Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Saints Row Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Go to http://meundies.com/kindafunny to get 20% off your first order plus free shipping. Tim sits down with Mike, Janet, and Blessing to get their full review of Saints Row. Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:01:49 - Housekeeping 00:03:32 - Saints Row Review 00:22:39 - Bugs 00:34:33 - The Highlights 00:49:56 - Mike’s Hot Take & More Frustrations 00:56:01 - Our Metacritic Predictions Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Mike Howard: https://twitter.com/SnowBikeMike Janet Garcia: https://twitter.com/Gameonysus Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the kind of funny games cast. Of course, I'm Tim Gettys and I'm joined by the new face of video games blessing at a yo-ye, Jr. Penny for your thoughts, Tim. Yeah, you want some thoughts, bless? I got some for you. I now own one of the coolest things of the world. The 4K Sonic the Headchog 2 steel case and look at that. Oh, oh, the Genesis thing slides on and off.

Janet, if you ain't familiar, you should be familiar. Get familiar. Paramount Plus, baby. I'm working on it. Yeah. That's what they tell me. Paramount Plus. Of course we have the roller skating. Janet Garcia, how you doing? Yo, what's good? I'm good. I have a Starbucks again.

Like last time I was on Gamescast, a new tradition. Good, good, good. That's just every day for me. You know, drink it. Is that just the black eyes coffee? Mm-hmm. Living your life the best way you possibly can. Rounding out the group today. We have the Master of Hype, Snow Bike. Mike. What up, Tim?

Thanks for having me on another games cast. Always love talking games with all of you. I'm really, really excited to have you guys all on this episode. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very interesting episode of the kind of games cast. We are reviewing Saints Row. Seems like thoughts are kind of all over the place on this one. Bless you had your hand raised.

What's up? Was that you that just cracked open a can of McCroy for some kind of can drink? I've been listening to a lot of Lil Wayne the last week. And at the beginning of Lil Wayne songs, we'll often have like the sound of the lighter open up the song. I feel like that's you with LaCroixen, Tim. I feel like you're the, that's your little wayne sound. LaCroix, exactly. Yeah. The little way of LaCroix.

What's I call him? God, you guys are too kind. You guys are two kinds. Of course, you can get this show on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com. You can also get it as a podcast by searching your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast and we'll be right there for you.

But if you wanted to go above and beyond, you've got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Just like our Patreon producers, Fargo Brady, Delaney, Twining, James Hastings, and Casey, Andrew have all done. Because they support us there, they get the show ad-free. They also get the exclusive post show that because my internet fucked up, we actually did a whole different intro to this show with a whole bunch of other dumb things said. Why did Bless ask for a penny for my thoughts? You'll have to go check out the post show to find that out.

Is it some of the most unhinged things we've done kind of phony in a while? Yeah, it definitely is. So go, go check that out if you so desire. But if you don't have dollars to toss our way, that's okay. You're out there buying games on the Epic Game Store. And if you use the creator code kind of funny, it doesn't cost a penny more for you. But it helps us financially. We get a cut of it.

It's fantastic stuff. And it's great for everybody. A little bit of housekeeping for you. Next week is about to be awesome. So much cool content coming out. This is Gamescast number one. But it will not be the final games cast because Jeff Keely's Gamescom opening night live has happening this Tuesday at 11 a.m.

We will be live reacting on Twitch.tv slash Kind of Funny Games. And then after that, we will do our gamescast post show breakdown where we grade it's give our thoughts on the entire thing, what we liked, what we didn't, if there was big surprises, if there weren't surprises, whatever it is, we're going to be talking all about it. And I am very excited for all of that. Today, we're brought to you by the undies, but we're going to have to talk about

that later. I want to get right into it. This is our review of Saints Row. now Mike you are the official reviewer for St. Roe here are Kind of Funny. I want to hear your thoughts on the game and what score you give it on the official kind of funny scale. Tim, thanks so much. I have a lot of thoughts on this game.

To start off, of course, when we had the return of St. Roe, there was a lot of camps there. There was people that were excited. There were people that were on the fence and there were people that were apprehensive on bringing back this franchise. And if you could bring that over-the-top, zany and just a little crude. franchise back and I was that team on the apprehensive side. I didn't think they could do it. And after my journey, I don't think they did do it, unfortunately. For me, I really did not like

Saints Row at the end of the day. There is some good, but there's also a lot of bad. And when I look at my experience there, it is not what I wanted out of a Saints Row reboots. I think the mission, I think the mission of rebooting the Saints and bringing in new characters into the fold with what they did. The roommates are just not up to the level of Johnny Gats. The satire and the over-the-top nature is definitely completely gone. The writing is not witty. It is

not fun and exciting. It is just a lot of, hey, what do you think millennials will like? Let's try to do that, right? And so for me, my playthrough was also plagued with a lot of bugs. It was played with a lot of just generic. Do this mission

17 different times, then do it again. Oh, here's a variation, but it's the same thing. But on the good side, I think they really nailed and captured the world design. I was really, really impressed with what they did with Santo Aliso and the Southwest setting. I didn't think when we talked about, where's the next GTA? And people brought up, well, let's do the Southwest. Let's do a desert theme. I never thought you could do that. But this team over at Volition really did knock it out of the park. It is still a generic desert looking sandbox, but the points of interest are really, really unique and well done. So I'll give

him credit on that. So I don't want to get too deep into the goods and the bads. But overall, when I look at this, this is not St. Thro being back. This is not the team that I would want the next generation of St. Thames throw to be. And so I'm going to give St. Stroh a two out of five on the kind of funny scale. Which equates to bad on the kind of funny scale. Remember, one's terrible, two's bad, three's okay, four is great. Five is amazing. So continue, Mike? It's tough, right? Like when you look at this game, is in my mind a fine. game, right? There's some good, there's some bad, right? And I kind of looked at the scale and I said, where do I put myself on this, right? I could justify a three, could battle for a three,

but at the same time, like, what is a two to me, right? Is that a four? Is that a six of using the 10 point scale? For me, I always tell the viewers, right? Is this a day one purchase? Is this a wait till it's on a discount purchase or is this a skip completely? And for me, this is something I would look at my friends and say, you should wait for this game to go on sale, right? You should not be buying this day one unless you were over the top on Saints Row. But for me, it is a two out of ten or two out of five bad game. That's it. There you go, Mike.

Now next up, I want to go with Bless because I think that he has less thoughts on this one. So, so Bless, where are you at? I do have less thoughts on it. And that's because at one point, it was the lead review on this game. And I decided to rage quit. Not because the game was too difficult, but just because the game was so frustrating. This is a game that I feel like starts off with so much promise and so much potential.

