Review by: Brandon "Sad Panda" Cackowski-Schnell

During the run up to the release of Saints Row: The Third, I was concerned that the game’s deep commitment to the absurd would result in a gaming experience that provided plenty of wacky moments, but at the expense of something you’d want to play. Luckily my fears were unfounded and the game became one of my favorite releases of the year. Unfortunately, any sense of balance between the absurd and the enjoyable were thrown completely out of the window for Genkibowl VII, the game’s first playable content pack and the result is a handful of activities that are as irritating as they are absurd.

Professor Genki is the host of the Super Ethical Reality Climax, a riff on the super-wacky Japanese game show genre. Those that preordered the game received an extra set of activities based on the cat-headed Professor, activities that had you running through a Running Man-esque gauntlet of mascot suited enemies and environmental traps. The goal was simple enough: kill enough people to earn enough money and make it to the exit before time ran out. While the activities were silly, they were generally good for a laugh and the absurdity never got in the way.

For the DLC, Professor Genki has chosen Steelport as the site of his latest Genkibowl and has pulled out all of the stops, turning Steelport into a neon infused playground of murder time fun time. Winning the Genkibowl requires completing two instances of three different activities: Apocalypse Genki, Sexy Kitten Yarngasm, Super Ethical PR Opportunity and Sad Panda Skyblazing.

The most disappointing thing about the Genkibowl isn’t that it doesn’t tie into the greater story, or any story for that matter, or that the rewards for completing activities and ultimately winning the Genkibowl is nothing but a collection of suits, vehicles and homies. The disappointing thing is how utterly unoriginal the activties are when considered in context to the other activities already in the game.

Apocalypse Genki is nothing but two more instances of the activities given through the original Professor Genki preorder pack, only this time with a pool of water, complete with waiting shark. Given that you have to move through the map pretty quickly, lest you get killed or run out of time, staying to gaze into a limpid pool simply isn’t going to happen, nor is it convenient or good from a strategic point of view to grab a mascot and turn them into shark food. I know that not everyone preordered the game, so maybe they haven’t experienced Professor Genki, but if extra content is meant to entice fans of the game into preordering, selling them more of the same down the line seems like a silly business decision.

Sexy KItten Yarngasm and Super Ethical PR Opportunity are riffs on the existing Mayhem and Escort activities just Genkified to make them extra annoying. In Yarngasm you become a giant ball of yarn and use it to cause the destruction needed to get to the target dollar amount before time runs out. You can earn a shockwave attack, useful given how little damage yarn does, but there’s a finite number and it’s all too easy to waste them and not get the most buck for your bang. To make matters worse, the yarn ball is utterly uncontrollable, easily stuck on telephone poles, buildings and stray oxygen atoms as precious seconds tick away and your combo goes the way of the dodo.