The Gamers Arms

Out February 2022

I'm still not over the story and characters from the original, embarrassingly. So this may be a stretch unless it gets good reviews.

Plus no Johnny Gat, at least not yet.

Rossell wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:47 pm

I'm still not over the story and characters from the original, embarrassingly. So this may be a stretch unless it gets good reviews.

Plus no Johnny Gat, at least not yet.

It's all new characters and a new city so there will be no connection to the old game which I think is the right way to go. It's also an Epic Store exclusive.

Oh, I'd read that as a remaster. Didn't think I'd recognised anything in the trailer. That explains it.

Saints Row the third (remastered) is free on the epic store at the moment

I must say I didn't enjoy the trailer. I never really got the Saints Row games, they always felt like substandard GTA facsimiles. There is absolutely space for open world city games in the style of GTA, it is just that nobody has yet come close to Rockstar on that front (in my opinion, I know not everyone agrees).

Problem is, when you make a game and deliberately populate it with the kind of fuckwittery usually reserved for driving game 'story'. Apparently one of the opposing gangs is a bunch of 'influencers' - I 100% expect that it is my age, but I have no time for Twitch, social media or any of it so that just made my skin crawl. Oh, and I would happily kill all the gang members shown in the trailer.

I know, I am a miserable old bastard, but you are stuck with me

If it's any consolation Snowy, I feel exactly the same. I enjoyed SR2/3, but this one comes across (so far) as annoying.

We're just grumpy old boomers, basically. I'm sure the kids will have a lot of fun with it

I've played 3 and parts of 4, and while I thought they were decent enough games, there's just something I don't like about them. There's just no subtlety to any of it, every line of dialogue may as well have your character quip "THIS IS EXTREMEL|Y HUMEROUS" after every line. It grates on me a bit.

I enjoyed 2 (apart from the godawful, broken driving on PC), but couldn't get into 3 and never played 4. I doubt I'll play this.

I thought 2 balanced very well between the tone of the first game and the utterly bonkers over the top crazy they became from 3 onwards, it was by far my favourite. The formula got very thin after 3 though and I stopped playing them. 3 was fairly good and had some amusing missions, but far too much of the main story progress was locked behind completing tick lists of what were previously just side activities in the second game; it felt very lazy and like they'd rushed development on it.

Everything about that trailer fails to enthuse me. I'm also really not a fan of when the writers go down the 'everything is super zany and fun and everyone talks in one liners' route. It stinks of trying too hard by just throwing endless punchlines at you to hide the fact that it's just not funny or well written.

Saints Row 3 was one of the best open world games of that era, it managed to take what had become a tired formula and make it fun. For me the "humour" of GTA had long since grown old so I liked the more zany nature of Saints Row 3. I also enjoyed the superhero nature of 4 but the genre itself was starting to wear on me a bit by then so it didn't hit in the same was as 3 did.

but far too much of the main story progress was locked behind completing tick lists of what were previously just side activities in the second game; it felt very lazy and like they'd rushed development on it.

You had to go through one of each of the side missions as an introduction to the character involved which was a bit of gating but they were only in place near the start and they were short and easy to complete. I think it was anything but lazy, the way they were able to keep introducing more and more craziness with each mission building to the crescendo at the end was really well done. Sure it had the usual filler side stuff, as all these games do, but the story missions were some of the best I'd ever played in an openworld game at the time. I get that people didn't like the game but there was a wealth of creativity and content in 3 and to a lesser extent 4 as well.

As for this game, I don't see anything that really enthuses me but I'm at a point now with open world games that they really need to be doing something special to get me to play them. The last open world game I enjoyed was AC: Odyssey, everything I've played since then and even some of the games I played before it, like Horizons, have just bored me to tears.

I enjoyed 3 very much so and 4 was good to a point though the driving was rendered void by the superpowers being.. Overpowered.

Oddly enough since watching the trailer I have been dipping in and out of 4 again. I remember being annoyed by it at the time because all the reviews were raving at having uber powers in an open world game without anyone pointing out that it was just a rip-off of the movement and combat from Prototype 1 & 2 (which I thought were far superior games).

That put me off continuing the game, rather stupidly. Enjoying it but in a mildly enjoyable diversion kinda sense rather than a "how did this pass me by" one.

The new one though, honestly, playing a bunch of quippy students turning to crime to pay off their student loans? Fuck off.

Rossell wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:22 am

I enjoyed 3 very much so and 4 was good to a point though the driving was rendered void by the superpowers being.. Overpowered.

I quite liked not having to use a car. I don't know if I ever want to have to get in a car to drive to a point on a map in an open world game again, it just feels like such a pointless exercise and a waste of my time.

Depends how satisfying the driving mechanics are really. Traversing the map is a core element of open world gameplay, mechanically speaking it accomplishes exactly the same thing as flying does. It is a genre based on filler time moving from point A to point B, if it's really not that satisfying to do that then you've got a bit of an issue with your design regardless of whether it's flying, driving, climbing or swinging with webs across buildings.

Given the choice between poor driving, generic flying or simply fast traveling between missions; I'd just fast travel everywhere and save myself the time. Whereas with something like Spiderman you can bet for sure that I'll be swinging my way across the city because of how fun it is.