And I do think starts off in a good place in terms of what the gameplay is and what the story set up is and what they set up with Santo Aliso. And like Mike said, right, I think the open world is pretty good, right? And I like the vibrancy of it. And I liked it starting it. But there is such a downward turn for me to happen probably three to four hours in the game where I went from being like, oh, this is fun. Oh, I can't wait to see where this is.

goes to me, maybe like four hours past that being like, I don't want to pick this game up again. And that, there are so many things to pick on in this game, right? I think for me it spans from story, just not being interesting, right? I think they, again, they start off from an interesting place in terms of, hey, we are a bunch of young adults that are trying to start up our own business, trying to start up our own enterprise, trying to start up saints, right? And it gets into this flow of you trying to, you going through the motions of doing these missions that are, hey, we're setting up the Saints, right? We're doing company retreats. We are recruiting people. We are building up weapons. We're doing all this. But story wise, it just does not feel interesting. There is not much to pull on in terms of interesting characters. Right. And like, I had a moment while playing this game where I was like, is this Saints Row? Has Saints Row always been bad? Like, am I crazy? Is this just what Saints Row is? Is this just what Saints Row is? in 2022. And I had that feeling so much so that I went back and I downloaded Saints Row 4 because I really liked Saints Row 4. And picking Saints Row 4 back up again, I was like,

no, this is good. Like this is a good video game. I don't want to put Saints Row 4 down. And going back to Saints Row the new one, I think for me, it comes down to it having this lack of character where it doesn't feel like a Saints Roe game. It feels like a game that's doing its best impression of a Saints Roe game. And it feels like something that doesn't bring any new or fresh exciting ideas to it. You know, after the first, what, three to four hours, there were moments where I was like, all right, cool, they set everything up, you know, hopefully they bring in exciting characters in the way that in St. Row 3, I remember meeting that one pimp who had, like, a T-Pain auto-tune voice and going, oh, this is hilarious, right? I remember getting the

dubstep gun. I remember getting the giant purple dildo bat, right? I remember jumping out the helicopter while Power by Kanye West was playing, right? There are so many different moments in Saints Row in the Saints Row games that I think allow those games to shine, allow them to stand out and allow the goofiness to really come through. When I think of Saints Row 4, I think of the beginning of that game where you're playing as the president. And you're like, you're, you're, watching down the White House hallway and you're like giving people dabs and you're doing all these things, right? And there's an alien invasion. These games are the best when they have so much character and so much goofiness and a lot of the time that stuff makes up for what can be janky

or repetitive gameplay. I was really hoping that that would come through in the New Saints Row and at no point does the personality come through in a way that really lifts it up. Instead, what I was met with was not interesting characters, not interesting story, gameplay that was oftentimes janky, a lot of bugs, and I'm sure we'll have a big conversation about bugs. And for me, the moment where I, where I rage quit, which was mainly just bad game design. You know, there are most people. missions in a row where every mission in this game pretty much boils down to, hey, shoot down waves of enemies, or drive here, shoot down more waves than enemies. Now drive here, now go through this corridor, shoot down more waves than enemies, right? Everything comes back to shooting,

and the shooting quickly becomes boring. I think off the top, it starts off as pretty decent, but quickly becomes repetitive, doesn't evolve much. And what really broke me for a couple of missions was the enemy placement, where there's one mission where you are hanging out outside, you are moving down waves of cops. And it starts off as them like showing up in cars. You mow them down, right? And then the second wave of cops for some reason is placed on an overpass that like you can't really see over.

And so like I found myself, you know, trying to bust out a sniper, not really being able to see with this overpass, then going, all right, maybe I'll drive to them. But then veering too far in the game being like, you're out of bounds, get back in 10 seconds and me being like, how am I supposed to take out these cops? And so what I ended up doing was taking out a grenade launcher and lobbing grenades, just praying, hoping to God that I don't run out of ammo before I knock out these cops, right? That was strike one on that front. Strike two was a mission called Company Retreat, where you're mowing down more waves of enemies, and the enemies this time are in a lake. They are driving around in, what you call them, the wave race vehicles.

Jetkeys, thank you. They're riding around the jet skis, and you are basically supposed to take them. out, but they don't really give you a good avenue to actually, like, take them out, right? If there aren't any jet skis available or, like, if you don't have a sniper so you can take them off from land, that frustrated me. I was like, did nobody playtest this, right? Why would this be the way in which you lay these enemies out? Like, it was just so unfun.

And even in that moment, right, like, a lot of the enemies, combat AI, reminded me of jet force, Gemini, which a lot of people are probably like, oh, isn't that a good thing? don't you like Jet Force Gemini? The thing there is that Jet Force Gemini is an N-64 game, right, with dated AI, right? And like, in that game, the enemies would run on like a, run on rails, essentially. So they'd run back and forth in very specific paths. And then, like, the bullets would magnetize toward you. Right. So there's not really a rhyme or reason in terms of your placement as the player, right? The enemies are just on this script. That's what it felt like in a lot of these Saints Row combat scenarios where the enemies are just running in circles and shooting

at you and I feel like it didn't really matter where I was, you know, like, there's a, there's a lot of jank in this game. And yeah, at the end of the day, it just came, it just came down too much where I was like, I just can't play this anymore. And I got frustrated with it. So you gave up on it, but if you were to give it a score out of five, what would it be? Two out of five. Okay, so not a one. Not a one. I, and I honestly, I debated it. You know, I started off, starting off from this game, I was like, okay, this is a three out of five. And then after a lot of these, the jankiness it's popped up. I was like, okay, this is a two. But for a split second, I was like, fuck, is it a one? And it's not, it's not a one because I can see people playing through

this game and being like, oh, I like it for what it is, right? Or I'm a big Saints Row fan. It's not great, but it's fine. It's not completely terrible. I do think it's bad. And so that's why I come down on it, too. So Janet Garcia, it all comes down to you. Are you somebody that might enjoy this video game, Saints Row? I thought maybe I could be, but then that became untrue. So I kind of want to start from where Bless mentioned of that, like, I thought it was a three and it became a two.

Obviously, the review process is, you know, a long and arduous process, but the same time we're making assessments on games all the time, you know, like we stream a bunch here, and I'm sure, you know, we're always kind of processing and analyzing. I think even when you're playing casually,

you're doing that. So having picked up Saints Row, I was like, yeah, this is like a basic game, so probably a three, but I'm having a fun time. You know, I was feeling the customization, I really enjoy, especially early on when you haven't heard it for so many hours, like the license music was really hitting. They have a Banda radio station, which I greatly appreciated because I feel like that easily could have not been in there.

