Trying every PS-Plus Extra game: Saints Row: The Third Remastered

I've heard of Saints Row over the years but simply because it was just another offering in the FPS or 3PS genre that is extremely crowded in gaming, I never bothered to check it out. This was my first foray into the series at all and while I was initially amused with the rather silly and impossible sequences of events, the overall controls seem really stiff and after an hour, I am going to walk away from this one as well.

It was cool for a minute and at first I enjoyed the humor and ridiculous situations that you find yourself in almost immediately and according to friends, that is what this series is all about and I'm cool with that.

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Now if you don't already know... Saints Row in a general sense is a concept very similar to the Grand Theft Auto series of games, but increasingly absurd. The weapons, the campaigns, the side quests and all of the dialogue is intentionally over the top. The situations that you find yourself in take Mission Impossible and turn up the heat in their ridiculosity.

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For example: The very first mission in the game that you are "hot dropped" into without any preparation is a bank robbery with impossible odds... something like 20 guards against you and your 3 pals and some of the guards are women dressed in dominatrix outfits that unfortunately is an enemy skin that is extremely overused even before you finish this mission. Get used to it because you are going to be seeing it a lot. Yet you easily overcome these odds even though by the end of it you are stuck on a roof being attacked by multiple military helicopters.

I appreciate this intentionally overboard type of gameplay and would gladly keep at it if it weren't for one glaring problem: The controls on weapons are really bad. It 's a good thing that you seem to be able to take about 300 direct hits from a gun before dying because it really takes a long time to get your crosshairs on the enemies that you are actually attempting to aim at.

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You can adjust this in the settings of course so at least some of my gripe about this is my own fault. It is also important to keep in mind that I don't really care for FPS or 3PS games in a general sense. Other than the Doom games, this entire genre isn't really my cuppa tea.

I never played the original version of this game but as far as "remastering" is concerned the graphics and especially the framerate don't really feel like a modern game. The fact that the same enemy models are re-used hundreds of times is just lazy IMO.

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_{You are going to be seeing this exact enemy many many many many times}

Another thing that I didn't care for was the excessive use of cutscenes. In the one and only hour that I spent playing this game I think about 1/3 of the time was spent watching cutscenes that although humorous, was not what I really ever play a game for. If I want to watch a movie I will do so. I ended up skipping almost all cutscenes pretty rapidly and was disappointed to see that you don't have the choice of speeding up dialogue or just skipping parts of the scenes. You either sit through all of it or none of it and I chose none. This resulted in me having no idea where the story was going, all I knew was that I must KILL.

I think this game could be fun for a laugh but since the controls are very basic I don't think this game will hold the attention of FPS fans for very long and for non-FPS fans like myself, you were never really going to enjoy this anyway.

I paid nothing for this game so I am not going to complain too much, but after the 1 hour was over I was more than ready to move on to something else

Fun and amusing for a bit, but just not polished enough to hold my attention for long

Games I have already tried in my journey to play at least 1-hour of every PS-Plus Extra game

Gravity Rush 2 (action adventure game with fast movement in every direction. It has RPG elements and a pretty decent story. Make it past the first hour and the game really opens up. Recommended)
Oddworld: Soulstorm (2D+ platformer with great graphics, sound, and voice-acting. Unfortunately it is plagued with a lot of repetition. Recommended for a few hours)
Bee Simulator (sort of like a flying FPS game but with no combat. It's graphically impressive and filled with tidbits of knowledge about bees... unfortunately it is repetitive as hell and gets boring fast. Not recommended)
Prison Architect (a prison management simulator game similar to SimCity. It's a great game but just like most simulation games, it just isn't very playable using a controller. Not recommended on PS4)
Hotline Miami 2 (a top-down shooter with gruesome violence and terrible AI. Would be great for speedrunners and hardcore gamers. Casuals like me are going to quickly tire with it)
Battle Chasers: Nightwar (turn based RPG of medium-length that does a good job of teaching you how to play in the first hour. It's pretty old-school and I happen to like that... recommended)
Chorus (3rd person open-world space fighting game. It's graphically impressive but combat is too repetitive to really hold your interest for the entire story. Still recommended though.)
Portal Knights (a very well made survival action builder game similar to Minecraft. I really enjoyed this and look forward to playing it more. Recommended)
Saints Row: The Third (clever and funny FPS game that intentionally puts you in impossible and absurd situations. It's innovative and humorous but ultimately quite dated and got repetitive and boring pretty quick. Not recommended)

All other games I have already reviewed (there are a lot of them)