Saints Row: The Third Blog (glitches, war zones and tanks)

I’ve now played through the Steam version of Saints Row: The Third. The game not only brought chaos and war zones, but zombies and shark jumping. The final mission crawled up pretty unexpectedly. I was in it four about an hour before I realized this better be the final mission, because I can’t imagine anything crazier than this.

So what made it so crazy compared to the previous 15 hours of insanity? The difficulty and stacking the odds against me. It kicks off with a phone call that sent me to three locations with giant battles. Not just battles, but blockades and a war going on while driving to these battles. The first one was standard enough. Chaos between luchadores and soldiers. Clearly something everyone sees on their way to work. I had two homies and Oleg with me to decimate everything. By decimate, I mean four against hundreds before the two bosses arrived. A heavy chain gunner and a maniac that would stomp me to death.

After I cleared the section and my crew arrived moments after to save the day, it was on my way to the next section. The game then froze, glitched and crashed for the first time playing the game. Ouch. That was a tough section and at least the save file wasn’t corrupt like the Insane 2 game I played.

Well then we cleared out the first area again, and it was on to the next. Through a zombie war zone. Yeah that’s right, this game had zombies. Maybe I’ll blog about that one when I’m not so backed up. The zombies however had been cleared out, leaving only a crashed plane tail up in the ground.

At the next battleground, it was even bigger than the first with soldiers and luchadores everywhere. There was no cover except for whatever burnt out vehicles are around. New vehicles would arrive only to explode in all of the mayhem. That wasn’t the tough part, that was reserved for when the tank arrived and started melting through people and flattening cars, leaving me on foot. Each death was 10 minutes, but it felt longer. I’d hide for cover behind vehicles, but the tank would melt my crew so they needed to be revived. Oleg was really the only thing that could hurt the tank.

Try after try, I used different tactics. I even called in my short bus full of zombies to help. I started taking one of the lucha boss’s sticky bomb launcher. It was an effective weapon against the armored SUVs, but not the tank. The only way to win was to hide and hope your crew didn’t bleed out. Reviving them meant I’d just be doomed to their fate. The debris all around would get caught on my feet so I couldn’t jump. It was just a glitch fest.

On my fifth drive from the first to the second battleground, I even managed to catch my tire on something that completely hooked my vehicle and wouldn’t let it move. There weren’t any other vehicles not watched over by an army, so we hot foot it to the battleground. Then a few more drives over there, I ended up taking a wrong turn even though the path is clearly marked on the map. Then I drove by yet another brigade in a sea of brigades. That’s when I realized there’s a tank at that brigade!

So I stole the tank, because I’m a thief. Then I annihilated everyone on the battleground. Then came the boss tank. Tank vs tank. Who would win. Well I did, because a giant gun works much better than the heat ray they were using against me. Their tank went down so fast, I wasn’t sure if it was a glitch.

Then it was off to the third battleground. It was going smooth, me in my tank, my giant Oleg running behind me and one of my crew driving a stolen car that I hadn’t pancaked. That’s when some how a brigade just spawned on top of my tank. Normally tanks pancake vehicles but oh no not this one. It was stuck inside the tank and flipped the tank.

I bailed, dealt with the brigade of soldiers that had spawned on top of me, but there was a new issue. In front of me was a bridge to jump with parking stones in front of it. I stole an armored SUV, rammed through the other vehicles on my way to the jump. I broke through the barricades, tried to jump, but well there were no tires anymore. The vehicle couldn’t make the jump and we plunged into the water.

From there it was a swim to the third battle zone. The armory. The soldiers home turf. Full of tanks and armored vehicles. So after a few losses, I called in the zombie short bus. Then I noticed in my upgrades, I could call in a tank and that’s what I did. With my tank I was able to destroy everything with no problem. So huzzah tanks!

During one of my attempts to take the armory, I faced off with a tank and though that I had found its weak point. It was stuck on or in something and unable to move. So I took the opportunity to stand close enough to it that the heat laser couldn’t hit me. Well a fifty fifty chance it couldn’t hit me. So I just kept putting bullets into the gunner. He never died however. I think his health is attached to the tanks health. That life was lost when the tank was flipped over onto me. Thanks Oleg.