I tried 'Saints Row' to see if it really is THAT bad...

everybody is saying that saints row is not very good some people are even saying it's the worst game that they've played this whole year i mean 63 on metacritic for the ps5 version is not very good nor is the 2.9 user score these are not winning scores at all but you know what maybe it's just people being dramatic maybe they just don't want to like it because they don't like fun games maybe that's what it is let's see what some of these reviews actually say oh look we got one here from gaming nexus they gave it a 95 almost a perfect score let's see what they said first sentence i'm just going to come out with it and i don't care what anyone thinks i like saints row games better than grand theft auto games i've never beaten a gta title but i've beaten every single saints row game okay so maybe this person is not the most qualified to be taught i mean i'm not saying you have to love grand theft auto but like if you're gonna critique an open world game and you've never finished a grand theft auto game that's that's bizarre that's like saying that you are a chef but you don't use ovens like it's really weird to me okay well bad example what about this user review perfect score they said i truly don't understand the hate charming story with relatable characters cool combat and easily the best graphics of any saints road game today people love to complain but don't let that stop you from enjoying a masterpiece a masterpiece wow i don't want to miss out on that and i mean i read it on the internet which means that it's probably true so let's actually play this masterpiece and see how bad it could possibly be all right and we're in it let's rock and roll quick sidebar just out of transparency i did play the opening chunk of this game actually over on twitch live with a lot of you guys who are hanging out with me in chat so i've gotten through the tutorial sections because i know that if i made this video with just the tutorial sections people would be like it gets better later so we're actually going to play the game with some basic abilities unlocked and the map generally opened up if you want to see the live stream highlight or hang out with me live right now because i'm live when i post these videos on mondays wednesdays and fridays jump over to twitch links in the description box in the link tree so pop over there say hi say you came from this video it'd be super cool to see you but we're actually gonna play it and we're gonna give the game a shot and see if it holds up and is as terrible as people have said that it is or if it's been uh sort of overblown but before we do that a big thank you to our sponsor ren ren is the innovative company that's been featured in the new york times forbes and bloomberg that provides an all-in-one one-stop shop for making a difference wren actually partnered up with the university of california at berkeley to create a calculator that helps you figure out what your actual carbon footprint is super cool check it out you go to ren.co and you can actually immediately start calculating your carbon footprint based on your lifestyle where you live how many pets that you have all of the above and then we continue answering the questions and it'll calculate our overall carbon footprint for my household i'll fast forward through it so you don't have to sit through me answering every little detail but watch and boom just like that it calculates your actual carbon footprint effect for your household so you know what you're up against in the case you want to see how they actually calculate this stuff you can actually click here and see their individualized sources that they use to calculate all of this stuff it's completely transparent but what do you actually do with this information well you can click take action and then actually subscribe to offset your carbon emissions on a monthly basis how does this work well they partner with a bunch of different people all over the world to work on projects that make a difference everything from planting trees to installing biochar in california you name it they're probably doing it and it's completely transparent so your donations and pledges are not thrown into some pot that gets thrown away into some mystery ceo's pocket you actually get a report of where each dollar is going so it's not some amorphous big charity blob thing you actually are making a quantifiable difference and it's completely transparent and to make it all the better the first 100 of you who sign up using the link in the video description box below or in the pinned comment will get their first month of their subscription to ren for free even if you just want to use the calculator to figure out what your individual carbon footprint is on an annual basis go check them out it's super cool and if you decide to make a pledge whether it's small or large you'll be helping make a difference okay let's get into it okay and we are in the game so this is our apartment this is my generic white guy avatar i tried to make him look like myself but i really struggled like are you guys like that too where it's weirdly like difficult to design yourself in games but like you can design other people like i could design a joe biden look alike in this game it'd be totally fine it'd be super easy but when i try to make myself it's always horrible maybe i'm weird but i always struggle with that so first