Review – Saints Row: The Third

Sandbox / Action

Come out to play.

Rich

If there’s one criticism of sandbox games that I hear over and over again, mainly from the voices in my head, it’s that there is always too much time spent doing mundane tasks. From Far Cry 2 making you drive half-way across the dullest stretch of Africa for malaria jabs and San Andreas making you exercise and eat burgers, to numerous games making you make taxi runs for non-playable characters or otherwise performing repetitive fetch quests, games designers always mistake the popularity of these games as an indication that we want to perform menial tasks over and over. Well we don’t. All we really want to do is unlock the story by killing a lot of things or driving really fast.

Business as usual for the 3rd Street Saints.

THQ’s Saints Row 2 showed signs of understanding that. A riotous rampage through a brightly coloured fictional city that gave you all the toys you could ever want to create digital chaos with. The plot, a slightly hackneyed tale of a gangster crew trying to earn respect and influence by wiping out their competition and the shady Ultor Corporation was pretty much an aside but did have moments of decent humour. It was a far cry from GTA 4‘s grey interpretation of city life and all the better for it.

It wasn’t perfect though, with a bit too much chore thrown in with the action and a multiplayer component that was full of antisocial dicks ruining it for everyone. A heaping of ranked badges made the achievements something of a grind too. A few other techinical issues and glitches didn’t help either but overall Saints Row 2 was a fantastic example of the genre.

Set three years after the previous game, Saints Row 3 sees you taking on the role of gangleader of the 3rd Street Saints again. Three years is a long time in the gangster world as the Saints are no longer just a brutal and effective criminal operation but now a fully-fledged media empire with their time split equally between doing dirt (I’m getting my terminology from the Wu Tang Clan here) and setting up legitimate businesses and a popular line of merchandising.

I kick arse for the Lord.

Starting out with a bank heist, it looks like the Saints are in familiar territory from the off. Things soon take a change for the unusual when it is revealed that they have an actor in tow researching them for a role and the gang are wearing characature masks of themselves. The heist goes wrong and soon turns into an all-too-real bloodbath. This opening sequence is breathtaking as far as cold openings go and the action soon ramps up to sublime levels.

At this point, if you’ve got any sense of fun in you, you should be well-hooked and expecting things to settle down a little. The game follows up with a second, unbelievable playable set piece which sends a strong message. This game is going to be more ridiculous, hilarious and dynamic than anything you’ve played before. Mission after mission of amazing set pieces and full-on laugh-out-loud humour will reward you for your purchase. You’re just along for the ride.

Inbetween missions, the Saints concentrate on building a new empire in the fictional city of Steelport – a typical mix of business, industrial and residential areas. It it a city full of shops to visit and take over, side-missions to conquer and all the vehicle and weapons you can eat. The opportunities for chaos are everywhere and the game’s strong but exaggerated engine just enhances everything.

Lurk Secondary Review One word I will be using a lot in this review is fun, that’s simply because this game is great fun. Too many sandbox games can be overly serious or just have large areas devoid of anything. What Saints Row: The Third does is give you a relatively compact playing area and all the tools to go out, explore the area and have fun blasting the shit out of rival gangs, the police or just civilians. The cars handle in a very arcade way, which is a good thing because there’s no quick travel system in this game, but you don’t mind because going from one point to another never really seems like a chore. Then the other vehicles in the game like helicopters, planes and boats also handle very well. Flying is a particular joy, because the controls are so easy to get a hold of you’ll be flying about blasting enemies with ease. Playing through the story mode keeps you hooked because you want to see what the developers come up with next, due to the game having some really cool set pieces. In particular the first couple of in game missions really help to cement you into the over the top world you’re thrown into. The side missions in this game are fun whether it’s escorting a tiger round the city in your car or the insane Dr Genki’s Hyper Ethical Fun Time show, which plays like a version of The Club. The game does have its flaws like the fact once I completed the main story of the game I never got the achievements pop for completing it. Also during car theft missions it has popped up with a message saying the target vehicle has been destroyed, which it obviously hadn’t because I was driving it quite safely at the time. These nit-picks aside I’ve really enjoyed playing the game and hopefully the DLC that comes out doesn’t turn a game I enjoyed into a hateful piece of dogshit like Borderlands, because I want more missions. Secondary Score: 9/10

Many of the side-missions will be familiar to veterans of the series but newcomers such as Dr Genki’s and an odd twist on the taxi driving missions (a very odd twist!) up the ante suitably well. Of course these endeavours, and the main missions, can all be performed in co-op although it’s still just a two-player affair.

Graphically everything is what you’d describe as pretty but functional. Steelport is a big place to play in (not so big that it’s a chore to navigate though) and so the level of action catered for does mean the graphics aren’t going to be up there with the likes of Skyrim or anything. It looks good though. Where the presentation really excels is in the sound. Everything sounds great from the gun battles to the snippets of incidental speech that you get when wandering around. The voice acting takes it up a notch though with some truly memorable performances that I won’t spoil for you. The best thing is the music selection though. A great selection of dance, hip hop, indie and metal are on offer from the in-game radio stations, the best of which is The Mix which plays everything from Adam Ant to the theme from the Karate Kid! Oh and Return of the Mac!

Just as Skyrim (review coming, we aren’t rushing it like other lesser sites) simplified and polished the gameplay set down by Oblivion so does Saints Row 3 when compared to the original. Levelling up, collecting money and organising your weaponary, missions and contacts list are all a lot easier now with most options all being accessed through your phone. They’ve taken out a lot of the collectables too so it’s all just a lot more immediate than Saints Row 2 was.  The achievements reflect this with a much more streamlined and manageable list compared to previous games.

When it comes down to it though, Saints Row 3 is all about impact. It starts at 100mph with big set-pieces and funny cutscenes and even when it settles down to street-level, there is always a great story mission, a new weapon or a great character around the corner keeeping the momentum up. The game concentrates on fun. Distilled, bottled, swigged and vomited all over you. Instead of being mired in a concrete world of realism, Saints Row 3 is set in a sugar-frenzied world of imagination and possibility, knowingly ridiculous and proud of it.

You can look at minor niggles in the game, some of which are design choices, others that will no doubt be patched out and consider whether or not points should be dropped from the score but if you do that, you’d better start from twelve because no other game strives to give you this much to do and this much fun doing it.

Rating: 10/10