And it was, and that was awesome. So I thought they had like a great suite of music on that front. And overall, I just enjoyed the, I think the world, like to Mike's point. Like I liked going around. There's kind of a set of missions that's related to like taking pictures of different like icons or places. Like I was down for the flow of it. It was simplistic. It was definitely done before. But I'm like, yeah, I drive from place to place. Maybe I stop by digging a dumpster. Maybe I get some drugs and make a little bit of money. So like, I was down for it and having fun. And again, you can have a lot of fun with a game even if it's not, you know, a masterpiece of a game. So that's where I started my Saints Road journey where I'm like, yo, this is basic, but I'm having a good time. I'm feeling it. Eventually, that did start to wear out, which I suspected it might because that's always the risk with a game that doesn't have a lot. going for it to begin with. So like as I went, I would just have these different issues, you know, to like what Bless said. It was for me, the biggest fault of Saints Row and the reason that I am landing on a two out of five bad as well is because so many things are frustrating about it. I feel like it stops me from enjoying the small bit that there is to enjoy. Like I think

there can be fun in a straightforward, basic open world, you're shooting, you're hanging out, you're designing stuff or customizing things. But there's so many moments where I'm like, this is either a really bad design choice and or it is straight up broken. And so many times I had to ask myself, like, is this working the way they intended to? Is this a bug? Am I in a bug now? Or did I just not know something? One continual frustration I had was the fact that they give you plenty of information on how

to do different side quests, use different vehicles, use whatever. There's no way to view those tutorials in the menu. So I'm like, oh my God, did I forget how to do this? Why is this impossible to do? There were countless times where I knocked down the difficulty from the normal, which is kind of like the standard is like five down the line. It goes up to nine for like boss. Five is like entrepreneur. I knocked it down to like zero on all those markers because I'm like, I know I can do this. I don't want to try to get good at this jankly made thing just for the

clout of no one. Like I'm just going to knock it down. And sometimes even doing that was barely enough. I'm out like there were so many times where I felt like I found things to enjoy in this game and I found a way to engage in a way that felt fun for me. And the game continued to push back on that and make me not have fun. with it. So that's why I have to say it's bad. I do think there's maybe a world where if they fix a lot of these issues and this never hits you, you might be like, oh no, it was cool. I had fun. That was not my experience and I cannot guarantee that they are going to do that. And again, it wasn't all just bugs. A lot of the things were just the design, the way the AI behaved,

the placement like Bless Ed, like so many things fought against me having a good time with this game. It is so frustrating. The one point where I deviate from, like, I don't recommend this game at all. Like, I'm also big on not, like, I don't really care about. Oh, it's cheaper. or it's free, it's on Game Pass, like, is the game good or not? Do I recommend it or not? This one, I think you can just skip it. This game broke me in ways that I haven't been broken. I think all year, this was probably one of my least favorite gaming experiences that I've had in quite some time. And that is why I kind of landed more in the two, where I thought about games that I feel like are okay. And I'm like, this isn't that. This isn't acceptable to me. I cannot, in good conscience,

tell people to go check it out. You might have fun, because I don't think you will have fun. I think you will get mad. And I think you will either rage quit like blessing or power through like me and do the credit roll immediate delete because I want to rid myself of the memory of this experience I just had. Jenna, you brought up before we went live. We were talking a little bit about dying light, which I think was earlier this year, Dying Light 2 came out. And I feel like we've had a lot of consistency in terms of like what kind of funny thoughts are on games throughout the year. But I feel like that was one of the more divisive ones. What do you think this lies compared to that?

This is like way worse than that, in my opinion. And I know some people think dying light is also like very basic, but I actually think there is like layers to dying light. Like I did find myself like immersed in elements of that story. I think the parkour really hits. Like there are things that I feel like dying light legitimately does well. There are quests I can point to and have no like question on whether or not this was like a good gaming experience.

Like there were like the highs were so much higher. the lows were not as low. And really, dying light's number one fault, like the reason that I came down on like, I don't even know if we were doing the scale at the time, but like a three or I reviewed for my outlet and I gave it like, you know, good, not great for like for my perspective was because the end

really did fall apart. Like the last couple of quests and the funnel boss was like really whack. This is like, what if those low points were like kind of everywhere randomly at any time? Like literally finishing Saints Row, which I did like right before we recorded. Like I was playing right up until that point. I was on the final mission.

I hit a game breaking bug and I had to run it back. And there were times in this game where I was afraid of playing the game because I didn't know if I'd be able to get through that next part. And I'm like, well, I wanna finish it, but like literally at any time something can break and I have no way of controlling that.

Not to mention the checkpoint system is really wonky. Sometimes it's awesome. Sometimes it's awful. There's like unskippable stuff when you have to rerun back dialogue. That's another reason that I'm like, let me knock some of this down just easy to power through it

because I don't wanna try because you haven't created a context for me to want to try in both intrigue of the gameplay and also like ease of getting back into it if you were to fail. Like the consequences for failing some of these missions feel so severe. I'm like, do I want to drive across the entire city in this like slow truck that clearly isn't up for this job again just to say I did it? You know what?

No, I'm going to try. And then even knocking down to easy sometimes I could barely get through it because it's like, it's just so much. Not to mention, you know, the repetition as well. So there's just a lot, a lot firing here for me. I think the dying light two comparison is very interesting because for me this game is almost perfectly the exact inverse of dying light too where I was not really looking forward to dying light too I didn't really care about the game I watched the dying to no streams that they did about dying light too and oftentimes I was like okay there's some promising things about dying light too I guess but I'm not dying light person I didn't really like the first one that much and so am I really going to enjoy dying light too and then I played dying light too and I had a pretty I had a surprisingly fantastic time with that game and I remember during our review the one thing that me, Janet, Greg. And Mike, you're in that review too, right?

You probably were in the same place of, oh, this ending sucks. Like, the last few hours of that game, I think, is a drag and it's buggy. And, you know, I think that last, the final hours of dying light too really tainted that experience. Whereas for me, with Saints Row, I was looking forward to Saints Row. Right. I like the previous Saints Row games. I like this type of open world game.

I went to the preview and I enjoyed my time with the preview. And that comes back to it being the exact inverse thing of, I think the first few hours of Saints Row are actually pretty good. Um, for me, everything falls apart when you get to, um, uh, there's, there's a mission where you essentially unlock a church that becomes your base for where the saints operate. And after that, I think everything takes, you know, building up to that point, it is you being introduced to the mechanics and it's like, okay, the shooting's good. All right, the world is interesting. Okay, they're setting up story stuff. They're showing you, they're introducing you to your friends or the other characters.