impressions i mean it doesn't look terrible the graphics are relatively decent it's running fairly smoothly if i show you my little performance overlay you can see we're running at 90-ish frames a second on average it's really not bad so for those of you not familiar with saints row my impression of these games and the way that i've always viewed them is that they are sort of this irreverent homage and parody of western rpgs and western open world exploration games they make fun of the rock star titles of the ubisoft titles they are supposed to be the thing that you can point to and it just makes fun of all of the right things but still provides a fun game at the same time but for some people these games have always felt like a knock off grand theft auto and that's mainly because they have large open worlds they ask you to explore do some outrageous things but they've never really hit the mainstream like grand theft auto has and that's not because they haven't tried they've really put a lot of effort into these games in the past but it is not easy to compete with the likes of grand theft auto 4 or 5. those are amazing games which is why when some reviewer says that the game is great but they've never played grand theft auto and finished it that gives me skeptical hippo eyes because it's like critiquing painting but you've never heard of michelangelo or leonardo da vinci like it just it shows and betrays a total lack of appreciation for some of the greatest products that this industry has ever seen so it makes me take your opinion much less seriously what was that dude oh god oh god i'm sorry i'm sorry okay one thing about the driving i'm already noticing is that i'm i'm about to turn the the left stick all the way to the left and look how far i actually end up going okay ready three two one go you see how slow that turn is maybe it doesn't come off as super slow on on video but it is like painfully stiff it would be like driving a car but you can only turn it 20 degrees in order to make regular turns and the reason they did it i think is because they have a drifting mechanic where you hold down a and you can sort of tokyo drift around corners like that but it just feels bad man it does not feel like this car is operating properly but you know what driving can suck who cares let's see what some actual gameplay is like get you know get off the car okay let's do this shall we get started right now um sure where's your crew no crew just us seriously don't worry i've got it some d some nbc is trying to fight me dude what look look at that i'm in a dialogue thing and i like he's trying to attack me what the hell i need you to ride shotgun dude and i can't disengage i'm stuck okay oh there we go okay well it's over okay okay so you might notice that there's no music playing at right now like at all it's awkwardly quiet i thought that was because i turned off the copyrighted music but when i turn it back on you'll see it doesn't actually come back even if we reload it doesn't actually come back there's just random glitches where there's no audio for no reason at all it's just like it doesn't trigger and it doesn't play it's really really weird but it's really like awkward because you don't realize how important the music is in these moments until you don't have it and then it you realize like it just feels weird to not have it at all it feels so awkward and stupid you also notice like there's a lot of action going on here cars exploding destructible environments i i will insist the gun play is like painfully terrible it looks like i'm shooting a nerf gun you can actually see the individual bullets as they fly out because they're moving so slowly it just comes off as awkward and i i don't know it's very xbox 360. it's it's just outdated like right now i'm holding why and i can't actually go inside the car i can't go in the car i'm holding it down it doesn't work oh that's stupid like i get it we're now like done with the mission but for like 30 seconds before i couldn't climb in the car to heal it just wasn't working and this really is the tail of the tape when it comes to saints row 2022 is that across the board it's not that things are just egregiously horrible and like unplayable and just totally broken it's that there's this constant persistent feeling that things are not working properly and it makes you feel like you're playing an unfinished game because in large part you are like looking at the landscape here it doesn't look bad there's a couple of issues with like pop in you see some really muddy textures in the distance but it's not bad like this is passable for sure this doesn't mean that the game is bad whatsoever it's just not ideal it's not up to snuff with modern games i'd say that are really really polished okay other major pet peeve motorcycles in this game drive like absolute butt crack like one of the issues is that if you pull back on the left stick at all while driving you go into a wheelie pose which means that your ability to control the left and right direction of the vehicle plummets to basically nothing so right here if i pull back on the left stick at all even when i'm just turning to go some other direction he'll go up into this wheelie pose but then you can't really control left to right anywhere near as well as you can when you're regularly on the road with both wheels down and the reason that gets really annoying is because sometimes when