{"id":905,"date":"2012-01-01T22:26:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T12:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/?p=905"},"modified":"2012-01-01T22:26:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T12:26:49","slug":"saints-row-the-third","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/2012\/01\/saints-row-the-third\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints Row The Third"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to something. One minute I&#8217;ve decided that I need to pull finger and finish <em>Saints Row The Third<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0and the next, I&#8217;m staring at the closing credits. Admittedly, it&#8217;s not a long game, but I also find it difficult to push myself through any &#8220;entertainment&#8221; I&#8217;m not enjoying. There&#8217;s nothing deep and meaningful here: <em>SR3<\/em> continues to succeed in its predecessor&#8217;s goal to escalate the levels of parody and hilarity and generally succeeds.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The game is highly aware of itself. In the opening sequence, you rob a bank disguised as yourselves. The wanky actor who you&#8217;re babysitting describes it as &#8220;ultrapostmodernism&#8221;. And it kind of goes downhill from there. It hits all the clich\u00c3\u00a9s of the gangsta genre, the open world genre, the violent video game genre, and the games-as-social-commentary genre. In some ways though, I think they&#8217;re trying a little too hard. I mean, this?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X6Hq4xkEs4Q\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Really? Or how about this?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kVs7yQRPlYk\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(Oh, sorry, content may not be appropriate for youngsters or those with impressionable minds)<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a minor issue, though. I mean, if you&#8217;re looking for good, old-fashioned escapist fun then you&#8217;re in the right place with <em>SR3<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that did bug me was that I wasn&#8217;t as attached to the new city as I was to Stillwater (the setting for <em>SR2<\/em>). On reflection, I think that <em>SR2<\/em> was a better written game. The rival gangs were tied to the parts of the city they owned, and their story segments had significant meaning. By the time I was done with <em>SR2<\/em>, I knew my \u00c2\u00a0way around as though Stillwater was a real place, and many of the landmarks were the sites of important battles that I had fought on my path to dominate the town.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, Steelport feels at once smaller and less personal. I kind of know my way around, but the GPS is always on, and one block looks as much as the next.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, <em>Saints Row The Third<\/em> is a fun romp, and looks a hell of a lot better than its predecessors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to something. One minute I&#8217;ve decided that I need to pull finger and finish Saints Row The Third\u00c2\u00a0and the next, I&#8217;m staring at the closing credits. Admittedly, it&#8217;s not a long game, but I also find it difficult to push myself through any &#8220;entertainment&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[542,541,540],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p149Qe-eB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}