And it is on such an upward trajectory. And funny enough during my preview, like that's where I ended up stopping my preview was at that, right after that church mission. So I left that preview being like, all right, cool, like it seems okay. Like this game seems all right. But then afterwards, right, picking up for review. And that is after three to four hours of playing. You get to that point. And I think it just fucking nose dives in terms of, all right, we got no more story to tell, really. You know, all these missions, are you built, are you just doing these random, random things to try and build up, build up that base? The more you explore the open world, the more you experience bugs, right? The more you like, the more paper thin everything starts to become. I, in,

this time around, right, doing the play-through, I just didn't have any, any, I don't know, encouragement to want to do side stuff. You know, the world stopped being interesting as from like a character perspective, right? The world is a character. I think the world looks good. I like the design of the world. I like it visually, but they do, they do nothing for it in terms of the wackiness or like making it interesting or I think there are a couple of interesting points of interest but there's not really much to discover to make that world shine right it seems so paper thin and all this elements and it just unravels so quickly after the first three hours of it Mike tell me a little bit about the the bugs oh the bugs Tim oh man I had a couple of bugs uh

of course blessing did talk about kind of like the enemy placement and some bugs like you're gonna run a lot of the same missions over and over again. And I noticed halfway through my play through, the mission details stopped showing up. So I had to start guessing what I was supposed to do, right? And for example, what that was is you unlock a new kind of like, what do you call this, mission or, you know, money making scheme, right? Like your insurance frauds, your weapon details. But every time you do that, you have to now do five things within that territory of the

map to make more money, right? And this is the generic pull up, kill 20 people, find the space. hold it down for 90 seconds or kill a police fan. And I started to notice halfway through my playthrough, I would pull these things up and the mission details wouldn't tell me what I was supposed to do. So I'd just have to guess, right? And that really, really sucked. Enemy placement like Bless said,

I had the same thing happened to me on the bridge where I couldn't kill anybody and you weren't allowed to leave the zone. Another big game breaking bug for me was car customization, right? I said, in my mind, the good was some of the customization. But I had a totally unplayable experience with the car customization. Because when I went into Jim Rob's garage, I had this bright glare where you couldn't see the car. It was just totally white with like a fluorescent light.

So every change that I made, I couldn't actually see what was happening to the car. So I went in there about seven times, never once could see the car. And that really was disappointing on a customization side. And then my final big bug was the 4K UHD setting. It was unplayable. It was framey.

never could get to a consistent frame rate. Mind you, this game isn't pushing the graphics limit. It's not really that pretty of a game. It looks like a 360 game, to be honest with you. But, you know, this is the next generation of consoles. We're looking for that 4K 60. I'm expecting that out of a lot of these games. And this game could not set the tone on frame rate.

It was choppy. It was bad through cutscenes, through gameplay. I had to play my whole experience in 1440P high frame rate, which I know a lot of people will be like, that's fine, right? but I'm expecting if you put a 4K UHD setting in the gameplay, that it runs well and I can be able to play it that way. I could not at all.

So those were a lot of the big bugs I had from mission details, car customization. Then this 4K UHD was really disappointing and sad to me. Did other guys use characters with glasses or customize your character with glasses? Did you guys have the weird glasses fog? Yeah, I thought that was just the specific glasses, but then I never found a store that had other glasses. So I was like, that's just why I looked like.

Please explain. They're like very glary like very glary almost foggy basically and I thought it was maybe just the style because I didn't have that on like sunglasses but like also sunglasses looked different on them right. My glasses were fine. Wait, does it just affect the glasses or is how you see the screen? Just the glasses just the glasses. Yeah, how the glasses look on your character. I didn't realize that was a bug.

Yeah. So I had it. I had it during your glasses were fine. Fine 100%. Really like there wasn't any like sort of like smear because you could see right through it looked good. Wow. Okay, well that's... Maybe that's just a librarian glass. Were they the librarian glasses? They were the librarian glasses, yeah.

Maybe that's... That might just be how they look. Oh, well, they look. I did find it weird. I did find it weird, though, like, as well. And I had the same one that I actually didn't even dig into... That's another funny thing. Like, I think there's a lot of stuff that you would think would be very, like, iconically, like, woven into the game. But, like, car customization, they never really made you do, and I decided to never do it. Because, like, also with the ventures, like, you have these different businesses and to, like, complete the business, you would need to, like, do all of the ventures. Some of them had 14 things to do.

Some of them had five. Some had four. So, like, and then also, man, some were, like, two, I could not get them done. Like, I tried doing insurance fraud where a super fun idea that I was really into when I first did it, of you just, like, running into the street and getting hit by cars and you're trying to raise the multiplier. And I thought that was, like, fun, wonky, gross, cool, like, you know, very of the franchise. But then the set, like, with the first mission, it was like, oh, okay, wreck up a million dollars, and I'm in this time limit. The second one was like, now you need to do $4 million.

And I could not, for the life of me, get it to get to $4 million. Maybe I was just bad at it. I'm willing to cop to that. It doesn't help to the fact that you rack up that multiplier by getting hit multiple times without getting up, but your character automatically gets up after a few seconds. The streets weren't that, like, busy that they, like, put it on.

And I'm like, I feel like you could have, they make you, like, trigger the mission. And I'm like, I feel like you should have populated this higher or made the requirement way less low. because something that should be fun and goofy, like didn't end up working out, like a car maybe would get into an accident, and now it's congested, now there's less.

So I actually tried, like, during those venture missions, because that is part of the main campaign of, like, hey, complete, like, two ventures, and then later they make you do, like, three more. And I literally had to just give up on that. So I feel like I wasted, like, an hour of playtime. On that, realizing I couldn't progress. Same deal with, I tried doing the waste disposal one,

where you're carrying the barrels. The barrels would, like, they would get destroyed. They would get destroyed for me. like immediately and I arrived at the place with no barrels left and I didn't get any of the credit. But they also didn't even give me negative feedback either. They didn't say I failed. They just didn't tell me anything. So I'm like, okay, this venture is not going to be done.

Eventually I did find ones to do. But like issues like that that are kind of aside from bugs but sort of adjacent for bug stuff though, um, weapon customization, I couldn't preview any of the weapon customization. So I didn't do any of it. I'd hover over the thing and it never would show me what it would look like. So I'm like, I guess I'm just not going to do that part. sometimes equipping the weapons as well. You have to do that.

Your armory, like, the equipness didn't always land. Like, one time I got stuck in just having, like, those fake weapons from, like, the LARP mission, and, like, I couldn't get out of that. I had a bug at the final mission of the game where I was incapable of shooting my gun, opening my weapon wheel, or using my abilities. And then I had to reload that, which, of course, when you hit restart from checkpoint, instead of giving me a checkpoint in that mission, they made me do the entire mission again. other things, like many other examples of stuff,

and weird MPC stuff of like, I go to do a takedown with triangle, and my character, like, has the spaghetti arms, and that weirds out. Like, little stuff, like, you know, I'm taking down somebody, but they're now invisible. It's just because I'm doing the takedown adjacent to, like, the player character.

