Saints Row 3′s Genki Bowl DLC is weird, pink, and hardly worth the time

Posted by on January 18, 2012 in Reviews

One of the concerns some of us have with the DLC business model is that we suspect good content is being held back. We worry someone is cutting cool stuff out of our games and then selling it to us separately. Fortunately, no such thing seems to be happening with Saints Row 3!

After the jump, Saints Row 3 jumps the panda

After a flurry of costumes, weapons, and cheat codes that passed for paid DLC, the Genki Bowl add-on is the first in a set of supposedly substantive add-ons for Saints Row 3. It adds some new activities, laid out in a linear sequence of missions, based on the strange cat mascot named Professor Genki. You remember him from those shooting gallery rooms where the two announcer guys tell jokes that aren’t really funny, but you can’t really hear them anyway, because you’re trying to shoot your way through the same stupid set of enemies for the seventh time so you never have to do this again.

The Genki Bowl DLC is weird for weird’s sake, and frankly, it’s not even that weird. A giant ball of rampaging pink yarn is just an immutable Katamari. The new pink catwomen homies are no stranger than the costumes you’ve probably been wearing all along. A pink convertible with mounted flamethrowers sure would be cool in a game without VTOL cycles, TRON tanks, and a moon buggy. The Apocalypse Genki activities — all both of them — are just slightly more convoluted versions of the Genki challenges already in the game. And then there is the skydiving game with a gliding panda, at which point the Genki Bowl DLC goes from being a pointless diversion to an actual obstacle. Remember those infuriating challenges in Arkham City and Just Cause 2 where you have to glide through rings? It’s like that, but with sloppier controls. It’s as if someone played through the ridiculously goofy and entirely throwaway skydiving sequences in Saints Row 3 and thought, “These should be harder so the player has to do them several times!”

Saints Row 3 is a tough act to follow, particularly given how much awesome over-the-top stuff is already in there. But dribbling out forgettable and pointless content like Genki Bowl is exactly the wrong way to follow it.

1 star
Xbox 360

  • http://www.facebook.com/mordy Mordechai Shinefield

    Tom, if I really loved the Genki challenges in the original game — like couldn’t get enough and wished there were many more — will I love this DLC?

  • Anonymous

    Even then, I can’t really recommend it, Mordechai.  There are only two Ethical Reality Climax activities, or whatever they were called in the basic game.  Just two (2!), and without any meaningful new elements.  They have a new “tileset”, if you will, but the same basic dynamics.

    I guess if you love the weird vibe of the Genki stuff — the Tim and Eric-ness of it, you could say — then you might dig on the DLC more than I did.  But that brand of weird has never really worked for me and I don’t feel it translates very well into the game.  Rolling a Katamari around doesn’t become any better by calling it a “yarngasm”.

  • Barac Wiley

    I do love the weirdness of the Genki stuff (mind control octopi! Yay!) and thought Super Ethical Reality Climax was probably the best new side activity, but side activities weren’t anything like the strong point of Saints Row 3, and I was really hoping these bigger DLC releases would be adding more story missions, not more side activities.

  • Anonymous

    Actually, the mind control octopus gun and mobile people cannon are both kind of inspired. I particularly like the way the mind control octopuses mewl and mutter. Unfortunately, there’s nothing even remotely as good as those in the Genki Bowl DLC. :(

  • D.Z.

    As much as I loved Saints Row 3, there were only 2 things I liked in Genki Bowl: the mention of a grizzly rodeo in a previous Genki Bowl installment and the final cutscene, mostly because of the panda.
    Otherwise, I’ll agree it is pretty forgettable. The yarn event is particularly disappointing when you expect a Katamari clone.

    I won’t lie, the next DLC on the list (Saints in Space) doesn’t sound too hot either, if it builds on a part of the campaign that already dragged on, after absolutely brilliant stuff. Then again, I hope I’m wrong.

  • Shahabbabakhani

    There are things I like about DLC and things I don’t like. Some poorly thought out and unnecessary extra content released because “we need to put out some DLC” is one of the types of DLC that needs to be killed.
    The other type is the “these characters should have been in all along but we knew you’d buy them separately for a few bucks so screw you” that a couple of fighting games have pulled recently. That is not ok in my book but people are buying them so its going to continue.
    The stuff I like is the stuff like Bethesda has done with Fallout. Lots of new content, story, basically short expansion for $5-$10. Most of those I have been very happy with.
    I think DLC represents a chance at more content for games that might not otherwise have seen full expansions or sequels and will be a good thing overall for gamers and gaming. There will always be the “rip off” DLC, the launch day DLC, the Horse Armor DLC but hopefully as the digital marketplace continues to evolve we will see less of that kind of DLC and more of the good stuff.

  • markel

    I wanted to like the Sad Panda in the closing cutscene but the only reason it was there as far I could tell was so they could use the voice masker because they didn’t record the closing lines with any of the original voice talent.

    For about thirty seconds I had hoped that the panda was going to remove the head to reveal that the person at the closing celebration wasn’t you but was instead another character that would lead into the next DLC pack.

    I was rather unfortunately wrong.

  • jerky

    This review makes me sad.  I loved the Genki stuff.  Still, I have the season pass, so I guess I’ll give it a shot when I get through the rest of my Christmas haul.

  • http://www.facebook.com/KyrisBalbozar Curtis Bragg

    I cleaned up all of the Genki Bowl challenges in a single run.
    I only had to repeat one mission because I didn’t know what I was doing.
    it’s easy, forgettable, disappointing, and feels REALLY light in content as a “big time” DLC. all in all, I think it was just the company’s way of trying to keep people interested so they have more time to work on better DLC. hopefully.

  • Glenn Beukers

    How long does the dlc last for a average player?