Saints Row: The Third

FULL REVIEW

You take a glass, fill it half with Red Bull and the other half with Absinth black, and set it on fire. Then you ask a friend to kick you in the nads and shove you off a plane while you sip on flaming drink all the way down. Whatever order you decide to do the aforementioned in, would be mild compared to the collective thrills and spills that Saints Row the Third has in store for you.

The Saints have come a long way from being a street gang, they're now a media empire, with their own brand of body spray and “ass” tasting energy drinks. They go quickly from zero to hero in a bank robbery gone pie shaped, and the Saints find themselves in the sights of an international crime syndicate known as “The Syndicate. It’s time for the Saints to retake Steelport and prove that they're more than the face for body spray and behind tasting energy drinks.

So the Third sets out proving itself from the very first over-the-top explosive introductory mission that serves as a tutorial, as post robbing the bank you take part in an intense firefight on the top of a safe being hauled by helicopters, then you get shanghaied into a plane. Of which you jump off without a parachute, shoot baddies on the way, then you jump back on the same plane as it’s trying to ram you. You end the mission by securing yourself a parachute and land safely.

Take that as a template for every single mission, which range from off the hat to ridiculously off the hat. Elevator not working, so what, parachute from a plane and give everyone on a party on a penthouse new holes for their alcahol to flow out off. The developers Volition have not just decided to be tongue-in-cheek— they’ve gone the whole hog— driven way past over-the-top city and out the other side.

By rights this game should be a walking Swiss cheese of a cliché. The developers knew that, so why fight it, let’s just build a game on cliché, line the walls with cliché, hell, let’s name the kids cliché. Let’s just focus the time we save to make a fantastic game experience, and behold, Saints Row: The Third is a tight rousts gaming experience. That sets out to do something, and does it right. That borrows elements from games all over and packs them in right. There’s even sequences where you take over and command one of those flying planes and go all Modern Warfare on those who oppose.

A feature that the developers have got right is the character creation system. You can create your favourite celebrity look alike or your favourite celebrity lookalike, with a few embarrassing additions. The dress options are zany, crazy and brilliant. I spent hours just mixing and matching styles along with my significant other. Finally, I ended up with a Khal Drogo lookalike wearing pink hot pants and a top that’s too colourful to mention in this review. Not only that you can hop at any time during game-play into one of the plastic surgery places and get yourself a new look, or a sex change. Yep.

Steelport, the city of the Saints, has a brilliant art style. Everything feels very neo-Detroit and industrial with a slight amount of Bladerunner and Japanese neon thrown in, with towering skyscrapers and flyovers and freeways coiling around the city like serpents. The cars also look, drive and feel fantastic, and like GTA, closely mirror real world cars. You will see distant cousins of the Prius or Maybach in there. Each streetgang/faction the city has their own primary colour that strong and adorns their areas or the neon on their cars. Especially the attractive purple of the Saints own colours.

The Third is packed with all sorts of vice, with lots of scantily clad ladies of the night adorned in leather quite commonplace. To say that The Third doesn't mind showing a bit of skin would be an understatement, and while it does not go into nudie territory, it does go into some pretty weird leathery, SNM places. The humour is a constant thread throughout the game, with lots of potty jokes and painful slapstick that would make Jackass series proud. Nevertheless, you will laugh.

The game-play is tight and a lot of fun. There’s an interesting story running through, and every mission is packed tightly. The ending does leave you puzzled, but oddly you do not feel robbed. The Third is a game that will make you LOL a lot, with a game that doesn’t take itself seriously and that’s chunky to play, the ending would be the last thing on your mind. The first thing on your mind after the credits roll, would be to go take a nap so your brain can start producing adrenaline again.

The driving sequences remind one a lot of the Midnight Club series. Where you can easily drift everywhere, the camera and sound also does somewhat similar sense of speed and the cars feel as though they have weight behind them. You can perform burnouts in just like in MC2 and turn your car to face any direction which is a nice touch. All your mission planning is handled through your all purpose cellphone with GPS that has a very neat and tight UI. With a proper linear mission this time, it’s easier to plan your expenditures to buy key areas for the Saints to expand into. This has been well thought of and so have the upgrading systems. To put it mildly, you won’t ever run out of options to spend your cash. The weapon upgrade system is pretty cool, where you can mod your normal weapons with some fantastic and unique options. A favourite is a melee weapon that's a combination of a Baseball bat and ahem, sex toy, and it’s called “the penetrator”.

Each successful mission or side mission gives you respect points which unlocks more content and missions for you. There’s no dearth of stuff to do around the world of Saints Row the Third. Tired of the main missions you can go off on your own and do what good people do in open world cities, like all the wrong stuff. I normally spend my time in the city hitting people in the groin; the game is packed with nut smashing options. You can play through a Takeshi’s Castle like theme show; go on a rampage with a tank, streak and flash innocent bystanders for combo flash bonuses, sniping while being strapped to a helicopter and many more. In addition you also have returning escort, snatch and mayhem missions.

You can play The Third in Co-op where the second player can join in and jump out at anytime during the game with no impact on his or her game. You can play through the main storyline together or just go out and have a fun, carnage filled night out into the city, earning respect along the way.

The sound design can be best described as a lot of, lots of peppy beats and some really good licensed tracks in the radio stations. A favourite is the talk show station which has this smarmy coot of a lady narrating the news. The voice acting is epic, with some very well known names such as Daniel Dae Kim from Lost playing Johnny Gat, the likeness and voice of Porn star Sasha Grey used, as well as Hulk Hogan. Not to mention the other voice actors who have done a superb, zany job of bringing the insane life to The Third. There’s even a cool pimp that speaks in Autotune. The sounds of the city are top notch, the cars sound great, from the throaty big engines to the exaggerated whine of the electric engines. Everything is, very period perfect, whatever period The Third falls in.

Saints Row: The Third is well worth every paise you spend for this game. Think of it as a McDonald’s happy meal, with an extra large burger as shown in the picture, extra extremely crispy fries and a large toy that’s actually fun and well made. Be wary though, parents, bright colours on the box don’t necessarily maketh a kids game. Other than that, this game is fun and furious.