GAME REVIEW: Saints Row: The Third

Saints Row: The Third
PS3/Xbox 360/PC
½ (out of 5)

As much as I love Battlefield 3 for its heightened realism and terrifying, palm-moistening online play, there are times when I just want to unwind after a hard-day’s work. Not enter a warzone filled with snipers and AT mines around every corner. Even GTAIV and Skyrim feel like work sometimes. If I wanted to go play darts, I would head down the pub. And while Skyrim is a stunning game, spending three hours wandering around snowy slopes only to get pummeled by a giant? It’s hardly therapeutic.

Enter Saints Row. A franchise almost entirely dedicated to balls-out nonsense. It’s childish, sleazy and packed full of things that either make you grin - or roll your eyes with embarrassment. But you know what? Damn it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

If GTAIV aims to be hyper-reality, Saints Row is ANTI-reality. You’ll be charging around town with Hulk-fists, punching rag-dolls into next week, wearing a pink ninja outfit, and screaming out “I'm God here!”

Saints Row: The Third continues the saga of one gang’s rise to power in the fictional city of Stilwater. After your actions in the previous game, the purple-clad Third Street Saints crew are enjoying life on a high, raking in millions of dollars, and sporting their own clothing label and energy drink. But naturally, all this fame and fortune has also made them a target. Numerous new gangs have come to town, all trying to change the tide in their favour.

Immediately into the game, you find yourself wearing a ridiculous disguise and caught up in the middle of an over-the-top bank heist. It’s only after fifteen minutes of eye-popping gun-play that you even enter the avatar customisation menu to physically create your character. It’s a genius way of throwing players into the action, showing them the controls and setting a scene before the chore of having to decide what you’ll look like.

However, in Saints Row: The Third, it’s possible that the character customisation is actually one of the best bits in the game. There are literally millions of different combinations for players to try out, most of which all end with hilarious results. You can be an obese clown hooker with dreadlocks, or an Ethiopian midget geisha in a tracksuit.

Basically, if you can imagine it, you can look like that in Saints Row with enough time and patience. Online you’ll often run across hilarious cameos that players have painstakingly crafted; including Will Smith, Eninem, Pamela Anderson, Marlon Brando, the Joker and what I think must’ve been Dante from Devil May Cry.

Players can even select their choice of voice, walking style, combat technique and interactions with fellow members of Stilwater. Every vehicle you drive can be customised to this same level of painstaking detail as well, from colour, to body modifications through to what sort of tyres it has.

Saints Row: The Third Trailer

Fans of previous Saints Row shenanigans will be pleased to hear that a lot has been improved in this third instalment. Although the graphics have never been Saints Row’s strong suit, there have been some dramatic improvements to the texture wrapping, lighting, and character animations this time around.

A lot of critics have complained over The Third’s unpolished visuals, but considering the amount of detail happening on screen at any one time, I think a small amount of bitmap popping and clipping issues are easily forgotten. This game isn’t a work of art. It’s more like watching a million-dollar fireworks display in the hope that something will go horribly wrong at any minute.

There have been other improvements since the previous Saints Row too. The Third has more than twice the amount of dialogue from its predecessor, a lot of which have been voiced by well-recognised talent. The sassy ex-pornstar Sasha Grey, Daniel Dae Kim from the TV show Lost, Burt Reynolds from Boogie Nights and… Hulk Hogan… from, um… Hogan Knows Best. The game feels a lot slicker than Saints Row 2 as well, with faster loading times, cleaner menus, and a faster interface with customisations and cut-scenes.

Furthermore, all of the melee combat has been given a massive steroid shot in the arm this time around. Players can expect to perform outlandishly brutal take-downs such as the face-plant, the crotch-kiss, or the nut-cracker. I doubt these need explanations. If they do, you probably shouldn’t play this game. Let’s just say that whacking old-ladies over the head with a giant purple shlong or squashing people’s heads in with your arse muscles is pretty much common-place here.

There’s no argument that Saints Row: The Third is lowest common denominator stuff. It’s childish, it’s sexist, and is guaranteed to cause a stir amongst conservative lobbyists. You’ll get rewarded for shooting people in the balls or trafficking sex workers to a new brothel. In fact it’s probably safe to say that Saints Row: The Third has the moral fibre of Larry Flynt’s right testicle.

