| NO PRAISE FOR
SAINTS
So -- I realize I'm pretty late on this, but
yesterday, my friend J.T. brought over his copy of "Saints' Row," and, just
-- wow. This is the first game I've ever seen that literally lets
you assume the role of a poseur. It's hard to imagine being outright
embarrassed by a game that involves such heavy levels of wanton
violence, but there it is -- your character, in his idle animation, assuming
the stance of a bored caveman, looking at all times to be on the verge of
scratching himself, but never quite getting there. Elements of street music
and gang culture are hung up tidily on the walls of the game, and every moment
of every cutscene has been lovingly slanged-up and saturated with instances
of the F-word, so that not even a minute can go by without you being reminded
that this is the creation of pale, glasses-wearing guys in an office park.
Also of note is that each and every one of the gangs in the game have made
a commitment to ethnic diversity -- Martin Luthor King, Jr., would be proud.
"Saint's Row" is the perfect game re-creation
of your dad trying to talk to you 'on your level' about the dangers of drug
use, by referring to them via their street names.
That said, it's not an ugly game. It's actually
quite pretty in places -- charming, even, which begs the question of how
the city's crime problem got to be so bad when the city itself resembles
so much of downtown Mayberry. There're no potholes, no litter whatsoever...
Maybe I'm overthinking this particular GTA
ripoff. I could be.
Also played "Prey," and I don't mind telling
you, that's one pretty game, right there. I hadn't honestly paid much attention
to it in the previews, because - and I realize this will not come across
as very PC -- the main character's secret powers stem from Native American
mythology, and, well... Native American culture bores the crap out of me.
There was a big vogue for it in popular culture back when I was very, very
little (we were just coming off of the nation's strange fascination for truckers,
of all things, and needed something else dusty and mundane to stare at for
a while), and I was sick of it back then. Oh, the spirit of the buffalo.
Oh, the litter at the roadside. Oh, the lizard and the cactus. There was
no end to it.
Of course, I, myself, am approximately one-twelfth
or so native American on my mother's side, and thus am totally justified
in razzing their lousy culture.
But, fruity Injun powers aside, Prey's pretty
darned neat, and much more gruesome than I gave it credit for! I didn't see
enough of the game to figure out why they were doing it, but you saw a bunch
of aliens abducting people and then, basically immediately pureeing them,
one by one, in a giant person-killing machine, leading you to wonder if maybe
it wouldn't have been more efficient to have just wiped 'em all out on the
ground with a heat ray or something. They probably explained it later.
In closing -- Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe.
So proud to live -- so proud to die.
So, win-win for them.
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| Drew's Script-O-Rama |
| Home of the original, better
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