Saints Row: The Third

95

"Hey, that panda is on fire!"

Have you ever wanted to drive a pimped-out electric car dressed in nothing but a kitty-cat-backpack? Walk down the street in a steampunk suit, punching everyone that looks at you funny in the crotch? What about jumping off the roof of a building, basejump, throw a fart-in-a-jar at a group of people then do the vogue?

All of those things are more or less normal in Steelport, the city you wreak havoc in during the course of the game. And boy, what a game! And what havoc!

After what happened in Saints Row 2, you (the Boss) now run the Third Street Saints as a business. You and your crew are celebrities, just as likely to be stopped by the cops to be sent to jail as to sign their badges with your autographs. But there is another coalition of gangs that does not like this. The Syndicate, consisting of the Morningstars, Deckers and Luchadores. This leads to you being kidnapped, escaping from a plane (such an explosive way to start a game) ending up in Steelport with no money and no influence. No guns as well, so your first real mission is to raid the armory of the Military base. Where you get Predator Missiles you can steer from the sky to blow up whatever you want.

So you understand right from the start that this is not your usual game. Things you usually get at the end of a game, you get right off the bat. And they still manage to "up" what you get several times over. This style of crazy makes the game really enjoyable to play. You constantly want to push forward to see what other crazy things you can get your hands on.

It doesn't hurt that the dialog and writing is pretty funny. The downright insane Boss you play as, to the oddly intellectual lieutenants in your gang, there is usually something you at least have to smile at when it happens. But I did miss the more down-to-earth , and even sad, moments you had a few of in Saints Row 2.

While not the best graphics around these days, they are more than good enough for this style of game. The character creator is decently powerful, but I feel they could have taken it one step further. Been a while since I played Saints Row 2, but I vaguely recall it having more options. Still, you can make more or less whatever you want, from a normal looking person to some monstrosity never meant for this world. Seeing your character in the cutscenes is half the fun, and since you have seven voices in total you could play through the game seven times and still hear new things. You can also upload and download characters from THQ's website dedicated to the game, so if you don't feel like making your own copy of The Hulk, Buffy or Breaking Bad's Heisenberg, then you can just check that out and probably find what you are looking for. It also helps that you can change everything about your characters looks, voice and personality whenever you want.

Sound and music wise; the developers did a great job. Not only do you have a great and varied selection of tracks for your in-game radio-stations, but the DJ's and radioshow hosts are top notch. You also get a few really well thought out music played during missions, like the now famous "Power" helicopter jump near the start. Such a perfect way to frame a mission. There is also an oddly endearing karaoke section while driving with your buddy to a location near the start. Little touches like that is what makes this game more than just a fun and good game.

This time you also have a way to upgrade your character. With your hard earned cash you can buy upgrades to sprint longer, endure more shots, carry more ammo etc. You can only buy upgrades corresponding to your level though, which is dictated by your respect. You can end up with a character that takes no damage, never need to reload and never runs out of ammo. Somehow the game keeps being fun after that as well, and you really need to work at it to get to that point.

You also have a co-op mode, where you can play through the game with a friend or a random stranger, and a horde mode. Which they have, in true Saints Row fashion, called Wh**ed Mode. Classy. Playing the game co-op with a friend, or in my case a sibling, is really fun. But I would recommend to play through it alone first.

To end this, Saints Row: The Third is some of the most fun I have had with a game in a long time. With more and more games coming out, more and more real life things eating up gaming time, it has become less and less time to play through games as they deserve to be played through. Saints Row: The Third however is something I am still coming back to after finishing every little thing I can do. Yes, I have done every little side-mission and task. And I still enjoy the heck out of it.

94

Make your friends feel like they've done nothing all day!

My wife went out to dinner with some lady friends. She came home sharing stories of the latest gossip with their kids and husbands. I bit my tongue just waiting to say, "I beat up an old lady with a giant purple dildo, had a sex change, streaked all the way to a wrestling arena, then I fought an army of luchadores with a chainsaw!" Her stories sounded like crap compared to mine. I'm sure she felt a little silly with her mundane activities after hearing of my flying a VTOL aircraft into a zombie infested island and fighting giant amazon women after a gimp driven chariot race. I honestly think this game made her embarrassed to share a bed with me at night, but this was the most fun I'd had playing a video game in a really long time.

The story is ludicrous, the graphics are mediocre and cartoony, the soundtrack was only sometimes appropriate, and the gunshots and explosions lacked the bowel-evacuating levels present in most modern shooters, but damn was this game fun. There's always something to distract you from the main quest, but you still feel driven to progress based solely on the drive for more absurdly powerful weapons.

