Saint Row The Third Review
Developer Volition
Publisher THQ
Platform PS3, Xbox360
Release Date Out Now
In what game can you worry about the commercialisation of your gang, pull off a bank heist disguised as a bobble head version of yourself, shoot down a helicopter, jump out of a plane throw away your parachute dive back into the plane through the cockpit, shoot everyone inside, grab a new chute and land, all the time battling a gang of women dressed only in knee high stockings, underwear and full length leather jackets?And do all that in the first 30mins?
Saint Row The Third that’s where! The most fun you will have with your clothes on (that rule only applies because of the open plan office) Every second of the game is stuffed with obscenely funny dialogue and ludicrous set pieces such as seeing how the gang have now become celebrities in their own right, staring in commercials and stopping to sign autographs in the middle of bank robbers.
But it isn’t just all pants and no action as the game engine plays incredibly smoothly and rarely kicks up a glitch keeping everything playing at an incredibly high standard. It has to be said though that it does have the ocassional senior citizen moment and forgets what its meant to be doing, but for the vast majority of the time it is really smooth. This is made all the more impressive due to the open world city’s sheer size, you are no longer in Stilwater but have moved to new more salubrious surroundings of Steelport, not the most architectural pleasing city scape but once you add plenty of neon lights on top of it, it sure does glow!
Characters, buildings and cars are all rendered to a pretty high standard when you consider the endless modding options open to the player. Not only can you change the appearance of any of your cars, pimping them out in an array of crazy rims and paint jobs and that you can even record your own mix tape of your favourite tunes from the list of licensed songs to accompany you cruising around, but you can even change your underpants!
Outside of that you have tons of brilliant missions to complete as your do battle with over the turf with the other gangs and a powerful syndicate imaginatively called The Syndicate. You are probably comfortable enough with how these work, you get a mobile call and you go do a mission and blow stuff up. Completing it nets respect along with the all important almighty dollar. You slowly take control over the city buy buying up real estate to help oust the other gangs that are already well entrenched within Steelport.
The good news is that the full 15+ hour long game can be played co-operatively over the interwebs, which is great fun and makes it all the more interesting, but can get silly if your friend goes mad which he will eventually. Saints Row does that to you! But all the saves from co-op carry over into the single player game too which is a huge bonus, but this fun does comes with a cost and no other multiplayer modes are included.
Overall : Saints Row The Third packs in bucket loads of hilarious, exhilarating, action packed moments. All played out in a stunning city, with near perfect gameplay. All this combined makes Saints Row The Third an essential purchase. Yes it’s rude, yes it pretty much breaks all sense of decency, but it gets away with it because it does it all with its tongue firmly in its cheek and it never has to resort to being nasty.
Phew I made it all the way to the end of the review without mentioning GTA ….
SCORE : 10/10
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