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I was planning a short hiatus from LPing while I worked on my real job, but apparently I can't help myself. Ah poo poo, here we go again... It may be difficult to believe when you consider what happened with the later sequels, but Volition's Saints Row, released in 2006 exclusively on the Xbox 360, is really quite a basic Grand Theft Auto clone - basically an HD version of GTA III with some next-gen bells and whistles. Hell, the first time I saw it in a TV commercial, I thought "wow, this even runs just as well as GTA on PS2!" Some signs of Saints Row's trademark humor and charm can already be found in the first game, but this is definitely a bit more generic and has fairly strong "white nerds trying to act gangsta" energy at times. However, while not exactly the most original product on the planet, Volition's open world crime fest centered around color-coded street gangs featured many quality of life improvements that made it quite hard to go back to PS2 GTA games at the time. GTA IV hadn't even been revealed yet, so this was basically our first taste of what a GTA game might feel like on the then-new Xbox 360. In hindsight, the game was very rough from a technical standpoint as it struggled to hit 20 fps half the time and suffered from massive screen tearing all the time... unless you turned v-sync on in the options, in which case the frame rate dropped even further. I planned an LP of this all the way back in 2016, but the awful performance literally made me feel nauseous so that didn't work out. Now, five years later, it's time to actually head back to the lovely city of Stilwater. Thanks to Microsoft's backwards compatibility program on their more recent Xboxes, the performance issues are completely gone and it's actually possible to play Saints Row (I'm using the Series X, but it runs just as well on the One X and just loads a bit slower) without hurling. So, let's jump into the shoes of some random jackass who ends up in the Third Street Saints street gang by happenstance, and watch them rise through the ranks to become the The LP itself is divided into sections based on the opposing gangs - Los Carnales, the Westside Rollerz, and the Vice Kings, in that order. The Carnales are a bunch of Latino stereotypes who control the drug trade in Stilwater, the Rollerz are Fast & Furious rejects who love illegal street racing and chop shops and that sort of thing, and the Vice Kings are in charge of all the "legitimate" business in downtown Stilwater. Saints Row lets you tackle all gangs at once, but focusing on one gang at a time is generally considered a better idea and definitely works better for organizing the LP, so that's what I'm doing. Before we begin each gang's actual mission chain, we complete their associated side activities (barring some that are more appropriate to do at other times, such as street races being part of the Rollerz activities in the LP despite the two other gangs technically having their own sets of races). Activities are the primary way to earn Respect, which is basically used as a currency - one bar of Respect is consumed every time you start a new mission or gang stronghold - but also offer various other rewards and have their own cutscenes, so those are shown off as well. So, unless some of the activities get impossibly hard (some of them are definitely drat close), this is a 100% run. I am once again joined by my buddy ChaosArgate, who is very familiar with the Saints Row series in general but not so much with the first game. Sadly, there is no co-op in Saints Row 1, so this is just going to follow the same tried and true format from our GTA LPs. As for the schedule - like I said at the top of the post, I'm fairly busy with work at the moment, but I'll try to update at least once a week.  NO SPOILERS! VIDEOS: Click here for the full playlist! 3rd Street Saints (Tutorial): Episode 1: Canonized Episode 2: Round and Round (Prep Work/Los Carnales Activities 1) Episode 3: Wild America (Prep Work/Los Carnales Activities 2) Episode 4: Crack Down Episode 5: Los Carnales Are Fine Episode 6: Last Year's Fall Collection Westside Rollerz: Episode 7: The Need for Speed (Demo Derby/Street Racing) Episode 8: Little Boxes (Westside Rollerz Activities) Episode 9: The First Dance Episode 10: Death Race Episode 11: Semi-Charmed Life Vice Kings: Episode 12: Jeffreymobile (Vice Kings Activities) Episode 13: Kingdom Come Episode 14: Pretenders to the Throne Episode 15: Return of the King 3rd Street Saints (Epilogue): Episode 16 (FINAL): Salting the Earth DMorbid fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 30, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 00:08
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reserved for stuff idk
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Jul 26, 2021 00:10
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 Episode 1: Canonized It's our time now. Let's get this poo poo started. On a technical note, playing on the Xbox Series X doesn't actually boost the resolution or anything like that because there's no bespoke X update for this game. It does, however, run at a perfectly locked 30 fps (hard-coded, sadly, so you can't get up to 60 by turning off vsync like you can in The Third), all tearing is gone, and the load times are generally almost instant.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:12
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The last Saints Row I played was 3 so its kinda weird seeing the original crew all baby faced, this is gonna be a fun ride.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:46
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I've been replaying Saints Row 2 the past week, so this thread is really good timing. The engine between the two is drat near the same it appears. Anyway, quite keen to see the growth of the Playa into something more.