But, way... way behind all of the soft-core porn and delinquent humour, there lies a very solid game. The main storyline missions have been ramped up significantly since previous titles and now offer a wealth of varying gameplay within a sequence.

Not all of the action in The Third takes place on the ground, either. For example, you might be commanding airborne drones and raining down rockets from above with an infra-red view à la Call of Duty. Other times, you’ll be hanging from a helicopter shooting police officers off rooftops or free-falling from an exploding plane, fighting for your life and for a parachute as you hurtle towards the ground.

It’s great to see that the developers have picked up on comments that the gameplay from the first two games was repetitive; but they haven’t let down their fans in doing so, and most of the side-missions and mini-games are still intact.

Known as Diversions, Saints Row: The Third includes past favourites like Streaking, Base Jumping, and Barnstorming (where players must perform life-endangering stunts, along the lines of, as the name implies, flying a plane through a barn-door). It also marks the return of Activities like Insurance Fraud (running into on-coming traffic for cash reward), Snatch (you’re a pimp, better round up yo’ hoes), Trail Blazing (blow up as much stuff as possible while racing to the finish), and Hit-Man (stalk the streets of Stilwater trying to find and then kill a specific target).

The Third also introduces new Activities, such as Tank Mayhem. Not to be confused with just Mayhem from the previous Saints Row, this mini-game places you into a tank with unlimited ammunition and asks that you cause as much damage as possible before the time runs out.

Another new activity borrows directly from the movie Talladaga Nights and tasks the player to drive around busy streets with a tiger sitting in the back seat. Drive too recklessly and crash, the tiger mauls you – requiring you to drive fast but with extreme care to certain check-points before the timer runs out.

Sadly though, what was meant to be the highlight activity, Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax, is relatively disappointing. Harnessing the madness of Japanese reality television, trailers earlier in the year had this mini-game set up to be a bizarre and totally manic gameshow where anything might happen, hosted by a psychedelic cartoon cat in a stuntman’s suit.

The end result in the game however is just a deathmatch arena. Granted the maps are zany and filled with danger, but the overall experience is nothing like what we were led to believe from previous teasers. Luckily Professor Genki makes up for this by including his mad human-cannon vehicle that players can unlock in the main game. A comically-designed vehicle, it sucks up citizens of Stilwater and turns them into bloody rag-doll projectiles for you to blast at unsuspecting enemies.

Saints Row: The Third - Professor Genki's Super-Ethical Reality Climax Gameplay Movie

Initially these Professor Genki’s add-ons are available only to those who pre-ordered the game. While they don’t add a huge amount to the experience, we have heard reports that they will soon be available as a small download extra to those who missed out.

The game has plenty of online madness to enjoy, although strangely The Third has no competitive modes on offer. Instead only two players can team up, either online or via system link to play through missions co-operatively. One separate mode, entitled ‘Whored Mode’, is a sleazy take on the traditional ‘horde mode’ where players will need to stick together to defeat up to 30 waves of enemies. The enemies? Increasingly difficult-to-defeat prostitutes, of course.

Despite the surprising omission of deathmatch multiplayer, Saints Row: The Third still offers a lot of content. The main story arc itself is entertaining and varied, featuring memorable scenes and unforgettable characters along the way. All of the side-missions, activities, distractions and collectibles around Stilwater can generate dozens of hours of gametime. Not to mention the hours to be had just mucking around in a highly interactive sandbox environment.

Furthermore, nearly every action you perform in the game is tracked and totalled, adding a pseudo-RPG element to your gameplay. Headshots, powerslides, free-falls, and the number of vehicles destroyed in a hover-jet all increase your respect meter - which in turn levels up your attributes. You can even purchase or unlock abilities such as sprinting faster, being fire-proof or able to survive falls from an eight story building.

Overall Saints Row: The Third is more than just the middle finger to game censorship and feminists. For all of its crude and juvenile content, it’s a hell of a lot of fun - albeit shameful fun. Sometimes we tend to take videogames a bit too seriously and, although this game probably goes too far in the other direction, you can’t discredit Volition for letting loose.

Although I am starting to worry about the mental state of the minds that work there a little bit.


By Angus Deacon