I was playing Saints Row recently, and there's a term for the "open-world" sort of game like this - the sandbox game. But games like Terraria and Minecraft have given us literal sandboxes (sand included), so that doesn't really fit anymore. It's really more like an arcade where you walk around and stop by various games. For all the people that laud its freedom over GTA IV, it's not so much - it's just that the arcade games are more fun (throwing poop is more fun than throwing darts, for example).
That being said, it's a rather good evolution of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The writing is well enough, somehow wittier but not as funny. Overall it's like discovering Grand Theft Auto III was there all along, just working on getting better and waiting to come back... but never having quite fixed all the drawbacks. I've fallen through the ground, sent skidding to my death upon bumping into a running person, had a living person merge with my hood, her legs kicking as s I drove...
Recently, a designer said in regards to a certain well-selling but critically savaged game "I guess sometimes we want greasy hamburgers instead of caviar..." Well, Saints Row is a far better target of that metaphor, it is a tasty, tasty hamburger that occasionally makes you feel a little guilty for not playing something, well, better.
No comments:
Post a Comment