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Jul 26, 2021 01:09
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The core engine is the same between SR1 and 2, although Volition did have to rework it quite significantly to implement flying vehicles in the sequel. The original world streaming wasn't in any way designed to accommodate flying, and SR1 does its best to keep you at ground level (and blocks off various paths that look like they should be accessible) to stop the game engine from exploding. 
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Jul 26, 2021 01:15
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I jumped into this series with SR3, never seen SR1 before so this will be neat. Are you planning to play the whole series, or just 1?
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Jul 26, 2021 01:36
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As much as I love Saints Row 2 through Gat Outta Hell, this game has something ephemeral that it's hard to put my finger on. It never tried to take itself as seriously as GTA games do, and I think it managed to establish itself as a unique property right out of the gate. And the characters are excellently-voiced and animated and there's just something awfully charming about the whole procedure. And going back and watching it after all the later games, it's still just as enrapturing and charming to me now as it was then. Maybe one day they'll port the original game to PC (fat chance) so I can actually replay it... until then, this LP will have to tide me over. Also, back in 2006, I originally played this on a friend's 360, on their 22 inch CRT TV - and it ran really, really well, so I have very different memories about this game from most people, it seems. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 01:50
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Cythereal posted:Are you planning to play the whole series, or just 1? Sadly, Mike "IdolNinja" Watson, (the man working on the PC update, general SR2 modding guru, fellow goon, and all-around swell guy) recently announced he had terminal cancer. IdolNinja loves SR2 and the community so much he's going to work on this update as long as he's physically able, and he has ensured others will complete the work if he passes before that. So the update is coming out one day and SR2 on PC will be fixed eventually, but... yeah. gently caress cancer.  RelentlessImp posted:Also, back in 2006, I originally played this on a friend's 360, on their 22 inch CRT TV - and it ran really, really well, so I have very different memories about this game from most people, it seems. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 01:54
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Admittedly I never played the first game, but the second is the open world game of the late 2000s. By that time it found its own voice and didn't really need to be a GTA "clone" anymore. They got wild, weird, and were better for it. That said there were a lot of references in 2, 3, and especially 4 that call back to the first one. Whatever happened to Volition's announcement that they found the Saints Row 2 source code and had assigned resources to actually update it to run on modern hardware better? DMorbid posted:Sadly, Mike "IdolNinja" Watson, (the man working on the PC update, general SR2 modding guru, fellow goon, and all-around swell guy) recently announced he had terminal cancer. IdolNinja loves SR2 and the community so much he's going to work on this update as long as he's physically able, and he has ensured others will complete the work if he passes before that. So the update is coming out one day and SR2 on PC will be fixed eventually, but... yeah. gently caress cancer. WHAT THE gently caress? gently caress cancer! Fabulousity fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 01:59
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Fabulousity posted:Admittedly I never played the first game, but the second is the open world game of the late 2000s. By that time it found its own voice and didn't really need to be a GTA "clone" anymore. They got wild, weird, and were better for it. That said there were a lot of references in 2, 3, and especially 4 that call back to the first one. That’s IdolNinja’s final project.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:01
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Oh man, after binge watching all of your GTA III (and sequels) vids, I'm really looking forward to this.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:16
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That bit at the end almost feels like a direct swipe at GTA. Where the guy calls the girl a ho and she just casually decks him.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:25
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yoooo ground floor! gently caress cancer. e: yeah SR1 and SR2 have consumable respect in order to do story missions, slightly offset by the fact that they created cutscenes to explain why The Boss is bothering to partake in the activity. StupidSexyMothman fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 04:07
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First you take my grandfather, then several awesome celebrities I admire, now this great programmer! Cancer, you stink! I too will be enjoying this LP. Rep the Row! 3rd Street for life!
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Jul 26, 2021 04:22
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Something I always really liked was how the boss in this one puts some people on each gang and then tells you 'Go talk to them, they'll have stuff for you to do.' and then in the later gangs when you are the Boss, your character does the same exact thing, putting various people in charge of each gang and then telling everyone to 'talk to those guys if you need something to do.' Gothsheep fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 05:25
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Hey, it's my favourite game I'll never play!  You can see why it got called a GTA clone at the time, but it's amazing how much better this was than even GTA4 - at least design-wise, even if it could have used a bit more time and care to get it running decently. The sequel obviously improved on a lot of stuff, but already there are a bunch of things that are just less annoying and/or more fun than GTA, some cool new ideas, and a way, way better story. Not that that's saying much.
