Saint's Row: The Third
I finished the game recentely, but unlike Saint's Row 2, I don't see myself spending nearly as much as time on this one. I understand the critics who felt dissapointed. It's a super fun game, but here's an what's wrong with the game:
Number 1 - It's way too short, if you are pro, you can almost power through it in less than 20 hours. It feels extremely short.
Number 2 - The villains: In Saint's Row 2, the three different gangs (four when you take Ultor into consideration) have their own seperate stories and fully developed archs, in Saint's Row The Third, the three factions team up very early on and go into one single linear story. And for such a foreboding group, The Syndicate feel like pushovers.
Number 3 - Two of our main characters go through such a radical transformation - Shaundi and Pierce. Shaundi in SR 2 was the stoner, she was very absent-minded and had a penchant for being kidnapped (that's still true here). In SR3, she's a competely different character, both visually and in behaviour, she's way too serious. On the other hand, Pierce in Saint's Row 2, was the character who ussually had to come up with clever plans and tried to be the serious one in the group, however... he was always the bud of the jokes from Shaundi and the main character. In SR 3, he also seems barely recognizable from his previous iteration, more easy-going and goofy, almost like SR2 Shaundi-goofy.
The other new cast members seem cool and all, but to be honest, none of 'em stand out all that much, same with the main villains.
Though having said that, SR 3 is still very much a super fun game! It's much shorter, they removed some of the SR 2 activies that were a lot of fun, like Septic Avenger. Though, they did add one fun game, Prof. Genki's Super Ethical Reality Show, which can be summed up as a mini-game version of SEGA and Bizzare Creation's The Club. Prof. Genki himself does show up on the game world, but you can't kill him. I know, I tried blasting him with RPG rounds several times.
They also kinda dumbed down the Activies in SR 3, Mayhem in SR 2 was pretty hard after level 4. I had to backtrack to a Forgive and Forget and go back to the area and continue mayhem(the clock stop if you go outside, so there's really no penalty). In SR3's Mayhem, your character is invincible, so you have to be more focused on getting as many combos as possible.
I laughed my butt off with Saint's Row 2's Insurance Fraud, I sometimes boot up the game just to play that mission. SR 3's Insurance Fraud is a massive letdown and way too easy.
Heli Assault Lvl 6 on SR 2 was a friggin' nightmare, SR3's Heli Assault is much easier. Escort in SR3 is pretty much broken, you never lose.
Also, unlocked power-ups and upgrades are obtained via cash that you earn from missions and the places that you buy up, which is another downer. Very few store variety (Rim Jobs which I never used) and why are there so many Image as Designed stores!? Lazy, man, I tell you.
Final rant, Steelport is much, much smaller than Stillwater.
The cool thing about unlocked power-ups is that some of 'em make you feel like a superhero, immunity to bullets, car crashes and falls, which basically means I can drop from any tall building and be fine.
Immunity to bullets and fire carries over from the main game to Prof. Genki's game which makes it all the better.