And some of these things are like, okay, like, it's not really changing your core experience. But when you have that again and again, next to bad design, it just becomes like, man, I really can't bring myself to enjoy what is going on here. At least that's how I felt playing through all that. Tim. So Janet, we're going to take a second to get a word from our sponsors.

But when we get back from that, I want to hear what did you like about this game? Before we get there, I have a bug. I want to pull up for that. Okay, okay. Well, first off, here's a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by me undies. Of course, I'm Tim Geddes. I love me undies.

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That's meundies.com slash kind of funny. You're not going to regret it. You're going to love meundies, just like I do. Meundees.com slash kind of funny. Bug me away, bless. So a lot of the books that I had are similar to a lot of the stuff that Mike and Jena are describing. me and Jan were setting back and forth bug videos that we kept getting while playing the game. This is one that is me that Barrett has pulled up.

One of the things I'll all mention too is like there's just a weird effect when you have a companion on a mission and you get into a car and they like rubber band into your car in a very unnatural way. But this is one where like I go to talk to this guy and I'm like, why isn't activating what's going on here? And then this happens. Whoa. For audio listeners, I highly recommend you watch the video to see that. And basically his torso did like a fucking wheel spin like a million miles per hour. That same thing happened to me at the very final cutscene epic moment of the end of the game. Like when you go, you have a thing with like another character, like no spoilers, even though like, you know, for people that want to play the game still.

But it's like you versus another character. It's like cutscene. It's like, okay, kind of like showdown ask. And they're like, shoot. And I go to shoot. And then that character model T poses and does that same bug that you had. and then there's like a pause, then it hard cuts to the rest of the cutscene

and then like the credits of the game role. And I'm like, I can't think of a better way to cap off what this experience of this game was than what had just happened to me at the end. I love how it looks exactly like one of the inflatable tube guys. Yeah. And yeah, character models in this game just don't look great. I think the environments look decent,

but the carrier models look bad, dude. That's from everywhere from like, even the detail of the character models. I can't believe it's a PS5 game. Mike mentioned earlier that it looks like. a 360 game like the character modes especially look like that oh my god so many loads because of course it's trying to make a custom

character this there's so many loads in this game it's ridiculous and I maybe there's someone out there who makes dope looking characters but for the life of me I could try to make a dope character I could put on multiple different outfits and it always looks bad it never looks right the t-shirt doesn't sit right or the t-shirt looks

ugly you got boots that don't look good the character has pubs on his face for a mustache like I have never once in this video game found a good looking character where I'm like oh that's a good job Mike you made something good at most of the time I'm like God damn it like I'm wearing the exact same suit they gave me at the beginning because none of the clothes look good

and also I could never go shirtless there's a main character in this game who's shirtless showing off a bunch of tattoos Oh you should be able to I'm not I mean like shirtless shirtless Janet They were making me wear an undershirt the whole time I could never go shirtless Oh that's like I think that's a bug

That could be a bug Yeah, I couldn't take the shirt off and they're like, oh, get tattoos and stuff. I'm like, I can't take the t-shirt off. Why am I getting tattoos? You can. You can be totally like completely top-less with like your nipples out and everything. Like if that's what you're, you know, the important content to get out there. You can't have like your, there's no bottom nudity.

Like you have like a little like a sensor like icon over it. But you can have your titty's out in this game. Sometimes you got to let those tities, titty. This might be the only game of this year where you can like be full tities out. So like, you know, if that's what you had on your wish list, There you go. Tim, you mentioned for the highlights. One more quick low light that I got threw out there. With a lot, really quick. Really quick. You can't fast travel in missions. And they will like,

and they will literally what bothers me to no end about this. And also this isn't me like not holding back, but you know, I'm trying to be like a total ass. And people worked on this and they, you know, put out there. And I wish it was good, but it's not. What sucks is like you'll have something like, okay, maybe there's like a team meeting. That's how like the mission starts, you know, and you'll trigger that mission because you have to like opt in to like start the mission. And they'll be like, oh, we're having a team meeting. Come to the church. But I'm on the other side of town. They're like, oh, well, you can't fast travel because you're in a mission. So like, I guess you could abort mission, go to the church and then start it, which like, I don't know

why I didn't think of doing that in my 15 to 20 hours. But like the fact they don't let you fast travel anywhere. There's also not that many fast travel points to begin with even. The unlocking sometimes would be jinky for me. But yeah, I'm sure we'll get into more negatives. For the positives, though, I will say, I actually did like the character customization. I felt like I was able to make a character that totally looked like me to a degree, you know, within like video games. I liked a lot of the customization. There's very little character customization beef I have other than very small nitpicks. Like you can only have one like ear piercing when it's like I feel, you know, I have like three on one ear.

So I'm like I feel like they could have beefed that up a little bit. But for the most part, I thought they had a great suite of like, and people already know this. who are maybe excited about the game because they put out like the boss customization early to let people tinker with it, which I think is smart because it is one of my favorite parts of this game. I like the shopping fine.

Clothes were definitely hit or miss, but I did enjoy like the process to a degree of customizing my character. Like I said, I loved the radio stations. And I also did like some moments of the story. Like I liked, you know, you have your group of friends and like one of the characters is Nina

who's like Hispanic and like she has this. like in my opinion, one of her quest lines where they kind of deal with like she has her drama you're trying to help her out. And she kind of tells this like heartwarming story about her family. And like I'm sure for some people that didn't hit. For me, I thought that was like actually a really touching moment and otherwise mostly flat story. I think too, like again, a small thing, but I'm always complaining that they do the weird like, Amigo, hello, Ola thing with like Hispanic characters. They do have her speak Spanish. But oftentimes if she does, she will say like a full sentence in

Spanish, which is something that, granted, the bars on the floor, but I have not really heard a video game character do that, and I really liked that aspect of it. So, yeah, those were elements that I felt like brought me into it. And then I do like the idea of having your different businesses and stuff, too. Like, I think the game has plenty of good ideas, but because the execution wasn't that wavy, it didn't take a lot for it to fall apart. And I think a lot of our discussion is breaking down the ways that it did fall apart and why it isn't at that, like, you know, that three level. But yeah, those are kind of my quick highlights.

Yeah, I agree. The customization I thought was pretty decent. I like the car customization. I had a lot of fun tinkering, and there was one mission that I dug where you are basically you're stealing a car from like the other gang and to like torment this guy, you have to customize their car, but customize it in a bad way. So they let you just like fuck up that car in the customization and then you drive it. And I thought that that was a pretty fun gag.

I do think that there are multiple fun gags in this game. There are a couple of times I found myself actually laughing out loud. There's one mission where you have to pick up donuts for the crew. And you get to the donut shop, you stand in line, and then like you're moving, you literally like have to like inch your character forward. And like as you're doing it, you're calling up your squadmates to be like, hey, you know, what do you want? Like I'm picking up donuts.

