My take on Saints Row: The Third

This entry will have spoilers, because I will also analyze the story.

Saints Row: The Third is (obviously) the third instalment in Saints Row series developed by Volition Inc. It is a sandbox game more or less in Grand Theft Auto's footsteps. What makes Saints Row so unique is all the wacky shit that's in it. SR3 has VTOL's (vertical take off and landing) jets that shoot laser and rockets and your character can even surf on them, flaming quad bikes that blow up anything and anyone they touch, a 3 feet long purple dildo melee weapon called "The Penetrator". This melee weapon is actually so powerful that you can even blow up cars with it with just few hits. You can hijack cars by jumping through the windshield and perform all sorts of crazy wrestle moves on enemies and civilians alike. There are also new activities to perform, such as the crazy "Doctor Genki's Ethical Reality Climax" where you have to go through a bunch of rooms while killing mascots and earning money.

Judging by the trailers I started to think SR3 might actually be too over the top but after playing through it I quickly came to conclusion that it isn't, in my standards not even close. I would have actually liked to see more of the crazy stuff, because that's what makes Saints Row for me.

The story of SR3 is the one everyone has already got used to, but this time the gameplay happens in different town. Once again there are three gangs that the saints have to take care of and take control of the city and this is once again done by sabotaging the gangs and then taking care of their leaders.

In SR and SR2 you had to complete activities (such as mayhem, insurance fraud, drug trafficking) to gain respect which then unlocked more of the main story missions. In SR2 the amount of activities was just overwhelming and they mostly felt like a bother because you had to do them every once in a while to get access to more story missions which totally fucked up the games flow.

Now, one of the new brilliant design revamps in SR3 is that the activities are totally optional and there are less of them in number, hence keeping the story's flow more fluid. Completing activities simply nets you respect and money that you can use however you wish. The respect system has been revamped to be more like a leveling up system from RPG's. Getting higher respect level lets you purchase new abilities, combat advantages, gang benefits (such as vehicle delivery) and lots of other great stuff. The great thing about this is that now the respect level actually has a meaning other than breaking up your gameplay flow and it helps you during the story missions AND the activities, where as it was just an obstacle to completing the main story in the previous instalments.

When it comes to characters and dialog, I think Saints Row has always delivered. Saints Row: The Third adds new excellent characters to the cast but it does one very, very, VERY fatal mistake at the start of the game. In the second mission, Johnny Gat is killed off just like that. Bang, a 1 minute cutscene and he no longer exists. The most bad ass character in the series that has appeared full time in both SR and SR2, poof, gone in an instant. I just can't fit it in to my brain why Volition did that. Unless he doesn't actually die and does a comeback in a DLC or SR4, I would just call that bad writing. RIP Johnny.

Two old characters - Shaundi, who is as pissed about Johnny's death as I am, has been given a brand new makeover from the crack whore she was in SR2 and Pierce who is pretty much the same he was in SR2 except with fancier clothes - make a return as the main characters left and right hands. Their dialogue and voice acting is as good as it was in the previous game so I don't really have anything much to say about that.

There are a few new characters however. The first one is Zimos, a pimp who talks (or in some cases sings) all his dialogue through a staff fitted with an autotuner. All of Zimos' dialogue is rather witty and funny to hear, especially when he's talking during intense gunfights. I just couldn't help but laugh at him. The dialogue is truly excellent.

The second new character is Viola DeWinter. The DeWinter sisters lead the Morningstar gang but at one point Viola's sister gets killed and she joins the saints for revenge on the other gangs. She is voiced by Sasha Grey and I think she does a good job of it. It's not brilliant in anyway but I don't see anything that'd bother me in her perfomance.

The third new character is Kenzie something (for the life of me I can't remember her last name). Kenzie is an ex FBI agent who got fired for a reason I also can't remember and is now helping the saints to take down the cyberpunk gang "The Deckers". She's pretty nerdy and it fits her role, seeing shes taking down a cyberpunk gang.

The final new character is Angel De La Muerte, voiced by the famous wrestler Hulk Hogan. Now this is a character whose role I don't really get. His appearance in the game is so minimal that it's almost non existant. He is simply there because all the gangs have some sort of need to have a counter character who is handling the sabotages.

While I like most of the new characters, I think they all lack depth. It's not like Shaundi and Pierce are that brilliant either, but atleast I know a little bit where they are coming from because they were already in SR2. Where SR3 isn't very story focused game, I'd still like the characters and story to be there because just running around and doing random funny things gets exhausting after a while and I would have appreciated to have a slightly better narrative. I wouldn't even mind if you wouldn't have the choice to choose your next story mission, because how is the player supposed to know what's coming up next anyway, there is no real choice to begin with. If the story is made more linear it would probably be a lot better too. The choices at the end of some missions were a nice addition but in SR3 players just want to feel badass, why not give them a choice to get both bonuses somehow.

Doctor Genki's manapult in action. You crazy cat!

The gameplay mechanics work very well in SR3. There is no cover system, because the game doesn't need one. It's not realistic (and it's not supposed to be) and so the player character can take a rain of bullets and get away with it. There are health upgrades to be bought and they are not useless even though you can take more hits than you could in any other game that includes laser shooting tanks. Health upgrades are actually something I highly recommend picking up early, simply to make it easier. There are no covers... that are made of construction material, but you can grab NPC's and use them as human shields, that's all the cover you'll need.

All the cool actions such as the wrestle moves, jumping through windshield and sprinting is done using the awesome button. I think it's very logical to bind all the fast moves to one button, because after each wrestle move the player character usually keeps running forward, when hijacking a car by jumping through the windshield in 9/10 cases your intention is to drive off and sprinting is counted as a fast move for self explanatory reasons. Other than that the control scheme is very familiar from sandbox games and now driving is handled with the triggers (finally), in SR2 acceleration was binded to A/X which was just... weird.

The side activities are quit fun and theres a great variety of them. I don't have all that much to say about them, I think their design is spot on. Theres just the right amount of them around the city and they usually don't last longer than 5-10 minutes.

The amount of character customization in Saints Row: The Third is great, especially the amount of voice acting that has been done. There are 3 voices for male characters and 3 for females. The obvious choice for my male character was the voice of Troy Baker (Tales of Vesperia, Catherine) and he did a good job of it. I'll remember "Some asshole is in my pool" for ages to come. There is also a zombie voice which just does random zombie noises but I guess it wasn't very expensive to record so why the hell not.

Overall I think Saints Row: The Third is a very refreshing experience. With tons of stuff to do and all the crazy badass content it will keep players entertained for tens of hours. The story itself is around 8-10 hours but all the activities will soak another 10. There are lots of things to improve but they are not significant enough to break the gameplay experience. Saints Row 4 has already been announced to be in the works so hopefully it'll be even better experience.