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HERE'S A PURPLE DILDO BAT! GO NUTS!
Ok, so I'm going to be honest about this. The only reason I came back to Saints Row: The Third was because I really wanted to play Saints Row IV and I knew it is a direct sequel. I haven't played 1 or 2 so I wanted a bit of context. I was expecting to have a good time but given the thing I've heard about The Third I expected nothing special, just a servicable third person open world akin to GTA IV or something. Boy, was I wrong! It's GTA crancked up to 11 or on steroids if you prefer and I'll try to explain why in this review. As I said, I haven't played 1 or 2 so I'll mostly be comparing The Third to GTA and not the prior Saints Row games.
First, a bit about the technical side of things, graphics and sound. I liked the graphical style. It has a cartoony feel that fits the over the top nature of the game. The graphics have aged up fine and are pretty servicable given that the game is 7 years old. It felt fine. What I found strange, was that I had some extreme frame drops for no apparent reason. I mean the screen wasn't cluttered with stuff or anything and it's inexcusable for a 7 year old game that had all the time in the world to be properly patched but it never crashed or anything, so I guess, no real harm done.
Soundwise I was also very satisfied. Great voice acting all across the board which gives an added dimension, again to the cartoony over the top nature of the game. Also, great music selection on the radio stations that you can listen to while driving and The Mix(an 80's pop rock station which was the one I listened to the most) gave me the VRock vibe from Vice City, something that I haven't felt in another open world GTA clone since. Songs in this station include "I Need A Hero", "You're The Best" and two Motley Crew songs(my favorite band when I was a teen), excellent company for drivebys or driving to objectives. Some of these songs are also used in key story missions and really elevate them to memorable moment status. Another welcome addition to the stations was the classical music station for when you need to clear the soundspace. One minor complaint I have with the music though is that the selection of the songs was kinda limited, as opposed to GTA stations for example, so you had a lot of repetion. If you're playing the game for 40 hours it's really noticable.
On to the gameplay, the meat and bones of the game and the story. As I mentioned earlier, it's GTA on steroids. This is apparent in every aspect of the game and every single mechanic. You have melee weapons like a purple dildo bat or two oversized fists that explode people. Special weapons like a bazooka that launches mind controlling squid or another weapon that conjures up sharks from the sewers to eat your poor targets. Even the SMGs can be uprgraded to laser weapons and also that fits into the story in a nice way. I guess the game takes place in a sorta futuristic alternate universe while not stepping away from the current world and it's a good fit.
Now I'll talk about the things I really loved in the game. The progression system, the side activities and the customisation. The progression system is what really sets this game apart from other open world games. Sure, every game offers upgrades to your character but which game makes you a living God??? Let me explain. What I'm refering to is that you can upgrade your character to take less damage from all manner of things. Fire, weapons, cars etc. The final upgades for these is that you take no damage. Now, not all people will like that. I mean, essentialy it's like activating a God mode cheat BUT it is achieved by putting in the hours and playing the game, which brings me to the grind and side activities. This is by far the best thing about the game. The map is divided into parts of the city controlled by rival gangs that you need to take over and inside them are activities and collectibles that you need to complete and find to earn money and respect, the currencies for everything in the game from upgrading your character to buying weapons and everything in between. I would have liked for the costs of everything being higher because with a moderate amount of grind you can achieve the aforementioned God status fairly easily. Still, I loved these. I found the activities to be very enjoyable and varied and myself always wanting to grind more. Also, pretty much everything you do gets you money or respect so you're always earning something and progressing which is a nice feeling. There are also challenges which range from doing wheelies with bikes to kill certain amounts of rival gang members to using a certain amount of NPCs as human shields. There are also side mission(Assassinations and Vechicle Thefts) to complete. What I'm trying to get at is that the game has a lot of content that will keep you busy and entertained for many hours and you can really do everything at your own time and it works perfectly for the open world to be a densely packed playground for you to enjoy and I haven't even touched the customisation yet...
Oh boy, the customisation! You can pretty much adjust everything to your liking. From clothes, to weapons, to cars, to heck even having sex reassingment and complete plastic surgery if you weren't pleased with the character you created in the start of the game. This ungodly amount of options is really one of a kind for Saints Row games in comparison to let's say GTA games or Watch Dogs 1 and 2. Let's conside car customisation for example. You can pimp any ride in the game! EVERY SINGLE ONE! (except the Flatbed which really felt like a missed chance given the empty space in the back). You can take a street sweeping vechicle and replace the sweepers with bladed wheels and there are all sorts of stuff like this which I've never encountered before. I made my own fun in a big way by collecting every single car and customising it to my liking, earning respect along the way to better my character.
Now on to the biggest problem I had with the game, which is a minor one but something I didn't fully enjoy nonetheless. The story. The story begins with the Saints having reached worldwide fame status and being a powerful and ever recognisable brand. Then at the prologue, some things go wrong and they find themeselves in a new city where they have to fight the Syndicate an alliance of rival gangs and start again from scratch to achieve dominance. The story is really over the top and you can find the most crazy elements inside it but for me the actual story was very hit and miss and also the writting was just meh. While the story tries to up the stakes and the craziness all the time it fell flat for me. I didn't feel a struggle and everything was easily achievable in the context of the story. It had some cool and imaginative moments that were a welcome surprise but overall I found myself caring more about the grind and side activities than the story. The cutscenes were also directed in a really pedestrian way, they didn't feel cinematic and that didn't help things. Last but not least the writting was also hit and miss. It's mostly crude potty humour and basic sex jokes. I have no problem with those in general, in fact I love it but I feel that they relied too much on some running jokes that simply didn't work for me and I didn't find the "offensive" stuff to be really inventive, most of the times it felt like it was written by a high schooler.
To summarise, I love this game. While the story may have been a dissapointment most of the time, everything else made up for it and then some. I'm so pumped up for starting a new Saints adventure in Saints Row IV which I know to be even more over the top and out there in terms of gameplay. I think the Saints games are about having that open world mayhem playground sandbox. Like when you would go on a killing spree in GTA but here it is the focal point of the game and it is just a niche that this franchise fills very well indeed.