You know, what kind of do what toppings do you want? And like stuff like that. I'm like, okay, that's fun. And then that mission then turns into a, oh, somebody put you on the wanted app. So now everybody in the city is after you. And like the wanted app is actually another thing I like in this game where, like how GTA has the missions where you're going to the pay phone and they're giving you these assassination missions. This game basically has the exact same thing in the wanted app where you go to this app and you get to choose which of these assassination missions you want to do, right? And the wanted app, one of the gags with it is that it started off as like a Tinder as like a dating app, but then like turned into like this wanted situation.

There are a lot of gags around that that I was like, okay, this is cool, this is fun. And these wanted missions, I think, are pretty decent. A lot of that stuff I liked. And then I liked some of the music choices. Like, one of the early things you do in the game is you get into a police chase and KRS1's Sound of the Police plays. And that felt like a, hey, we're trying to replicate that power moment. And it wasn't that strong, but I do think it was fun, right? I thought that was fun when it came on.

I did, I do wish I liked the music more. I'm somebody that when it comes to the games like this that have radio stations, I gravitate toward the hip-hop station. And this is a game that I'm pretty sure takes place in modern day. And the radio station for hip-hop was just all 90s music. And it struck me as like, oh, yeah, the people making this game just really like 90s hip-hop. Flex wasn't, though. They had two hip-hop radio stations.

And the flex radio station was modern. I still don't think it hit that hard to your point. But they had like Princess Nokia and a couple other like tracks, which like one thing that I liked about this game that then like to kind of build in the music thing But then it kind of ended up not working out for me again because of bugs is they at one point unlock a playlist feature on your phone where you could like make your own playlist and like play that But I couldn't get it to work in a way that felt predictable like I'd start a song and it like wouldn't start and then I hit it again and it would go But then like they take they'd pause it automatic or I'd pause the music and then they'd once I fast traveled somewhere automatically start it again when I'm like I didn't say I was that I didn't say I started it so I didn't end up actually using that as much and that's something I wish they integrated with the car a little bit more because

you have to kind of pull it up on your phone like you have to it's like separate from the vehicle like it could have easily just been the ox as a station and that would just be the playlist playing but yeah and then like real quick before like you know Mike's highlights too I just want to point out something that I have forgotten up until this point but with the ventures one venture that I really liked which it's a shame that like it's nice that for freedom of choice, but when all the choices are the same quality, that's when it's kind of whack. There was one venture that was called like Eureka something. It's a corporation that like would, you know, do different tinkering with devices and the missions you had were alpha testing the devices.

That thing was fire. And I'm like, if people miss this, that sucks because that's where you get and it was also kind of too late in the game, in my opinion. But that's where you get stuff like a football where it locks on the enemies and flings them in the air. You get a freaking, as one of your special abilities like a sort of like projector border shield looking thing that lets you like shoot through buildings at enemies for a certain window of time and you get a hoverboard there and I'm like why is this not like in the main part because using those at the end of the game where like some of my favorite gameplay moments and it helped make gameplay feel different specifically that shield because I'm like now I have a different tactic that I can do other than

just going in there and just shooting everyone I'm still shooting everybody but I can be a little sneakier or kind of do something different with it. So I also thought that was cool. Yeah, well said, Janet. I agree with the incubators. They must do early on in the ventures if you can get that because, yes, the football and the shield are really dope. For me, Janet, the hoverboard was just too slow.

I hated it because it was like, it's also really wonky. Yeah, it's really wonky. Like, that's one thing when I bring up the bad is the combat and driving feels so antiquated and old and none of the driving feels good. It all feels very stiff. every car is way too slow. There's not a standout car that you'll remember like Grand Theft Auto.

And then out of nowhere, you'll hit like a fire hydrant and the whole game will just explode. Your car will be flying 50 yards the other way. You'll be bouncing left and right. Like driving just feels stiff and bad in this game and it never feels fast enough, especially like Janet with the hoverboard.

You do a hoverboard mission. And then they say, oh, go 1,800 meters the other way and you just slowly puts over there. And you're like, what is the point of this? Why is it always such a hassle to get from point A to point B? And then the shooting, they have the auto lock on just like any GTA and St. Trow, but it just feels old. It's not refined enough where you can quickly move amongst people.

If you're in a crowd, it will log onto one. And then in the back, it will freak out and try to lock onto the other one. It's just not smooth at all or precise, which is too bad. But for the goods on mine, I agree, Jan. I think the incubator was super dope. Some of the ventures are fun, but really it all comes down to the same thing. go kill 20 guys go from point A to point B on this car ride and then so on and they're never fun and exciting but things I did love the world design like I brought up I think they really crush the

southwest feel right from the music to the points of interest were really beautiful and cool and they also had these really random events we always talk about these open worlds and how they try to make it feel like a lived in open world but nobody's ever quite done it but we've had goods and bads on each one this one has really cool like random events as you're driving around around like you'll be off in the desert and people will be shooting off fireworks which is dope right you'll be in town and there's a fender bender or a cop is pulling someone over right and like every now and then you'll see that and you'll be like oh that's really cool looking and then of course you'll drive down the road and there'll be no one there all of a sudden or you'll drive down the road and it's

like people are walking sideways and don't look right and it's like we're making strides towards that truly lived in open world but they had some good a lot of bad on that one another one i liked was the endless checklist. I think a lot of people like these action open world games because it is just a endless checklist of things to do. Saints Row has that in bulk. Now, mind you, it's a lot of samey stuff, but I'm 73% of the way through this video game right now,

and I'm probably going to be there for another 20 hours guaranteed if I wanted to hit 100%. There is so much to do, and it is very samey. It's a lot, but like if you're looking for a checklist game where you zone out and you just check things off of a list, this is that. And one of the things I liked on that checklist was the scavenger hunt in the photo mode like Janet brought up, right?

I think the coolest thing in these games, especially with a game that has great points of interest in a cool looking world, is to pull up to a bar and take a photo and look at the artwork that they did and the cool points of interest. That scavenger hunt mode is really fun and exciting. And you're going to unlock a clothing brand that the Saints will oversee. And the girl who will now unlock more customization for you on the clothing wise will give you like a scavenger hunt. but it's like a cool little riddle.

It'll be like, go find this, right? Bugs, of course, I showed up to a couple, Janet, and it's just not there. And then I would reload the world, and then the thing is there. And I'm like, oh, thanks so much, that sucks. But it is cool to be like, go to this area. I love the pool shattered glass, and she has like a cool little poem,

and you'd find it and unlock that. So I really got lost in the scavenger hunt stuff of the points of interest photos and then the clothing stuff as well. I want to highlight the enemy variety. I think there's a couple of really cool parts of the enemy variety. A lot of them are just generic dumb baddies, but they had some really cool martial sheriffs that would like turn into five dudes

or they had the auto locker. Yeah, the rave people sucked. And like I really didn't care for the cobra head girl after 20 hours. But like her with the baseball bats deflecting stuff was cool looking at first. Like they have some small moments. We're like, oh, the enemy variety here is kind of cool. And then of course it just becomes the same thing over and over again.

