Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

Saints Row the Third, is an open-world third-person shooter, developed by Volition. It is the third addition to the Saints Row franchise.

In SR3, you play as a nameless protagonsit, who you get to create using a pretty decent Character Creator. You play as the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, a gang, that originally came from the fictional city of Steelwater, but after a chain of events in a bank, and then a plane, found itself in the fictional city of Steelport. Unlike past Saints Row games, you start out with multiple guns at you rdisposal. A handgun, SMG, Shotgun, and a couple of hand grenades. The survival aspect is gone, unlike past games, you're not fighting yourself up the food chain, you're already on top, and now Volition gives you a bunch of cool new toys, and gives you plenty of oppurtunities to play with them.

The story in SR3, isn't bad, but it won't keep you up at night, shaking of suspense, wondering what these silly 3rd Street Saints are going to do next. After you end up in Steelport, you soon find yourself fighting the Syndicate- the gang that rules most of the city, and their 3 divisions. The Morningstar- The top dogs, henchmen, who dress in red and black. The Deckers- Cberpunk goons, that wear tron-inspired clothes. The Luchadores- Mexican Wrestlers...... As you can see, Saints Row the Third's concept, and story, is quite absurd, for a franchise that used to be relatively serious. But the over-the-top characters, and weapons in SR3, are what makes this game so much fun. SR3 is quite funny a some points. It won't keep you in stitches for 12 hours, but it might get a few laughs out of you, if you're as immature as I am. There are a few elements of a branching storyline in the game. Nothing too complicated, but there are 2 different endings, and you're decisions do affect, the cutscenes you'll get. . During the game, you constantly get new missions-levels to cmplete. The game doesn't give you a specific order that you need to complete them in, so the missions never seem to be connected much, it makes it impossible for you to ever take it serious, and you never seem to care for what happens to your "friends", because they don't have a defined personality. But SR3 is not about the story, it's all about the action, so it'll be easy to overlook these flaws.

There's a huge variety of weapons in SR3, and all of them are fun to use, and unique in their own way. There's really fun, over the top weapons, like the "Apocafist" (one punch, makes you're foes explode in gory ways), "The Shock Hammer", and even a gun that calls in airstrikes. The shooting is fun, and exciting, but like in past games, the aiming has issues (no auto lock), and is quite unreliable at times. It's a small issue, and it's atleast better than in past games. The covering is just horrible. You press the 'L3' button, to crouch, behind objects, but even then, the enemy can still shoot you. Sometimes you wish the covering was as good as in GTA, but thankfully, the game is so easy, that you'll rarely feel the urge to take cover.

Driving works just as well as shooting, but sometimes the laws of physics are broken, and cop cars, go flying into the air, after the slightest of crashes. You might consider that to be a good thing, or you might find it annoying, because it makes car chases so much less exciting, and challenging. Other than driving, you can also use a selection of jets, planes, and helicoptres, as means of transportation. Flying is just as fun as driving. All in all, the gameplay in Saint's Row the Third is really fun, but there's plenty of room for improvement.

The city of Steelport, is grey, ugly, and most of the places look the same. There's plenty of property, that you can buy, to improve your hourly revenue, but the money you get from completing missions, is more than enough, throughout the entire game. After you customise your character, their looks aren't written in stone through the rest of the game. There's Tatoo parlors, clothing stores, and plastic surgery clinics, in which you can change what you look like whenever you want. You can also complete a variety of ''activities'', spread around the city. Those activities, are time challenges, that are arcade style, and a nice change of action, from the usual game. These activities include Trail Blazing (Racing in a burning quad), Tank Mayhem ( destroy as much as you can with a tank), and my personal favourite, Insurance Fraud (get yourself hurt as much as you can, as fast as you can, by jumping in front of cars and trucks. Just like in GTA, the funnest thing about SR3, is causing mayhem, and destruction, by blowing up cars, and shooting pedestrians. But unfortunately, losing cops, is way to easy. They give up too quick, there's only 1 to 3 cars chasing you at a time, SWAT teams, rarely arrive to help, and police helicoptres are nonexistant. They rarely put up a good fight, but later on in the game, a military group called STAG, arrives to aid Steelport, against gang violence, and they have tons of new weapons, and are much more determined than cops, but again- later in the game. The game is too easy at times, and sometimes you can't help but feel that some missions, are just there for cinematic purposes. But there are challenging moments in the game, and skydiving is such a thrill that you won't mind that too much.

If you've played past Saints Row games, you've probably noticed the bad visuals, and the slow frame rate. Saints Row the Third has improved alot visually. It runs smoothly, and other than a few glitches, it's a very well-polished game. The AI is lousy in this game, specifically, the Friendly AI. They take forever to get into a car, rarely get kills, and don't have the common sense to take cover, during a heated shootout. This wouldn't be a problem, if the game didn't require you to always keep them close to you during missions, and asks you to revive them, when their down, because if they die- you fail the mission. Thankfully, there's an online co-op mode, so just find yourself a buddy, with the game, and spare yourself the headache.
All of these issues are annoying, but what truly is the biggest problem with the game are the many- and I mean many visual pop-ins. You'll find them everywhere. Road blocks apearing before your very eyes, seconds before you crash into them, that cop car that was chasing you dissapears, right after you call the mayor, and ask him to tell the cops to leave you alone, and that army of henchmen, that suddenly fades away, after you finished your mission's main objective.

Saints Row the Third, has no major issues (other than pop-ins), and is just simply the funnest/funniest, third-person shooter of 2011. You will enjoy this game.