you're in like a crazy high intensity sequence where you're trying to drive away from cops or like another gang or something like that you might accidentally while turning pull back on the left stick and pull up on a wheelie and then you can't steer properly and that happens there's also extreme poppin as we drive through the city it's just extremely disruptive and it starts to really get annoying as you go faster and faster through these more dense areas again doesn't mean that the game is bad but it definitely doesn't help now apparently they don't have like hardly any original music to score like driving through the city or anything because when you turn off the uh copyrighted music and you try to turn on the radio there's just no audio it just doesn't work nothing happens okay that that was weird did you see that the led bar fell through the car's roof that's stupid but you know what saints row is about the irreverent humor it's about the outrageous combat let's see what it's actually like to go and do a do a mission let's take a peek see how we do that is we pull up our phone we go over to missions and we select one then okay what was that did you that happens a lot anyway the mission selected so now we drive our way to the mission following these little guide markers on the road super cool very very modern i'll be real driving like this without any music is like really really awkward i've tried like every channel now and there's just no music if you're streaming or making a youtube video that you don't want to get copyright struck so that that seems like an oversight to me like surely they could have hired some musicians on fiverr to make some tracks and then just give them full uh like unfiltered access to the copyright surely that's a thing that they could do other games have done that why like why is this game different there's just no audio if you turn off copyrighted tracks it's it's weird but okay we're fast approaching our base so we're gonna get right oh god come on okay we're gonna get in there we're gonna talk to our friends and do some sort of mission to see if these games really shine during the main quest because maybe that's what it is maybe it's that the the generic get off the roof god damn it get out of the car okay maybe it's better in missions okay let's let's see what they've got to say let's uh let's hear them out i don't know guys what do you think okay i feel like there's a lot we're missing there is but it's enough to go on for now what about criminals don't we kind of need more than three if we want to call this thing an empire there's four of us oh are you planning on shooting anyone after that party i think i'll stick to metaphorical bladder in my hands yeah that's less useful when people try to kill us nina's right we need more people we'll look more legit if we have a home base he's saying we're not legit already oh i love you but i'm allergic yeah point taken all right let's brainstorm what would our place need i got to be able to host some parties and have more than a [ __ ] galley kitchen to work with i want to be able to set up a proper garage to work in i don't think sergio is going to be letting me near the forge anytime soon that's good what you got i don't know a ball pit i'm joking i'm kind of jumping it needs to be defensible we pissed off a lot of people and let's not kid ourselves they're gonna try to kill us yeah it's so fun hey man just being real for me just being real guys just being real uh let's let's touch on this real quick so this crew is comprised of a wannabe business person behind my face cam right now the person on the far left wants to be a dj the person on the right wants to be an art curator and then you are just a psychopath that is like that's their character that's who they are they're complaining constantly that they don't have any money but they don't want to work real jobs so they decided to create a criminal empire so that they can buy 300 waffle makers and then also afford to pay off their student loans because you know it's it's relatable but okay let's see what we got yes he's going out in public like that who cares let's just get this over with get in the truck we're doing something we're gonna buy a church oh he teleported teleported into the car okay who cares who cares it's fine it's fine little clunky but you know what bethesda games have clunk too in the words of mr maddie plays who i did a collaboration with recently there's a real bethesda stink that is endearing in some ways so you know what it's okay there's a saints row stink okay that was weird it's okay bugs are okay they're just funny it's all right we'll just drive there and have a good time oh my god the turn radius on this like look if i wanted to turn right i like i can't really manage it because the turning radius on these cars is so horrible you have to swing all the way around a turn and slow down to make it it's so annoying like yeah you can drift but how is that more practical than just being able to turn properly so this is when saints row is at its best when it's just having you do stupid stuff for stupid reasons like oh they're they're doing a remodel on this church that we want to use for our purposes okay we'll just murder everybody and also go around with a bulldozer and demolish a lot of it you know it doesn't make sense it's stupid but it you know who cares in a similar vein in the opening sequence of the game you