The Comedic Brilliance Of Saints Row

We all know of the monstrous success that the GTA franchisee has become. The game hit a chord with gamers with the release of GTA Vice City in 2002, and the series hasn’t looked back since. Every person in that game has a story, with GTA IV providing a particularly strong narrative to its protagonist. One game, however, set out to rival GTA, with emphasis on fun over environments, and on customisation over gameplay. The series did not start out well with the first two games, which had a serious tone, but with the release of the tonally different third game, it found its audience. Since then, it has become renowned for its goofy tone, hilarious characters and handing complete control to the player. The series I am talking about is Saints Row.

To be fair, the series did not become crazily popular till the third entry in the franchisee. The first game, Saints Row, hit the market to very positive reception, but reviewers were not able to shake off the feeling of the GTA series, with people still looking forward to the release of the next GTA entry. The next entry, Saints Row 2, again garnered positive reviews, but coming out in 2008, when GTA IV was still all the rage, dented its appeal, in spite of a change in approach towards a comedic tone. The team then went back to work on a sequel which would be totally crazy and over the top, to distinguish itself from other action games. Saints Row: The Third (image below), released in 2011, did better than expected, with its characters and narrative receiving particular praise, with gamers also praising its embracing of a comedy tone. The game offered loads of character customization (you can be an overweight guy with a short height, orange hair, no eyebrows, and a zombie voice, and shoot up the bad guys), with missions also witnessing a crazy variety. It’s no wonder that it found a large audience, who thought of it as a more than worthy alternative to GTA.

This led to the development of the ‘God-game’ of the series, Saints Row IV, a game that doubled up on the craziness, adding aliens into the mix, while providing weapons that will possibly never exist in the real world, such as the dubstep gun (in action below), which when used, causes the victim to vigorously dance until he collapses. As if that’s not enough, the game lets you run like The Flash and climb buildings like Spiderman, which is cool enough. The game also parodies other games at various points, such as Mass Effect’s choice based dialogues and narrative. It’s no wonder then that the game again scored with gamers and critics alike. An expansion, called Gat Out of Hell, based on the character Johnny Gat from the game, was also released shortly after.

The series has had a fair share of detractors, who criticize its gameplay and environment, but then, they never may have played the game for fun, which is what it should eventually be about. In these days of competitive gameplay, there should be games that remind us of simpler times.