But I really wish they played more on that one. The Panteros, were just the generic super meathead bodybuilder guys, and I really think they missed the mark on that. But the Ravers had a couple small ones. Marshall did have some really cool enemies where you're like, oh, man, I wish I saw more of them, but they just weren't there.

And then my final piece that I really liked, I touched on the story that I did not vibe with, did not like. And so I said, okay, what can we find good out of this? And that's the mission set pieces. I think when you start this game, the first five missions have really awesome epic set pieces, right? You start off. You're in the desert driving.

feels like Mad Max. Then all of a sudden, you're breaking a guy out of prison. It feels like Hobbs and Shaw out of Fast and Furious. And they have a really cool couple of moments where it's like, I mean, you did great on the set pieces, but the story overall for me never worked, right? The roommates never felt good. The story itself started off about a book being stolen and then you quit your job and you form the saints.

It just wasn't that good for the beginning. But the set pieces, they had a couple of really cool moments at the beginning. Unfortunately, it quickly gets lost in the middle. They never really find the same. set pieces ever again. LARPing was not fun and enjoyable at all. A couple of the missions really suck. Like one guy was like, we got to go to all the burger shots essentially and get a happy meals toy. And it's like, oh, that just didn't click with me, homie, you know. And so those are my goods right there. A couple of goods. Skills were cool too. They have a skills and trade system.

Mind you, you level up to 20. And then after that, all the XP is pointless because you can't level past that. But some of the skills are fun and enjoyable, like the super punch. You can get a grenade that launches people up in the air, I thought was cool. I have one on my B button where he does like the Matrix Neo double spins and like just shoots pistols at people. I thought that was wicked cool. So skills are a highlight too. I'll give them that.

Traits, I really don't care for the traits. You have to unlock them through challenges. I spent all of my money on getting the epic trait, which is like $250,000. And at the beginning, that's a lot of money, right? And so you unlock those and then you spend all that money. And then like Janet says, The ventures start off from $100,000 a piece to $400,000 a piece.

And then at the end of the game, there's three final ventures that all cost $1.6 million each. When I ended the game, I had like $200,000 in my pocket. There was no way I was going to buy these anytime soon. And the ventures make you money, but they also don't explain to you, hey, you need to go into your phone app and like pull the money out on the regular or else it will stop accumulating or you just never get that. got to make sure while you're playing to be like oh snap i need to open up my phone take the money out of the ventures because i thought they were just paying me each and every time but they are not

you have to pull it out for itself which is yeah i don't like i'm lucky that i figure that i think they did that i don't know i guess actually but i felt like it was so you couldn't completely choose it like it does get capped but the cap goes up as your income goes up so like at first like oh 25k or something by the end it's like hundreds of thousands of dollars um i actually did like that about the game though because I felt like it took some of the pain out of money. Now granted, you could argue that like it's maybe not the best game design in the sense of if one of the biggest game compliments is that I don't have to play your game as much, maybe that already says something, but that also is where we are. And I did like that like, I kind of beamed through

this game starting on, I think Wednesday was the first time I picked up or Tuesday I picked it up. And I've been playing it every day since chipping away at it. And once I've kind of realized about like the money thing, I'm like, oh, you know what? I'm going to change my battery save settings and I'm gonna leave this thing on while I like go stream or do whatever. Yeah, and like, yeah. And while, you know, again, is that like the most exciting thing? For me, I did like it though, as someone who wants the freedom of like, I want to be able to buy my dumb $60,000 t-shirt or whatever without feeling like I have to grind. Like I will say one compliment to that system is that I never found myself grinding in a way

that I felt like when I saw, oh my God, I need 400K to get this last venture because I bought all the cheap ones. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to leave the thing on. I'm going to go do other things. When I come back, I'm going to do the other missions. And by then, maybe I'll have the money. And I was able to mostly, like, get all my money that way. But you're right, Mike.

They totally should have pointed some of that stuff out. Like, maybe they were afraid of doing too many tutorials, but there definitely were, I think, things that could have been interwoven a little bit better to both teach the player more, but also get you more excited about the world. Because there was like the wanted app that blessed shot out. I never used it. Like, I just happened not to. And if that really is one of the highlights,

They maybe should have at least made me use it once so I can maybe see the appeal and kind of dig into more and kind of customize my play for what I'm interested in in a way that's a little bit more guided than I think it was. I have a hot take really quick, Tim. I have a controversial opinion here that I want to have a conversation with. Jan and I agree with you. And I started off the review trying to buy everything. So I went into a money hole very quickly. So like save your money towards the end of it. But one thing I want to talk about is the art design in the world, right?

Something that really stuck with me was the world. and I really enjoyed how they built up this world, the points of interest like I brought back. And I kind of want to say something crazy. So I'm going to be open and honest with y'all. I like this world. And I think it's more beautiful and like kind of good looking and better looking compared to Grant Theft Auto.

I don't know what it is if it's the art style. I don't know if it's because we're closer. But there's something where the detail of the world is more powerful than Grant Deft Auto. Grand Theft Auto, mind you, I really like and it is great. But there's something about it where you're on the city, streets and everything like the sides of the walls look better and like it just feels better to me and looks better.

I don't know how it's the weird thing I'm trying to figure out how to describe in my mind, but I like the look. It's pretty vibrant. I think the vibran. I think it's the art style or maybe whatever engine they're using, but it feels like the city blocks are long, like, feels like in Great Death Star of the city blocks are like longer, but like the buildings aren't that like close to you and they don't have that much detail. This you feel like you're like really a lot of detail.

going into each and every building on the side of everything here. So I really like whatever the world design is. It's stuck with me. That's what really kept me bringing going back. Yeah, I mean, I can see that a little bit. Like I actually still have yet to dig into the GTA 5, which after I'm going to take a little break, I think from the open world. I'm like, I want a closed world now.