actually go to rob a payday loan store and it's it's a little funny because they're just deciding hey we need money let's go rob a place they don't put on masks they don't do anything they just go there and do it and then it's never brought up or addressed again it's really weird here's a clip from our live stream when we we saw it check it out so i made them watch while i broke their dad's [ __ ] walk away or the phrase dead end job gets literal he's got a vape pen i i don't have much we don't want your money just his get out of here you done [ __ ] up they didn't even cover up their faces or anything where's the safe if you're lucky the cops will get to you before my people go nice left been practicing i mean one thing i'll give them credit for like look at the the physics for like driving over vehicles it's actually kind of impressive so there's a pickup truck here then look i can drive over it and it crushes just the part that i drove over that's pretty cool that's pretty cool i haven't heard anybody touch on that but that's actually pretty cool can i smack it okay that was not really what i meant to do but that's like that's pretty cool actually i'll give him credit that's pretty cool i'll be honest i can't think of another game that's had like smooshable vehicles that's that's kind of awesome and yes this is the ai by the way for enemies they are so stupid that i am sitting here with a bulldozer still and they are just chilling in the car not doing anything what happens if i hop out can i hop out what are you gonna do okay all the exact same animations okay okay i i do a little melee little baby boppity okay not a big deal so you notice how that was like a specific animation that played out that's because in order to uh oh the last one despawn did you see okay maybe this is him i can't tell i don't know anyway the the reason that that little melee kill was important is because that's how you rejuvenate hp let it be known this game is painfully easy so there's no real difficulty to be found in the combat but whenever you do get low on health because you're just screwing around or not really bothering all you have to do is go up to an enemy and tap y it does a quick melee finisher and then you recuperate hp like it's mindlessly boring like even now there's no music playing at all as we're running like in this quest line there's just nothing it's like is it just me or is it really awkward i don't know maybe i'm just looking for problems at this point but this is weird okay now we need to drift to freak this guy out uh okay i can i can do that i can do that drifty drifty drift it's also on these long highways you can really see the pop in like look at that out in the distance jacob go ahead and zoom in on that for everybody so they can see vehicles spawning in and spawning out randomly like without rhyme or reason they just come in then they go out it's it's a little odd again this quest is way less fun without music it just feels so weird it feels so weird man okay we're moving we're moving we're trying to scare him oh we're doing a an okay job if you just smash a it just donuts forever like it never stops yeah fun little exploit who knew what was that did you see all of those cars despawn what was that oh my god it's so bad right here look at all that that's crazy man goodness and this is generally how it feels playing the game i've put like five six hours in at this point and this is the game in large part it's a lot of mindless driving waiting for the next thing to happen mindless shooting arenas there's almost no effort involved with any of it you're just going through the motions and it's just frankly not very fun which is a big problem when your game is supposed to kind of define stupid mindless fun like this is supposed to be the most outrageous and silly open world game that exists but instead it just comes off as awkward and stupid but all this has brought to mind a question that i i've been pondering since i found out they were gonna do a sort of reinvention of this franchise and that is whether or not saints row as it stood could actually be successful in the modern marketplace because clearly they reinvented it thinking that they needed to reinvent it that it needed a fresh start which is something that you only do if you really feel like it's needed with like god of war 2018 it needed a reinvention because kratos was very played out and it just wasn't working anymore the reviews were dropping players weren't as engaged as they were before it was just time for kratos to get a fresh start was saints row in the same position i'm not actually convinced saints row four had its haters as did saints row the third there were plenty of issues that people had with the games but it wasn't as as terrible as i think people remember and maybe it's just that now it's easy for us to be like oh these games aren't that bad because look how terrible this one is maybe that's what it is and it's just the grass is always greener but i don't remember it being that terrible i really don't what i do know is that this reinvention just simply doesn't work i mean look at these two guys they're they're trying to get ready to fight but they're standing with a wall between them and the enemies and so they're just not doing anything it like okay you're supposed to come around this way guys i can't open the door okay well that's tremendous now i've got to go all the way over here