Over the years I have played many video games and very few of them have surprised me as much as the Saints Row franchise. By and large I know what kind of games I like, strategy games, role playing games, world building games, shooter games with some content, etc. What I generally don’t like are immature games filled with gratuitously needless gunfire, giant purple dildos, mindless ‘splosions, and spray on feces. Unless, it turns out, that game is Saints Row. I first purchased one of these games at the urging of my good friend Jim, and while I was suspicious at first, Saints Row (2 and 3) have brought me many hours of fun.
Let me start by acknowledging that the events that occur within any Saints Row game, from the simplest transaction with one of the many colourful merchants, to an elaborate escape involving skydiving through a cargo plane, to the outfits you wear when rampaging through the neighbourhood, are completely over the top. Every action, every character, every story line, is larger than life. I think this is the primary secret of the series’ success. Most of the fun in these games comes from the absurd situations that you find yourself in or create around you. Saints Row also lets you enjoy yourself even when the things you might be doing in the game are beyond reprehensible.
The craziness begins when you start the game by creating your character. I’m not one of those nuts that spends FOREVER tweaking and re-tweaking the bars and knobs during character creation. I usually just find the default that closely resembles what I want and then change the hairstyle/colour and I’m good to go. In Saints Row I tend to spend a little bit more time. This is partly because there are just so many options, and partly because I like my inner gangster to be completely accurate. In the last game Jim and I started playing (and due to many rocket launcher related incidences have not yet finished) my inner gangster is a big hulking guy with a Mohawk and bomber jacket. He also has some nifty blue eye shadow, fantastic earrings, and a hello kitty back pack that bounces about as I commit acts of digital gang violence. The combination of the dangerous and the absurd makes it perfect.
The game itself is full off all kinds of craziness that could only happen to an over the top gangster in a world gone wrong. Carjacking, murder, robbery, and my personal favourite a Japanese style game show in which the contestant (you) takes a run through an obstacle course taking shots at various murderous mascots. The fact is that sometimes its just fun to be bad. As a mostly upstanding citizen I can’t very well steal cars and race them around town (on the wrong side of the street for extra points of course) but that doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t want to. Sometimes when I’m stressed out or I just need to relax nothing makes me feel better than doing all kinds of id based activities that aren’t suited for real life. Real life Dan can’t drive, doesn’t like guns, and has never had a plane landed on him. Internet gangster Dan will steal your car, gun you down, and promptly explode in a ball of fire as he inadvertently become a landing pad for passing aircraft.
The other thing that makes Saints Row eminently playable is that you can play it with a friend. I’ve played a little bit by myself but it’s just not as fun without company. What’s the point of running down the block hitting rival gangsters in the crotch with a rocket launcher if there is no one there to giggle with you? Yes giggle. Now by this point you might be thinking that I’m a terrible human being, but you would be too, if you were playing Saints Row. You just can’t help yourself. Jim and I have played many hours of Saints Row together but about only a third of that time is spent doing anything useful. Another third is spend running amok and the final third is spent waiting for Jim to either come pick me up (read: land a plane on me) or to settle on his latest outfit. The boredom I experience waiting for this is usually what leads to the running amok. That and I have an anti-pimp policy which usually results in swift reprisal. I don’t care for the brightly coloured fur cloaks and matching feathered hats.
When playing a game like Saints Row I honestly don’t spend too much time thinking about the things that the character I’m playing is doing, or why he or she is doing them. I personally do not have a lot of issues with violence in video games. I don’t have any problem separating the obvious digital fantasy from the equally obvious reality. Especially when the game is as patently absurd as Saints Row. The world The Saints inhabit is only faintly realistic and I consume that world much as I would consume any other similar piece of pulp entertainment. If I had to stop and think about how each digital individual is effected by my carjacking their vehicle and running over their loved one the game would quickly stop being fun. I save that kind of thinking for the real world outside or for games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead. The difference between Saints Row and something like The Walking Dead is that in Saints Row almost all the other characters are faceless potential bullet receptacles by design, while in The Walking Dead, every character is so well developed that it is hard to level a gun at one, even one you hate.
In almost every single game I play I like to be the hero. My Sheppard is always the paragon (even though I think I punch out that annoying reporter every time) and I always save the little sisters in Rapture. I often try to do a playthrough as the “bad guy” but it’ never seems to be satisfying and I never finish it. The worlds in most of these video games are set up to reward the good guy as default and being the bad guy always feels forced or otherwise wrong. Saints Row rewards the bad guy right from the get-go and I would argue that it would be impossible to play it as a good guy. And that’s okay. Sometimes it’s good to just let all your real world attitudes go and cause carnage for a while. At least until someone lands a plane on you.
D.