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Jul 26, 2021 12:19
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I can't describe how much of a joy it's to hear Keith David drop 'muthafuckas' in between every other word. You gotta love that voice; imagine how much cooler Mass Effect could have been 
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Jul 26, 2021 14:01
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I've never seen a single second of this game before, so this'll be interesting to watch! It certainly looks uh, of its time, is the nicest thing I can say about it. I already thought that Saints Row 2 had aged like milk when I played it back in 2010 or so.
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Jul 26, 2021 17:34
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Beartaco posted:I've never seen a single second of this game before, so this'll be interesting to watch! It certainly looks uh, of its time, is the nicest thing I can say about it. I already thought that Saints Row 2 had aged like milk when I played it back in 2010 or so. Saints Row 2 could definitely use a Remaster. A lot of the game's structure is really good, but the gameplay really, really shows it age.
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Jul 27, 2021 02:41
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quote:white nerds trying to act gangsta i always felt this way about saints row. thought it was trying too hard or something. recently i've been thinking that i just didn't get the jokes when the game first came out. glad to see you doing this game. now i can re-judge it.
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Jul 27, 2021 07:53
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voting the thread 1 because y'all wearing ballas colors grove street 4 life 
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Jul 27, 2021 19:59
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 Episode 2: Round and Round (Prep Work/Los Carnales Activities 1) Before we embark on the story missions, we need to build up some respect and make ourselves stronger. As such, we'll tackle the Insurance Fraud activity in all three gang territories while also spraying over all of their gang tags and starting a few activities in Los Carnales' territory. Because this is Saints Row 1, some of these activities are *very* hard.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:45
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Ah yes, Insurance Fraud. Possibly the best minigame in SR2. Especially when you get the meter really going and get launched. Also when you mentioned truck dismount I instantly went "Porrasturvat!". Which is technically wrong since that was Stair Dismount. But still, lost some good time with that game.
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Aug 1, 2021 01:14
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Insurance Fraud is fun. I don’t want to see our premiums after all those incidents though.  Trafficking is probably my least favorite Saints Row side activity, though the Hitman missions in this game where you have to kill targets with the right weapon comes close. I hate Escort Missions!
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Aug 1, 2021 01:21
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Cooked Auto posted:Also when you mentioned truck dismount I instantly went "Porrasturvat!". Which is technically wrong since that was Stair Dismount. But still, lost some good time with that game. e: achtungnight posted:Trafficking is probably my least favorite Saints Row side activity, though the Hitman missions in this game where you have to kill targets with the right weapon comes close. 
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 01:23
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With a game that has such a high explosion content as Saints Row, escort missions where you have to protect a highly flammable car/van suuuuuck. This is consistent throughout the series.
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Aug 1, 2021 09:13
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At least they somewhat solved that in SR3 by giving you an attack helicopter.
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Aug 1, 2021 10:21
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I always liked the escort style missions in Saints Row 2: Trafficking, Snatch, Escort. For some reason I always had real trouble with Insurance Fraud, Heli Assault and Trail Blazing. Until SR3 when they became much easier.