can i use this door sure can't okay now i'm gonna fail that's why ah yes sixty dollars right here look at that look at this the height of aaa game design not only is she putting up a real fight but also this man is really giving her a run for her money with with some really impressive tactics wow like this style of shooting and stupid ai and stuff was perhaps passable in 2008 maybe you could say that i think but it is not passable now and it's not acceptable now and it shouldn't be for you or for anybody else i mean this is how i enter cover i go behind a wall and i press down on the d-pad and this is the extent of cover like come on like you can say that this is supposed to feel cartoony and silly and so it's not supposed to be that serious but honestly you're just making excuses for why it feels bad because this just feels bad it doesn't feel good it doesn't feel fun it doesn't feel engaging doesn't feel like it was a creative choice it just feels like the game isn't working well and the game wasn't designed well there's just so many issues with it like come off it and again i'm just gonna keep reminding you because it's driving me crazy there's no music even still like nothing i'm just sitting here playing in silence i don't know why but it is what it is what come on man right as i killed the last guy he dies so it doesn't count i swear to god it's going to make me do the whole thing again ah it's gonna make me do the whole thing again i bet wait for it yep sure is oh my god here we go okay we actually did it good god almighty remember when i said the game's not hard i mean it's not difficult because of the gameplay it's difficult because it just doesn't work and when you do hit a fail state it doesn't feel like it was your fault it feels like the game messed up and did something stupid like with kev randomly dying right as i finish wiping everybody out so that i have to go and then restart the whole thing again it's just annoying but right here this is the origin of the saints this is where they learn it big moment we need a name we need a name what are they going to call themselves [Music] the saints we call ourselves the saints that's it and then we get a bunch of random crap and we continue along the way so right there from this experience where are we and how do we feel well i'll be honest i just don't get pleasure out of touching this game playing this game i like i there's just no no dopamine going into my brain it's literally a chore if i weren't making a video on this game i would not own the game i would not have touched the game i wouldn't like go anywhere near it it's just because people have been asking me to try it to let them know what i think and see if it's as bad as everybody's been saying it is and i'm happy to report or perhaps not so happy that it seems like it is you know it's not like i get pleasure out of this i wish that the game were amazing i would love it if i had a new open world obsession that would make everybody sit up and go oh there's a new player in town they're doing really really well volition everybody look look here look listen listen up this is real talk but unfortunately this just isn't it and pretending as though it is and in many ways just ignoring the plethora issues doesn't help you it doesn't help volition it doesn't help the game doesn't help the franchise it just makes you look like a fanboy so don't like make excuses for something that is pretty clearly just not very good and there's a lot of stuff that i didn't touch on in this let's play i do want to go through them real quick before we wrap this video up because they're things that we found on stream when i was playing through the opening two to three hours of the game to just run through my opening impressions of the game from when i first started playing the opening hours are not tremendous the gun play is immediately exposed as being outdated with bullets that travel at speeds closer to that of nerf darts and bullet spread that's much more in line with a water gun than an assault rifle and the issue is compounded with the brain dead ai that fails at practically every step to behave in a human manner you might not notice it when there's hordes of enemies racing towards you in waves within a small arena like in the church sequence that we just played or even in the uncharted homage that takes place in the opening hours but you will pick up on it as you enter the mid game a lot especially when you were in larger arenas with room for the npcs to run around and expose their stupidity what is this ai what are you waiting for what was that [Laughter] it's also in these opening few hours that you'll pick up on just how outdated the game's design is across the board especially and specifically in foundational ways systems as crucial as a.i vision are completely busted you see npcs cannot see through transparent objects and i would guess this is because the rays that are used to calculate from an npc's head out to another object to see if it can see that object they only collide with solid objects and that's where the vision stops the problem is there's a lot of objects in the world that are not solid even though they have collision detection such as gates or this little pillar which has a bunch of transparency in between the struts that go up and around it considering how terrible the ai is i wonder if i even have like they even have detection on me behind these like