Even after finishing this game (which you do get to see both endings no matter which you choose), I still went back just to blow stuff up, which is something I never do. The outrageous missions just make this game a joy to play and rarely did I get frustrated enough to stop trying a mission. If you really miss having fun playing video games, buy this game. It's the perfect antidote for the frustration of getting headshot by twelve year olds online.

87

Rockstar needs to learn from SR3

First off, I have to say that I have never played SR1 or SR2. Therefore, I wasn't sure what I was getting my hands-on when I chose to purchase this game and let's say that I was more than impressed with it. After 2-3 gta that all felt the same to me, I was wondering what THQ could bring to this type of game.

I went through the entire game playing about 20 hours of very diverse gaming. I was impressed by how much all the side missions kept me driven off the main. Normally, in games like GTA, you don't really feel like doing the crappy side stuff like starting a cop mission and everything, but in this game every single minigame is fun.

Of course, some will say, bah this game isn't much realistic, but guess what it's a game and its supposed to be fun and it is!!! Plus the soundtrack is amazing. Starting a mission falling from a helicopter with Kanye West's "Power" is simply amazing.

Overall I think this game rewards everything everyone loved doing in GTA plus it adds a whole lot more.

85

Absurdly Fun.

The Professor Genki trailer for this game sold me completely on the franchise, to that degree that I bought Saints Row 2 and preordered Saints Row: The Third. Considering that I always was kind of negative towards the Saints Row games before, it was a complete turn for me.

My expectations going into Saints Row: The Third were quite high and on some fronts they weren’t really met, more on that later, but on those notes that it met my expectations it really excelled, like the first thing one notices is the graphics, they are solid, nothing like the poor port that was Saints Row 2, everything feels polished. The shit that happens are so absurd at times that one can’t help to just let the jaw hit the floor and just laugh. Going around the town doing different mission is great, buying up real-estate, taking out gang does have a purpose, taking over the city.

The part where it fell short was the story, not really good as I thought the second game had, even though there are lots of awesome moments in the game, seems there were more that I liked in the second game. All the different gangs to take out also didn’t have the personality compared to the gangs in the second game. Still, a must buy for sure and I even haven’t tried multiplayer or co-op where I think the game will shine the brightest.

75

Great Game, Terrible Writing

Graphics: 8/10 Game-Play: 8/10 Immersion: 0/10 Writing/Story: 0/10 Vehicle Physics: 8/10 Gun Physics: 5/10

Game Length: 20-30hrs (run-through) Originality: No

Pros: Awesome game play, physics, and graphics. Cons: Dim-witted scenarios, repetitive missions, and sad, sad writing!

If you thought Duke Nukem Forever’s one-liners were cheesy, wait until you play this! The game starts off with a bank robbery, which is unique (in a good way). What killed it was the pathetically idiotic babble going on between this “infamously notorious trio.” Here’s a sample dialogue taken from the game: “We need a lot weapons and quick…There’s a military base not too far from here.” “…but that’s a fortified military base!” “…and your point is?” “Nothing, it just seems kind of dangerous” “It’s either that or you start turning tricks for dough” “Okay, we’ll raid the military base.”

The combined deductive reasoning skills of these “infamous thugs” is so pathetic that I feel like smacking the game-writer! Much like the deep philosophical writing of Duke Nukem Forever, Saints Row The Third loses most (if not all) levels of immersion due to the fact that most people (modern-day gamers at that) expect a game that will appeal at least partially to their intellects on some level, and this game just doesn’t deliver. Unless the aim of the game was to mock would-be thugs and the mediocrity of their thought processes, the writers should have probably stuck with the self-obsession theme that the writers of the Duke Nukem Forever apparently thought was befitting for their spectacularly-designed game. I remember imagining how awesome games such as Crackdown 2 would have been if they lost the corny “agency theme,” and hired some creative writers to go along with the game play.

In closing, there you have it: another polished game with excellent mechanics that could have been the game of the year; but, won’t be due to the audience that can’t respect a game with cheesy one-liner anymore than they can respect a movie with the same. In all honestly, there’s no excuse; we can expect poorly-written dialogue from arcade games made by some broke developer who had a great idea but didn’t have the money to pay a writer — not heavy-hitters such as THQ and Volition.

With “Alan Wake” winning Time Magazine’s Game of The Year in 2010, you would thing that publishers would start pushing their designers for better-written games. Hey, if you like our review style, please don’t forget to add us to your facebook or hit the “like” button on our blog. We’re trying to raise the bar with our reviews and include all aspects that matter per game so that gamers looking for immersive games won’t wind up with great hack ‘n slash titles, etc.

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