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Aug 1, 2021 15:20
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So the DJ for Krunch 106.66 is Bubba The Love Sponge, who is sort of infamous. In 2001/2002 he got in trouble for having a feral hog butchered on the air for a crowd that was there to see his show. Afterwards he claimed that the noises of the hog were actually from the soundboard. In 2004 he got fired for having cartoon characters talk about sexual encounters after the stations he was on got huge fines. In 2005/2006 he got hired to work on the Howard Stern channels on Sirius and appeared to be Howard's successor. Instead he ends up continually fighting with Sirius management during every contract renewal. He probably spent a month rallying his fans to annoy Sirius to keep him around at the end of 07. He works 2 shows (Sirius & a local Tampa Station) for 08, rallies his fans again and then announces on his last day before December Break that he signed a new deal with Sirius. During the last 10 minutes of the show he mentions that the new contract consists of the show just being a replay of the FM Morning show, with him doing 1 live uncensored show a week on Fridays. poo poo hits the fan with his fans online and everyone is pissed. The Friday live show quickly becomes a complete half rear end shitshow, and he starts missing nearly every Friday afternoon show. It was a 2 year contract with Sirius, and for the last 6 months of his second year he starts hyping up his "Golden Ticket" which is basically buying a 3 year package to listen to him on RadioIO along with something special. People begin guessing that the something special is stock in RadioIO, which was a penny stock and the company was run by Bubba's agent Tom Bean. When his contract with Sirius ends, he gives people three more months to get in the ground floor at RadioIO by doing a free show that anyone can listen to. When people start calling him out because the RadioIO show is just as half assed as his Sirius show, he tells them things will from 2s to 10s once the 3 month grace period is over. He claims he can't just give the content he's planing away for free. After the 3 months are up, people get their Golden Ticket packages and the surprise that will definitely end up being worth it was RadioIO stock. Bubba's show on RadioIO ends up being just as half assed and lazy as the last Sirius shows, and he pretty much stops doing them after the first year. The whole RadioIO stock thing ends up being a huge pump and dump scam that I believe Tom Bean and a few others got investigated about. The biggest thing that Bubba ends up doing after this is being involved (he was the one that recorded it) in the Hulk Hogan sex tape. But after that little bit of notoriety, he pretty much lost the possibility of getting back on regular radio because he was gaming the Nielsen radio ratings system. He would pay people that had Nielsen devices to listen to his show, and to attach the devices to oscillating fans so the device believed you were still active. Pretty much everyone who was associated with his show back when it was popular is gone now, and he's down to streaming his show on twitch (I think) and on his own website.
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Aug 1, 2021 18:02
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Yeah, I know basically nothing about American radio in general, but even I'm aware that Bubba the Love Sponge sucks and the best thing he ever did was get his rear end kicked for real by Black women's wrestler Awesome Kong at a Total Nonstop Action Wrestling show after running his dumb racist mouth (in what was described as "the most one-sided backstage fight in the history of the wrestling business"). I can't tell one lovely shock jock DJ from another, so forgot he was the DJ for Krunch until I looked at the SR wiki between recording sessions, and for some reason I started to listen to the other radio stations a lot more after that point. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 18:21
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 Episode 3: Wild America (Prep Work/Los Carnales Activities 2) We finish up the rest of Hitman, as much Chop Shop as we can at this point, and the remaining Los Carnales activities including the perennial "fan favorite," Escort. Next time, we start the Carnales mission chain.
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Aug 4, 2021 22:23
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The "use specific weapons for Hitman" thing would work better if it were more like the dog food missions in GTA III with a specific reason to target everyone. Then you could give a reason why Billy had to die that way.
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Aug 5, 2021 02:11
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Man the rewards for missions are very... variable in quality. A pair of pants does not exactly compete with a double damage weapon with free ammo top offs at home.
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Aug 5, 2021 03:57
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You killed Bill! I trust before you got him, you worked your way through a list of folks with whom you had unfinished business... 
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Aug 5, 2021 10:47
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I can't believe you killed Bill Bye the FBI guy.
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Aug 5, 2021 17:42
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 Episode 4: Crack Down We shut down a couple of the Carnales' drug labs and steal their truck, which doesn't make the Lopez brothers very happy at all.
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Aug 8, 2021 22:29
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The Carnales are first for good reason. They got Danny Trejo (Victor- yeah, I know it's not really him, but they look very similar) on their team. You're in a gang war against that guy, you take him down ASAP if you want to survive, let alone win. The Carnales being the first big gang in Stillwater and part of a major drug cartel are also good points. Focusing on one gang at a time is good for me. Let's not break any rules of Fight Club if we can avoid it.
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Aug 8, 2021 23:08
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I think the series got a bit too silly around the time the entire earth gets destroyed. Three manages to straddle the line fairly effectively, I think. The luchadores are definitely the silliest gang concept but Killbane pulls enough story weight to make it feel just enough like it works. Don't know if it would have helped for that game to have had its three gangs be more properly separate. ...but I guess I should save Saint's Row 3 opinions for when you actually get to that game. For now, still funny to see this game and thing we're only two sequels away from Professor Genki's Reality Climax. I don't think I mind the languages not being translated. Generally it's clear from context what they're talking about and a bit of a bonus if you understand enough spanish to actually know the dialogue. You don't miss out on anything by not knowing.
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Aug 9, 2021 00:59
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Oleg speaks a bit of Russian in 3. I'm also kind of surprised that a game this old includes women in the random enemy mooks.
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Aug 9, 2021 03:31
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