see-through pillars i don't think they do dude yeah he can't see me behind this bro that's so stupid wow okay so in case that's not clear this little scaffolding thing that you can see through i can see through this but because it's one solid object the ai can't see through it because the ai thinks that it's a solid object since the hit detection is solid so standing behind this thing even though you can see through it the ai can't see me through it it can't see me so whenever i went behind it they would lose detection of me and aim at somebody else even though i can still see through it i can't shoot through it which is another giveaway that this is actually just one solid pillar but with transparent textures you can't shoot through it the world itself also feels extremely empty this is for a few reasons i think but chief among them is the lack of interact-ability while you're driving through some of the smaller desert towns through the big cities or even walking along a sidewalk you'll be struck with just how brain dead the world feels it doesn't notice you and you don't notice it on a quick glance it might come off as passable but upon any further investigation you'll realize just how empty the world itself is even simple things that it feels like you should be able to do you can't like riding a bicycle these things are all over the map by the way they're sprinkled outside buildings outside your apartment outside your hq all over quest areas it seems like a major oversight to put these things in the game but to have them be effectively paperweights there's no way to ride them you can't do anything they just sit there and it's true of many other objects in the world it's all set dressing and there's no substance there the same is true for all of the npcs these people don't do anything they just stand there because a level designer plopped them down in that location and decided they were gonna stand there there's the occasional dynamic car flip or ambulance on the side of the road but i saw three of these in my first 45 minutes with the game and if you doubt me you can go back and watch the vod from when we streamed it and furthermore these were direct copy and pastes from one location to another which made them appear like they were identical events just happening in different places because that's what they were this is the same exact failure that we saw with all of the dynamic quests in fallout 4 such as all of those settlements that needed your help they were dynamically generated but they weren't fun and they come off as just copy and pasted content because that's what they are now again by themselves these problems do not a bad game make but when they stack on top of each other's when you run into the issues there's a ton of other issues as well that i haven't touched on such as hit detection issues vehicles glitching out constantly animations not working properly npcs randomly leaping in front of your car while you drive at them at 50 miles an hour and of course the most egregious bugs being the ones that prevent you from actually progressing through quest lines there are a few in the main story to this day when i'm recording this video a few days after launch which just totally prevents you from continuing in the main story the only way to do so is to either backload or to hard reset your entire pc and just basically start from scratch reboot the game and continue on it's unbelievable that we have this issue now in 2022 where you can sell a game that's that broken but here we are but you know what let's just say we fast forward six months and we ask ourselves the question okay what if in a hypothetical situation somebody's watching this video in 2023 or 2024 and it's like should i get the game should i try it i wonder all of the technical issues have been patched out and the game runs really really well now is it worth getting at that point i would say the answer is still likely no issues such as ai npc vision and threat detection the driving mechanics and the laughably bad gun play are all foundational and integral at this point going back to cyberpunk 2077 many of the problems with that game were so deeply entrenched that it took a year and a half before they were largely fixed with the big 1.5 update that hit digital stores in the spring of 2022 and even after those improvements there are still plethora issues with cyberpunk 2077 that will frankly never be fixed because the only realistic way of doing so would be to simply develop a new game entirely as unfortunate as it is to admit to ourselves some of the problems which we see in video games that launch broken are simply unfixable and perhaps the most discussed example of an unfixable problem within saints row would be the cringe inducing writing which is all throughout the story now quick sidebar it's really hard to discuss cringe in any sort of meaningful way because what's cringy for one person might be really thoughtful and provoking for another person i for one really enjoy watching like psychic fail compilations but for some people like the people that were in the audience that paid to hear that psychic speak that was actually like an amazing revelation and it was really interesting and thought-provoking and magical and spiritual but for everybody else on the planet it was cringy and hilariously bad it's in the eye of the beholder so what one person finds to be cringy and satisfying in that