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Hello everyone and welcome back. It's tiiime!



Time for what, I hear you ask? True Eye seeing time. No, it's time to get the other of the most useful quality of life upgrades.



Playa's gonna learn to throw herself into traffic!

So, Insurance Fraud is one of the very, very few mini games that has appeared in every Saints Row title to date, from 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell. Only Mayhem can claim the same thing!



The timer starts as soon as we get into the district. But there are three guidelines for Fraud:



1) Don't bother with intersections. People in Stilwater drive like assholes, it's true, but they still obey traffic laws. You will never make anything close to the amount of money you need in intersections unless you get insanely lucky.



2) Highway off-ramps are gold.



All we have to do is run a ways up the off-ramp so cars aren't slowing down, and then ragdoll (by pressing L2 or R2) before one hits us.



Done right, you'll get a big boost from being knocked forward and then getting run right over immediately after. This also gives a big boost to Adrenaline mode.



Adrenaline gives Playa lower gravity and causes her to go flying when she gets brushed. You also get a shitload more money.



We earned 150% of the requirements for level 1 in a single combo. Yeah. And that's on top of the 40k we already had going in.



$116,771/$50,000

That's 233% of the goal. As you can also see, our 15% bonus respect from style is also coming in handy.



Now you might notice I never covered guideline 3. That's because it's less of a guideline and more the primary commandment when it comes to Insurance Fraud. It's something you can take to the bank every time in every version of the activity as a guaranteed way to get what you want.



I mentioned the highways last time. I mentioned, last time, we'd be revisiting them for a future activity. That time is now.



You see, cars typically don't come to a stop on highways. They're for high speed travel, after all. And a highway runs through every district in the game. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.



Because cars move so fast, you can get really high combos going with almost no time investment.



Some drivers are assholes, however. This is just as big a problem in Saints Row the Third. I derisively call people that come to a stop when they hit someone "good Samaritans."



Cars on the highway are typically just far enough apart that you won't often get hit by two in a row. But when you do, the results are spectacular.





The important part of Fraud is to make sure your transport vehicle is safe before you start. Otherwise getting around can be difficult.



So yes, just for the sake of being complete, the third guideline for Fraud is "go to the highway to win." This is also why guideline 2 works in case you can't find one nearby. Cars on the highways and off-ramps drive like maniacs, and if you ragdoll before one hits you, you can get some impressive numbers going.



It's very important when you get Adrenaline mode going to ensure you fall on the highway. Getting back on could be difficult!



And here we see more handiwork of those Good Samaritans. Them coming to a stop means the maniacs can't drive fast at you, which slows the whole endeavor down.



Sometimes ragdolling in front of a maniac will send you off like Team Rocket. If that happens, there's nothing you can do but curse under your breath and hope to finish before the time runs out.





In SR2, whenever you finish the first 3 levels of an activity, you'll get a lesser version of the main reward. In this case, we can now sprint twice as long! Still very nice, but I'm going for gold here.



Something I want to point out for the higher levels: you want to aim to get hit by as many cars in a combo as possible. That's where the big rewards happen. As an example, look here. We have $7300 from the first hit from this Semi.



Hitting it a second time almost doubles it!



If you have Adrenaline mode going and are flying hard through the air, you can sometimes keep the combo going by hitting the ground.



Like so.



Adrenaline mode also increases your control over how Playa falls. So if you're good, you can force her into oncoming traffic while still ragdolled.



$151,485 in a single combo is pretty damn good.





Not much to say about level 5 but this: $222,430!



You naturally get more respect at higher levels of the activities. Insurance Fraud is really easy even at level 6, so it's not the worst way in the world to grind to Infinite if you can stand it.



During level 6, we get knocked off again. But that's fine, there's a small bridge nearby that gets cars to also drive like maniacs!



This bridge is the way to the airport district. Enemy drivers are madmen on this thing. I wouldn't advise going here, however, unless you had no other options.



Because it got down to the wire. 24 seconds left had me sweating a little, not gonna lie.





Now for the rest of the LP, we can just run anywhere we want to without having to worry about stopping. This will make some missions infinitely easier.





Don't ask me why the auto-GPS took me from the airport halfway across the city. There's no way in hell this was the closest garage.



Next up is another unlock I really wanted to grind out. This is gonna take a bit, however. So bear with me as we take the world's most winding way to get there.



In the middle of Saints Row is this jewelry store. It's completely unremarkable except for one thing.



When we walked in this guy tried to rob it. Fuck you. That's my job!



If you hold up a store clerk the same way you would mug someone on the street, you start the holdup minigame.



Unlike every other store in the game, the safe is also behind the counter.



Sure you get next to nothing for it, and three wanted stars for your troubles. But...



Forgive and Forget is a few blocks over. Now think about that. The holdup instantly completes, a few meager blocks over you can erase your wanted level, and you need to do this 20 times.



Outside of the shop, I decided to kill a few rent-a-cops and lookie at what showed up.



The Bureaucrat Interceptor/FBI Interceptor is the most powerful SUV in the game. It's built like a tank, has the engine of a sports car, and seats four.



So let's put this up in our garage for a rainy day. I foresee a lot of rain in Stilwater's future, if you get what I'm saying. Now bear with me, I'm gonna do this next bit out of order. But I want to show off the holdup unlock before we do this next bit.



After 20 holdups, we unlock free food and liquor from every vendor in the game! Given that food restores percentages of health, and some later missions will require us to chow down a lot, this is a lot of saved money.



Now back in time to where we diverted.



This is the Red Light District apartment I've mentioned several times now. To quote playa, "it's kind of a shithole."



Lets meander our way on over to this customization icon and see what we can do with it.



Customization is quick and easy. There's several categories, and each one has three "levels."



We're looking at Cheap.



Classy kinda looks like a college dorm.



The TV goes from small to...



Decent.



The office...



Gets classed up.



...gross.



This at least doesn't look like it'll give me some sort of disease by stepping in. But this is only the middle level. Let's kick it up a notch, yeah?



Red brick interior looks really nice.



Got a big TV!



Every Saint crib needs a stripper pole somewhere.



That bed looks really comfy.



Now why did I iterate through each one of those? Simple, because each individual purchase gives you invaluable style XP! It barely cost us any money and now we're a lot closer to Style Rank 4.



Eight in-game days had apparently passed during all this fucking about the past couple updates. ($500/day * 8 days = $4,000)





The Superiore is another super-car and, like the Attrazione, holds equal claim to the fastest car in the game. They both have the sleek Italian sports car look, so they're pretty easy to spot from a distance.



I intended to do another hostage run, but those don't seem to turn out for me.



This one is no exception.

Who cares about chump change when we can steal a goddamned tank?



The Grizzly only comes out in the Saints Row and Nuke Plant districts. It replaces the SWAT vans we'd see out in the normal world. As for its qualifications...



It's a goddamned Armored Personnel Carrier. It's designed to ferry troops safe through literal war zones.







And while we're here, and because it clears notoriety, let's do a race.



This is another checkpoint race.



Pretty easy, though we skirted by with gold at the literal last possible second. Take a look at that timer!

Just ignore the Brotherhood symbol. We'll get to that soon enough.



So like I said, Strongholds.



This is where the call with Gat normally plays.

quote:

Tourists to Stilwater's underground caverns received a shock today as dozens of homeless flooded into tourist areas and past confused citizens. Caverns authorities believe the homeless had been living somewhere deeper within the facility when people—most likely teenagers—attacked the make-shift shanty town and forced its residents to find safety.