When I played the first Saint's Row I thought was some cheap San Andreas knockoff...I was right but it was also fun, dorky (that kick animation from the main character still has me in tears) and brutal (that goddamn plane mission) .
So yeah I did not expect the game to be popular enough to get a sequel, my first impressions on it were "Hot damn look at those visuals! And you give yourself tattoos? And dress up in a hotdog costume? Well I might look into this further THQ!" So I got the game and wow everything was better, better soundtrack, better vehicles, more customization, a more livelier city, etc. I was actually suprised the game picked up where the first one left off, in fact I was suprised they suddenly gave the main character actual dialouge. Overall the game seems like it was trying to be a little less "gangstah" and more silly such as shooting mimes, covering the neighborhood with feces, streaking, car surfing, adjusting the size of your johnson...in short Saint's Row 2 was pretty much San Andreas, in that it was telling a semi-serious story about taking over the city with your gang.
When I played Saint's Row The Third I was intrigued that they took series in a whole new direction: the Saint's weren't some drive by shooting, graffiti making, hood living troublemakers anymore, now they are celebrities too busy selling merchandise to pop caps in people's asses. This idea itself is very similar to the 3rd Act of San Andreas when CJ left his hood life for fame and profit. In fact SRTT traded in it's hip hop feel for electronic dubstep, almost everything about the entry is different. Now the game is hardly serious, the first few minutes has Saint's robbing this bank all diguised themselves as giant Johnny Gat bobbleheads, we also got killer japanese game shows, giant dildos as melee weapons, a zombie infection, turning into toilets, clones, a taunt that has you do the Ric Flair dance...ThQ threw everything at this game hoping it'll all stick. The game itself: I'm glad they changed the Respect mechanic, using it as a way to unlock extras instead of progressing the story. I love the zombie voice they added and the skin color choices. I can't get enough of all the bizarre vehicles like that green blocky tank.
Yet I was a little disappointed at the fact that they completely abandoned the whole "going after Dex" plot, it was the whole reason why the Saint's moved to another city. I was also disappointed that the city of Stoolbend wasn't as compelling as the city of Stillwater, Stillwater had several different enviorments like the rundown suburbs, smoggy industrial parks, brightly colored cities, this strange Ancient Greek looking town that sold Spartian clothing, two giant islands one of them being a prison the other a nuclear power plant. What does Stoolbend have? Giant building everywhere.
Another thing about the game is that it's the easiest entry in the series, you can pretty much take over all of Stoolbend in a few hours. You'll never a problem with running out of money since you now have an hourly income that increases every time you purchase land. Hell once you get this megabuster, you never have to worry about not being able to defend yourself. Ingame unlockables that make you pretty much immune to every kind to threat that it makes having cheats like godmode pointless. So overall SRTT was pretty good but my heart still goes out to SR2, at least that game wasn't a 24 kook fest, and it didn't have the ATHF theme song as a song in the radio (seriously, the hell?).
Now enough of me rambling about the first three what do we got for fourth game? Aliens? Giant living Saints Flow can monsters? Superpowers? Oh my.