way doesn't mean that somebody else is going to find it cringey or satisfying in that way that being said the writing in saints row i think we can all or hopefully all agree is just not very good and it tries so desperately to be funny and witty and relatable to the young hip kids that it simply comes off as the crazy ramblings of like a 50 year old senior executive writer trying to come up with stuff that's hip and and cool with the kids nowadays and it's it's just painfully unfunny you know nothing's more unfunny than somebody trying desperately to be funny but how bad is it actually well let's talk about it you see many youtubers and reviewers brought up the point that the main cast of characters are creating this criminal enterprise of the saints in order to purchase a waffle maker and also to pay off their student loans and of course this would be absolutely hilarious as a motivation for the main character and the secondary characters but for all of the wrong reasons not funny haha funny i'm sad that you guys thought this was a good idea instead of coming off the way i think they intended it to it just makes it seem like the writing staff at volition were trying desperately to appeal to the young tick tok crowd by being relatable like oh look you guys have student loans and we do too hahaha that's so quirky and in line with my lived experience but i can't believe i have to say this it's utterly amazing to me while i and many other people not just in america but all around the world have student loans and that is a relatable thing oh the characters have student loans just like me i don't want to think about student loans when i'm playing video games like i can't believe i have to say this but i play video games to not think about that stuff i i'm like trying to pay them off and i'm trying to chip away at it little by little but it's gonna take decades and it's miserable and awful and terrible it's an evil financial instrument we can all agree but i don't want to think about it when i play my video games i i just don't i play video games to escape that reality not to see somebody else dealing with the same thing but realizing the only reasonable solution to that problem is to like go on a murderous rampage full of theft and crime like it just isn't isn't as interesting or fun as i think the writers were thinking it would be but you know what maybe this game just wasn't written to appeal to somebody like me because the secondary cast of characters it feels like it's just trying to check off all of the boxes for like a marketing ideal cast list it straight up feels like a pepsi commercial for example the shirtless one wants to be a dj the guy that's dressed really really well and looks like he's going to a midnight showing of casablanca he wants to be a successful business person but doesn't have an actual job or any qualifications to make that a reality and this young woman wants to be a professional art curator whatever the hell that means like i don't have friends that are this insufferable maybe i'm hanging out with the wrong people like again it just makes me wonder who they thought was gonna be playing this game because i don't know a single person that's like this and you know i had an epiphany at one point on stream when we were chatting about this i think the reason that the writers put all this stuff in and do this cringy thing like they did in watch dogs 2 is not because they think this is like how the young people act it's because this is how the developers act like they are the target audience they really think that this is relatable because so many of them are fresh out of art school and behave act and dress and talk this way like this to them is very very relatable but to anybody else outside of that little bubble it's insufferable nonsense like all over the map there are characters which are throwing out random lines of dialogue about the ills of materialism and late stage capitalism and stuff but like here's the thing you can have a really interesting take on capitalism macroeconomic theory you could even have an interesting perspective like i think i do uncollateralized debt obligations and how they likely are leading into another financial crisis and housing collapse like they did in 2008 but listen most people don't give a crap they just don't especially when you're playing a video game and you're exploring an open world trying to have some silly stupid fun and then you're accosted by npcs who start rambling about how terrible capitalism is you're left here just like uh what i was just playing my game like i don't care you might even be right in your perspective but that doesn't mean that i want to listen to it while playing a game again like i play video games to escape this crap not to think about it more like especially a game like saints row this isn't supposed to be like a naughty dog deep existential crisis that i paid money to engage with this is supposed to be light-hearted fun not a lecture from some like liberal arts professor you know and the supporting cast does this constantly they are constantly talking about this insufferable nonsense and it's like the developers were just totally unaware that like when a normal person like you or me hopefully you're normal runs into somebody like this in our day-to-day lives we don't hang out with them again you know like they're the the annoying one that doesn't get invited back to the party