That Bit Where... Saints Row: The Third

Back to my favourite moments in video games series, and today I'm looking at Saints Row: The Third, my second favourite game of last year. I've written about it in my review, but without going into too many specifics, so here I'm going to talk to you about one of my favourite missions in the game.


Saints Row: The Third - http://deckers.die


In a game filled with ridiculous situations, this is probably the most ridiculous of all.

The Deckers are one of the many opposing gangs to your Third Street Saints, and the gang is mainly composed of computer genii led by Matt Miller. They cause many problems for the Saints, not limited to your character failing to withdraw $1,000,000 from an ATM and consequently punching it. Anyway, eventually the camel's back is broken and it's time for you to enter Cyberspace and face off against Miller, seriously.

You're transported to this Tron-esque environment, all neon and straight lines, with Kinzie, your own computer specialist, watching over you. Except that she got your character model wrong and you're a toilet... and then a sex doll... Eventually you settle for a wire-frame character, simply because "at least it has a gun".

Decker grunts start warping in, and you swiftly dispatch of them while making your way to "the firewall". Staying true to the rest of the game, there is some hilarious dialogue, with random technological buzzwords being thrown around as if anyone knows what they're really talking about.

Eventually Miller notices the ease with which you're defeating your enemies and starts altering the world. He slows you down, reverses your controls, and -my personal favourite- starts to create artificial lag. This is the first time lag has ever been fun in a game, and you marvel at how close it feels to the real thing. You have to imagine it was actually pretty hard to do, the meeting must've gone something like "Okay, we need the frame rate to go to hell, and for enemies to jump around the screen". I mean it's nothing less ridiculous than what the developers had been asked to do prior to this point, so I doubt there was any argument.

So then you complete the text adventure and move on...

Yup, they threw in a text adventure style mini game for you to complete. Why? Because they did, just accept it. It's hard to explain if you haven't played the game, but by this point you just take whatever it starts throwing at you. It contains swords, magic and unicorns, and comes with amusing lines from your character for each of the many ways you can "die".

After you complete that, you're back in cyberspace (as a toilet with a gun for a while), kill a few more Deckers and close in on the firewall. But not before playing a bit of 1974 Atari classic Tank!. Honestly, just go with it.

Back in Cyberspace, killing a few more guys, and then the game crashes. Not your game. Cyberspace. You have to "press any key to continue". I love this game.

Finally you reach Miller and the firewall. It turns out his avatar is a 20 foot tall winged warrior with a Final Fantasy style comically oversized sword. You exchange blows, fight off a few more Deckers, and eventually Kinzie manages to turn you into a replica of Miller's Avatar. A few attacks later and you defeat him, and are the new lord of cyberspace!

I think I'll have to write a bit more about Saints Row: The Third in the future, as there are several other awesome moments I haven't even touched on.

Thanks for reading.