When I look at games in the open world genre in our current generation I can’t help but compare them to movies. For example the father of the sandbox, Grand Theft Auto, is the equivalent of Goodfellas, a dark moving tale about the world of crime and what it does to the people that live this lifestyle. Red Dead Redemption obviously gives me visions of the Clint Eastwood classic Unforgiven with more than one parallel being drawn between the two. What movie would I compare Saints Row the Third (SR3) to?” Well about the closest I can come is something between New Jack City and The Naked Gun with a dash of American Pie thrown in for good measure.
I have been a fan of the Third Street Saints since their first entry. There was something joyful in the absurdity that it offered when compared to the seriousness of its nearest competitor, GTA. The shooting was strong, the missions were varied and the character I created oozed gangster personality. Well, SR3 took all of these things, added an interesting story and “turned it to 11”, making my time with the game a blast.
I was welcomed back into in the world of the Saints with a tutorial mission that involved robbing a bank while dressed as a bobble head version of one of my gang members. Moments later I was taking down a plane full of rival hoods, skydiving to catch a fellow Saint, dropping her and shooting down an attacking 747, then catching her again before landing amongst the carnage. I had never experienced an opening to a game quite like this. It was clear that realism was not only thrown out the window, but beaten with a large purple sex toy by a passing gangster and left to rot.
Speaking of large purple sex toys, they were in the game. So were gimps, S&M clubs, prostitutes, strippers, drug dealers and crack heads. This was quite a collection of reprobates, but the whole thing was so over the top it had just became parody and wasn’t shocking in the slightest. In some missions and activities, the developers went too far into bad taste, including one where I was escaping an S&M club riding on the back of a gimp drawn rickshaw, but generally there was nothing here that really made me worry too much about my eroding morals.
One thing that may offend is the swearing. Let me put it this way: I played Rugby League for a Navy team and some of the things said in SR3 even made me blush. It was all very much in character and I do know people that talk like this but at one point I counted 3 “Fs” and two “C-bombs” in the one sentence. To me that was just a little excessive. I will now take off my grandpa spectacles and get on with the rest of the review.
The missions (and the amazing variety they offered) were the biggest highlight for me. I raced through town with a tiger in the passenger seat trying to maul me, broke in to a military base to steal an experimental jet, participated in a wrestling main event with a chainsaw and even played a text adventure à la Zork. There was always something new and outlandish for me to tackle just around the corner. The best part of it all was that I could bring a friend along for the ride with an extremely robust co-op mode available for the whole campaign. Shooting energy mascots with explosive bullets is always more fun with a friend.
Whenever I felt I needed a break from the main story, I always found plenty to do in the city of Steelport (the location of the game this time around) with many side missions available to entertain and distract. My favourite of these was Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax. It was a sort of Running Man style game where I made my way through traps and shot advertising mascots while being careful to avoid hitting pictures of pandas, because as Professor Genki pointed out, that would be “unethical”. I had a lot of fun taking part in these zany diversions.
The level of customisation available to me was also impressive. I could chop and change the look of my character, car, gang and (to a lesser extent) hideout to suit my preferences. I settled on a combination of Bikers and Ninjas for my gang peeps and a stunning cowboy outfit for myself. There was even an option for my main character to have a Zombie voice, where he just mumbled, dribbled and occasionally yelled “brains”.
What it came down to was fun and I had a boat load of it. Crazy weapons, awesome missions, excellent customisation, a ridiculous yet entertaining story and a great co-op mode make this an easy game to recommend. If the seriousness of Skyrim, Call of Duty, Batman and the other big releases of this year’s silly season is getting to you, Saints Row the Third may be just the antidote. Just don’t show grandma when she next pops round for a visit.
