I never once had to turn down a task so I wouldn’t be late for my shift bagging groceries.
And that’s basically Saints Row. The game’s torn between a satire and an accurate depiction. What’s the point of the “perfect” physics engine and attempts at AI interactions if the rest of this debacle is so god damned cartoony? The developers keep trying to force jokes on us like we’re bound to miss it unless they highlight it a half dozen times. A few missions refer to and take place at a restaurant named after the Wendy’s icon (sort of like “Wendy’s”) but their spin on the name (which is necessary for integration into the world they’ve created) is “Freckle Bitch’s.” How many times did we have to “meet [some dude] at Freckle Bitch’s” or “pick up some Freckle Bitch’s” before we figured out the reference? Get it? The red hair means she has freckles. And she’s a bitch, because that’s what we call girls. No, guys, we got the fucking joke. Real clever, and it’s just one of many like it.
This game doesn’t know what it’s trying to be, and neither do I, but I already told you what it is; a horrible joke. Unless you have some bitter feud with Rockstar, why play this?