But pulling up, like I just pulled like gameplay footage, I can see why you say that. I think the thing is besides the perspective, they have like that almost like it's not a one to one, but it kind of reminds me a little bit of Far Cry New Dawn's aesthetic of like that hyper saturation neon pinkness to it because in addition to being like Southwest, this is very much pulling from Vegas, pulling a little bit from just general California. And I think for that reason, there's like these really cool almost like, okay, this is definitely trying to

be the strip or this is trying to be this other place. So I think you catch more like areas of vibrancy. I think also too, because it has a little bit more of that cartoony aesthetic, I can see why that might hit harder than, God, when did GTA5 come out, like 20th, 13, then 2013 realism, which I think by today's standards, obviously our realism has evolved quite a bit. Not to say that GTA5 doesn't still look good now, but, you know, like, when you have something a little bit more stylized, it's easier to not be as graphically impressive because, you know, it's different things that they're kind of approaching. Oh, and then also, if you're going to build casinos, you're going to build a go car track, use

them. Do something with them. The casinos are so unused. There's a go car track and mind you I have three ventures left so maybe it will use it but I can say right now that go car track is unused the whole time and yeah the casino is used once but like

if you're going to have these dope casinos do something with them. It's unbelievable that that's a massive moment with nothing going on. I think totally like it's so funny because with every and I think this speaks to like why we all kind of land on this game being bad because every time we compliment it. We just also think of the ways that it wasn't quite enough, though. Like,

even the things I liked have baggage. Like, there's so much, that's how I would kind of saw my experience with Saints Row. It is a game that gave me a lot of baggage. And it's mechanics and what it put me through in the ways that I wanted to engage, but I couldn't engage. And I think it's what's so frustrating about it. But, like, with the ventures, like I had, I tried to, like, lean in to, you know, what I thought would be cool to own. So I got, like, a laundromat. I got, like, the radio station at one point. But even though I didn't do anything with it because I was the end of the game at that point. But like I was so bummed that like the laundromat stick for instance is, oh, we're a laundromat. But like our real stick

is that we like clean up crime scenes for you or like the shady oaks footage is like, oh, we're going to, you know, like do some scams. At least the Shady Oaks Quest did have like you're doing insurance fraud so you went out to commit insurance fraud and that made sense. So many of these like lacked creativity in what they were. Like they weren't really pulling from the themes. Like the job is to clean up crime scenes. This should be like a mini power wash simulator moment that could feel really different, but instead, I don't clean up the crime scene. I just help drive, like, the body from the crime scene. And other people do the cleaning. Not to mention, I don't get to even go into the laundromat. I meet the guy outside, and he's like, thanks for helping me with

the laundromat or whoever was standing there. And it's like, you know, the food thing, could have been a fun food mini game. Instead, steal someone's truck and kill a bunch of people. It's like, it kind of reminds me, like, this game reminds me so much of that scene from the office where Michael Scott's improv was just him having a gun all the time. And I know, like, people were going of course say oh i come you for to shoot because it's saints row sure but like when you have stuff that isn't just the shooting that isn't just the main campaign that's your time to do flavor and create a differential in your mechanics and you fail to do that and also the mechanic you have isn't even that good so like why are we still like even when we deviate it's still the same so yeah

really quick tim i know we're getting out of here the ventures they have these really cool buildings that you build i wish like for me who loved the world i wish i saw that and could pull myself back because all of a sudden I've put a military like arms distributor in the middle of downtown Santa Laliso right and it's like does not look right as a crash plane with a bunch

of tents and then there's high rises and stuff I wish for me who likes to like make my worlds look really nice and stuff I wish I knew that before I went in because all of a sudden like I put this ugly thing in the middle of nice downtown I have a really beautiful awesome clothing storefront in the middle

of like the death of with nothing around it. I'm like, God damn it. Like, if we're going to make these buildings look so cool, I wish I at least knew that beforehand. Because, yeah, you'll start putting things in because they only have 12 special spots to put them in. And it's like, if you put one awkward thing in,

like the toxic waste thing in the middle of a neighborhood, it's like, well, that doesn't look right in the grand scheme of things. But you can do it if you want. I don't like that. My final question for you guys, as we get out of here, do you think that the views here, the two out of five,

it's a bad game mentality is going to be the standard across the rest of games media. Yeah. I think from a lot of, I think from a good amount of sites, I think a few, well, I feel like this is getting a little spicy. So I'm like, got you got to choose the words carefully.

I definitely think some people will like it and give it maybe a seven, maybe even an eight from some places from people. But I do think there will be a few key sites that will be like this is a five, maybe even lower depending on how, you know, it depends on everyone waits, bugs and stuff differently. And also like your experience can be really different.

Like I could have played this. this game and had no bugs. And then maybe I would have even had a different score. I think the Metacritic will probably be a high 60. And I think there will be some sites that we'll like drag it through the mud. And then some that'll be like, I had fun. And this is like, you know, nostalgic open world stuff. But my thing is it's like there's not, it reminds me of like playing really old GTA, you know, when that dropped, people were really upset about that. I feel like if people were upset about old GTA not being like updated or being like in some ways weaker than the old one, then they're going to be really mad at this. Because at least that has the necessities.

nostalgia of back in the day, this was iconic open world and we have like these core memories. Like, I don't have that for this game because it is a new game. So what I do have is just paid and frustration. Oh, damn. I mean, even you're removed from the nostalgia, I would rather play GTA trilogy than to play this. And these are both. You should have drafted it, bless. I don't know why you drafted this. Oh, thank God. Oh, because it had. I had promise, Janet, right? I had, I had promise. I had, I had promise. And also like, who counterpicked it. Me. I knew. I knew. I got damn. You're going to have your hand on a pulse. Snowykemex coming up.

No, I think this will land in like the five to seven range. I think the sevens will be like on the higher end of the scores. Like somebody's going to give it an eight. I'm sure somebody might give it a nine. I call those people crazy. But like, yeah, I think this will, I think the five to sevens is probably going to dominate where this game lands. And I don't know. I don't think one person is going to be like this is the best Saints Row game.

I think Saints Row has been better in the past. I think this is a step down. And I read who mentioned it. I might have been Janet of like, you know, like I don't want to just like shit on games or shitting on games or like, you know, it's not just good for game pass or whatever. Like, I'm somebody who really likes Volition. I'm somebody who wants Volition to win, right? Volition's like my, that's a game studio that resides in my hometown. So I had friends growing up that would do QA for like previous Saints Real Games and shit. This is a game that I

wanted to win so bad. And like, I almost feel like a upset parent having to come down and be like, no, man, this is bad. Like, you guys got to step it up because this one isn't it. But yeah, no, I do think that the popular opinion is probably going to be like, that yeah, this is not it. Mike, you had a visceral reaction. I think we're going to see a lot of sevens here. I think a lot of people will play it safe and give this game a seven. I think it needs to be somewhere in the four to six range is where I would put this.

But I bet you we see a lot of sevens tomorrow or whenever this drops. Well, there you go. We'll have to have to wait and see. Thank you guys for hanging out. Let us know in the comments below. If you're still excited for this Saints Row reboot or not, we will be doing a whole bunch more fun content this week live on Twitch. dot tv slash kind of funny games and then later youtube.com slash kind of funny games including

jeff keely's gamescom opening night live it's going to be a ton of fun until next time i love you all goodbye