Dear Reader,
You wouldn’t always know it to look at me, but I actually have something of a moral compass, especially where games are concerned. There are titles I won’t play, or won’t play very often, because I feel they lack integrity or substance. 99 percent of violent video games feature combatants engaging other combatants, and I have no problem with this, but when we get into killing innocent people, or go too far with the violence, I start to politely back away. “Manhunt,” for example, will never find itself in a console I own; I’ve never cared for “God of War’s” wholesale endorsement of sociopathic rape and murder, and I’m even a little bullish about “Grand Theft Auto” if I’m totally honest.
For this reason, the original “Saint’s Row” represents one of my most complete failures as a person. The moment I picked it up, I knew it was precisely the kind of game I don’t play, but it got the best of me anyway. Like your friend’s slutty cousin, there’s nothing classy about SR, but it has a filthy lure all the same. I beat the original to death, and I’ve put more time into the sequel than I’d like to admit. So it is with a heavy heart that I welcome 8 absolutely bangin’ minutes of new “Saints Row: The Third” gameplay footage onto the floor. Let the self-hatred begin now.
–AA
suspect? how can it not know what it is?