Review: Saints Row: The Third (Xbox 360)
- Scott
- Nov 24, 2011
- 6 min read
Title: Saints Row: The Third
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Genre: Open World, Third Person Action
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Price: $59.99
Rating: M
Saints Row: The Third is the next game in a series that was already pretty crazy and full of itself. Saints Row originally started as a game that was out to capitolize on everything that the Grand Theft Auto Series games were not. The original Saints game came out in 2006 and filled the void that gamers had waiting for the next installment of GTA. However where the GTA series set itself up more and more to take on a more serious tone for its games, the Saints Row games went in the other direction.
Grand Theft Auto tackled issues like immigration, and truly hard choices concerning who should you back up and who you should kill… Saints Row throws that all out the window. Instead choosing to deal with drug dealing, wiping out entire gangs, and oh yeah, taking a full septic tank truck and spraying shit on buildings (and people) to lower the property value.
As a new member of the “Third Street Saints” you start out as a punk, but over the course of the series you rise through the ranks to eventually head up the gang. Saints Row: The Third continues the story. After completely wiping out rival gangs at the end of Saints Row 2, the Saints quickly rose to super celebrity status. They are now international superstars and live in the lap of luxury. Everyone knows who they are, and everyone wants autographs and pictures taken with them, even police.
One of the original members (Johnny Gat) feels that they have become soft, and they need to get back to what got them known in the first place, being gangstas. Not content to simply rob a bank, the Saints then attempt to steal the vault entirely from the bank. Unfortunately since they are now in Steelport and not Stilwater, they are on someone else’s turf. The bank they rob is in control of the “The Syndicate” and their leader is not happy. He attempts to negotiate a deal with the Saints but that too, doesn’t end well. So now you have a bone to pick with the Syndicate and the best way to end a grudge, naturally, is to kill, destroy, or take over everything they have. This is the set up for the story that holds Saints Row: The Third together, surprisingly well.
It really is hard to put in words why Saints Row: The Third is so good. Especially with out spoiling some of the more outlandish and insane moments found with in. I could list off so many ways that this game will make the player smile, but that would ruin the fun of actually seeing where the story will take you next. The way that this game portrays itself to most, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a bunch of random nonsense thrown together to make foul-mouthed, simple minded, immature kids happy. However the way that the story is written allows the game to be some what self aware with out stepping over the line of “fart jokes are funny, so here is a really tired fart joke.”
After the very first mission of the bank robbery, you take your few gang members and rob a military base, stealing a UAV drone that fires predator missiles. This is the SECOND MISSION in the game. From then on you would think the game probably doesn’t get any bigger or crazier… BUT IT DOES. And it’s not just the weapons that are crazy and yet totally believable in the Saints Row universe. The characters you meet along the way are just as entertaining. From the pimp that speaks completely in “auto-tune”, to Killbane the leader of the Luchadores, and yes even Burt Renyolds (playing himself) is not out of place. I guess that is the one thing I can say about this game that really no one can dispute; It is full of character.
Mission structure is a big part of how this game is able to get its hooks into you with out feeling forced. The opening let’s say five or six missions, walk you through all the available side missions you can take on. Be that tank mayhem, or insurance fraud, hooker delivery, or the occasional sadistic game show. Each of these is done once out of necessity and you NEVER have to do them again, if you don’t want to. The biggest issue that I had with previous Saints games was that you reached a certain point in the game where you couldn’t take on more missions until your “respect meter” was at a certain level. Not so in the third game. If you want to move on, use your cell phone, call a homie up, and take the next mission on. No muss, no fuss.
Respect and cash, in general, aren’t an issue in the third installment of Saints Row. Pretty much everything that you do will earn you respect. Drive a car down the wrong side of a road, find a stash of drugs, upgrade your crib, or just shoot other gang members. It all gives you respect. Buying up property and completing missions will earn you a stake in the town of Steelport. The more property you own the more cash that gets dumped into your account hourly (in game time, not actual).With enough respect, and cash, you will gain a level and thus unlock certain perks found in the game. These run anywhere from cash multipliers, to the ability to dual wield weapons and in the much higher levels, complete resistance to damage of any kind. Pretty much you are rewarded handsomely for everything you do, and once you hit around level fifty you can walk around doing anything completely unfazed by bullets, fire, and explosions. You are a god.
For most “open world” games, you have to make some concessions. This game looks great, but it kinda controls like crap, or I can do anything that I want to do, but it’s full of bugs. While Saints Row: The Third does have the occasional issue, not of them are game destroyingly bad. Hell most of the time if a car glitched through a wall or a character started acting crazy, it just felt like it was almost scripted that way. That’s not to say that the game is full of bugs. In the fifteen or so hours I have played the game, I have maybe had one or two issues. For a game of this size and as crazy as it could get, that is a pretty small number. The controls are nothing that you can’t adapt to quickly and, quite frankly, they are much better than GTA in almost every way. The shooting feels good, and the driving is what you might expect from a game based around insane car chases. I have always felt that the controls in the Saints Row series were much better handled than those in GTA.
So why is Saints Row: The Third in contention for my “Game of the Year” list? Because it is not afraid to give the player exactly what they want from the game; fun. Simply put this game is the most fun I have had with a sandbox style game ever. I have not once finished an open world game. At the point I am at in SR3 I can totally see myself not only finishing the story, but completing everything found in it. There has yet to be an instance of what I have called “sandbox-syndrome”. That is to say, a point at where I get so distracted from the story by driving around doing stupid things and just generally goofing off. The reason being, the story proper covers all the stupid things I could want. From mission to mission you never know what might be next and it is simply too intriguing to not continue. Will Saints Row win over everyone like it has me? Maybe… maybe not. But don’t let it’s garish exterior put you off from playing it. No matter what you think of the Saints Row series, the third installment is an entirely different beast. Maybe not purchase, but “you should totally play Saints Row: The Third.”
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