Review: Saints Row: The Third

Saints Row: The Third is a third-person shooter sandbox game for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. It was developed by Volition Inc.

The Boss, speeding through downtown Steelport in a stolen police car.

The Third Street Saints, the only remaining gang in Stilwater, have gone from a lowly gang to a media juggernaut under the direction of the Boss and his/her lieutenants Pierce, Shaundi, and Johnny Gat. This brings them to the attention of the Syndicate, a Steelport-based criminal organization, who kidnap the Boss and his/her lieutenants and tries to kill them, but fail. Stuck in Steelport without their resources, the Saints have to gather allies and rebuild their gang anew in order to bring down the Syndicate.

In The Third you, as the Boss, go around Steelport, completing missions which progress the story and you earn, cash, vehicles, and weapons. Most missions are some form of driving to a destination and fighting Syndicate members, or shooting someone while driving, or shooting while someone else is driving, or piloting a aircraft and shooting up everything.

You can also take over parts of Steelport by completing side missions or buying stores which gets you the part of Steelport they are in. Controlling parts of Steelport creates a steady income which you can use to buy new clothes, weapons, and upgrades. Side missions include such activities as causing a certain amount of property damage in a tank under a time limit, picking up ho’s and escorting them back to a safehouse while dodging Syndicate goons, and getting hit by speeding cars and making money off how far you fly.

What Saints Row: The Third does really well is combine extremely cathartic gameplay that is always rewarded with immense freedom and customization. You get a nice selection of weapons immediately, and ammo is nice and cheap. Very soon you get access to heavy duty stuff like rocket launchers and grenades, which are always fun to shoot at crowds of Syndicate thugs. Several missions even force you to use only cool things like rocket launchers or sniper rifles, usually while doing something cool like skydiving or hanging off the side of a building.

You can store any vehicle you steal and customize it to change the design, the color, and performance. You can easily steal explosive military vehicles and aircrafts which you can also store. The easy access to heavy weaponry can make the game easy, but it does not make it any less delightful.

Special mention has to be given to the character customization. Not only can you choose the gender, race, hair, hair color, skin color, build, and mess with the face of the Boss, but there are dozens of pants, shirts, hat, and accessories, all of which you can change the color of, that you can buy around Steelport. It is very easy to get sidetracked from the main game by running around shopping all the time.

I still would have liked a bit more customization. You cannot customize weapons, military vehicles, or your bases, and it feels silly to have to buy a hoodie with its hood up and down separately instead of being allowed to manipulate the clothes you wear.

The Third has a very good reward system set up. Upgrades you buy with the income you make all very useful, from simple things like increased health, to damage reduction, to being able to call up your homies and have a helicopter delivered to where you are standing, to explosive shells in your pistols. Rewards are reasonably priced but get expensive the more you buy, so you can always afford them as long as you regularly takeover neighborhoods. It is a good incentive to complete the side missions, and makes sure you always have something to buy, since your income can get really big as you takeover Steelport.

Or you can dick around. Either is fine.

Actual combat is rather simple. The most enemies do is stand straight up and shoot at you, and sometimes take cover. The Boss though is almost indestructible, so the main challenge is in the enemy’s overwhelming numbers, which you pick off while they all whittle down your health. Later on enemies bring in bigger guns and explosives which can be dangerous, but soon you get easy access to explosives yourselves, and can just blow up everything.

An example of one of the tougher enemies.

Despite this, main missions are fun because the variety of weapons and vehicles you have, the different locations that they take place in, and because dealing with lots of enemies is at least somewhat challenging. It was fun to see what kind of weird new scenarios the developers throw the Boss into for missions, which often take place inside buildings and give the Boss a new toy to play with.

You can call in homies to help you with fighting, but their aim is terrible and they mostly act as a distraction for the enemies to focus on. Sometimes you are awarded unique homies or special costumes for your homies when you complete missions; I would have preferred more weapons and cars.

The side missions, while not as fun as the main missions, are still entertaining on their own. It is a mixed bag though, some are more fun than others, and a few can be downright frustrating, but never to the point that they take a long time to beat. At most they take ten minutes to beat.

The characters and voice acting are funny, but the story is not much more than the Saints effortlessly going through each of the Syndicate’s criminal groups until everyone is dead. However the Boss and his/her lieutenants like to tackle problems in the most ridiculous way possible, so level by level stories are always fun to watch.

The Third's ideas on taking over a criminal empire are not what you would call realistic, thank God.

Saints Row: The Third continues the Saints Row trend of being the cocaine equivalent of video games. You will spend so much time flying around Steelport, collecting and unlocking everything, that finishing will feel like a giant hole where all this cool stuff once was has been ripped out of you.