because they can't shut up and talk to somebody else about their opinions or their thoughts they just want to ramble about whatever they learned in their sociology class like it it's not something that we tend to hold up in high value as like oh really thoughtful yeah i'm glad you know we're robbing a liquor store right now but you know what that is a very interesting thought on marxism and how it's at play in a modern capitalist society that's very interesting anyway put the money in the bag like nobody cares shut up i'm not gonna do the thing where it's like oh video games aren't supposed to be political because video games are the natural evolution of narratives and storytelling i really do believe that and i've been saying that for years and years i think there is certainly a place for political discussion in video games religious discussion and video games all of that because it's just another art form you can have religious messaging or or atheistic messaging or political messaging or whatever you want in a painting in a novel in a play in a musical in a movie whatever the hell you want including video games i don't have a problem with it but when your game is built around being light-hearted silly stupid fun and that's what players are expecting and then they boot it up and they have to listen to this tripe i just don't want to deal with it and you shouldn't be surprised when your fans are like what is this this is not what we wanted or expected you just shouldn't be surprised by it like i love the island boys as much as the next guy i am cause i'm an island boy an island boy i have it on my soundboard ready to go but like if i went to an island boy concert if that's even a thing and they got up and like started freestyling about the inner workings of the trump administration i would be like this is not what i paid to come see i'm good like i'm i'm leaving a negative yelp review on that one i i just am not interested did that make me sound like such a boomer because i said yelp with regards to like a review of a musical performance yeah probably i'm an old man but the point of all of this is that these writing problems cannot just be patched out you just can't do it at least with cyberpunk 2077 there were technical issues but those were things that could for the most part be improved upon and maybe not completely fixed but greatly you know refined and patched up but the writing the story the characters the world building the art design all of it was tremendous so when the game was working properly you could really enjoy what was there with saints row there just aren't any redeeming qualities there's just nothing there and any sort of advice or or thoughts i can throw out on what they should fix or change for making this game what it should have been to begin with just ends up with me describing a new game like oh we'll rewrite the main cast rewrite the main campaign secondary characters need a complete overhaul the art style looks like fortnite mixed with watch dogs too it's really cringy and stupid i think you should totally rework that there's tons of technical issues so we got to fix that the engine seems to not be able to keep up with what you're trying to do so we got to probably refine the engine maybe even restart development on it maybe even a new engine we'll see we'll we'll think about it we need to completely restructure the quest design because they all feel like they're straight out of 2008 and the gun play is utterly atrocious we gotta completely rebuild that by the time i'm done i have more by the way but i'm gonna leave it there by the time i'm done i've just described a different video game entirely you know it's a bummer because i would have loved to have another saints row that was really fun irreverent and silly i i had people talking in chat over on stream that were like genuinely heartbroken because they were like this i i needed this game i wanted this game to be great and amazing i wanted to have that escape and it just sucks that it's not that game but that's the realization you have to come to this game just isn't that and you're not going to get it even if you buy it you're not gonna get it even if you put 20 hours into it it's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse so do yourself the favor don't buy saints row don't bother i don't think there's any reason to play it full stop even if it goes on a deep deep sale i just would stay away from it it's problems go so deeply that it's just not worth your time but with that said join me over on twitch i'm live right now and i would love to see you we're almost done with our playthrough of god of war 2018 i'll be doing a re-critique sort of thing on it in the coming four weeks or so in preparation for the sequel so make sure to be subscribed with the bell rung below for that and of course if you have any other games that you'd like to see me tackle in this way let me know in the comment section below i'm always looking for inspiration but with that i love you all more than you possibly know i'll see you over on stream or in the next video hugs and kisses bye

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 452,285

Keywords: luke stephens, luke stephens saints row, saints row, saints row 2022, saints row review, saints row critique, saints row reboot, i tried saints row

Id: MccNr-nuCrI

Length: 47min 38sec (2858 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2022