Saints Row The Third is not your typical sandbox games. It features cars, weapons, npcs and missions, but each one of those are completely different from your typical GTA experience. The review will be divided in a few parts: Weapons, cars, missions, activities, customization and fun factor.
The weapons
In Saints Row 3, you have all your typical weapon classes, like shotguns, pistols, smgs, assault rifles, sniper rifles, rpgs, and melee weapons. Each of your weapons can be upgraded to generally 4 different levels like increasing damage, adding supressor, faster reload, more ammo etc. The bad thing about it is that when you've purchased let's say, the supressor, you can't take it off and you have to play the rest of the game with it. While the idea of upgrading your guns is really nice, they really should have given us the option to keep or remove some upgrades on our weapons. They also all have that weak feeling to them, except for a few powerful weapons. It usually takes around 15-35 smg bullets to kill someone, except if you go for the head, then that's an insta-kill. Where the weapons truly shine, however, is in their variety. In the game, you gain acess to c4, giant dildos, a remote car controller, a predator missile (like in the cod modern warfare serie) apoca fists, that let you explode your ennemies with a single punch, target lock-on rpg, miniguns, flamethrowers, a bottle with farts in it (upgraded flashbang) and a lot more. The weapons really are one of saints row strong points.
The Vehicles
Saints Row 3 really wanted to make the player feel like he really had a lot of freedom, and putting a s**t load of different vehicles in the game really is a good way to do it.
The vehicles range from sport cars to muscle cars, going through pick up trucks and suvs, not forgetting the exotics and the limos, even public transports like bus and garbage truck. There's also a wide variety of authority vehicles, like humvees, tanks, jeeps, enforcers, jets, helicopters and more. All of the vehicles are quite unique looking, but they all feel the same. The driving physics are far from GTA 4 and I couldn't help but feel that even the fastest car in the car was a little bit slow. Doing a 180 degrees turn at 200 mph sure is insane, but feels like too much. There's also a nice car customization that let's you pimp out your ride, like adding nitrous, changing color of everything, change sideskirts, bumpers and a lot of different options. While it sure is a nice feature, it comes nowhere as close as Saints Row 2's car customization, which had a lot more options.
Missions and Activities
While not as deep and engaging as Saints Row 2's storyline, Saints Row 3 still offer a nice ride around Steelport, the new map the story plays in. The bad part is that this is not a gang war game anymore, it's just you killing everybody to get famous and sell your crappy Saints Row dolls. While there are gangs in the game, they all belong to the same leader, so it's all just one big gang in 3 different colours. They lost the Saints Row feeling in this game and made it a ridiculously insane game. But too much fun kills the fun, right?
The missions in Saints Row 3 are amazing and varied. In the first few missions of the game, you'll get to: rob a bank, jump through a flying plane, free fall while shooting people, attack an army base and a lot more. Even if some missions in the game are disguised as activities, there aren't too many of them to make the game lame. While the missions themselves are pretty great, the story telling isn't. There are many new characters in the game that will act as your lieutnants, but you don't get to know them very well since the story cutscenes are so short and really rough on the edges. At the end, you probably won't remember any of them, except for Oleg, a nine feet tall 400 pounds guy who join your clan once you have freed him from the syndicate, your ennemy in the game.
The missions in Saints Row 3 are amazing and varied. In the first few missions of the game, you'll get to: rob a bank, jump through a flying plane, free fall while shooting people, attack an army base and a lot more. Even if some missions in the game are disguised as activities, there aren't too many of them to make the game lame. While the missions themselves are pretty great, the story telling isn't. There are many new characters in the game that will act as your lieutnants, but you don't get to know them very well since the story cutscenes are so short and really rough on the edges. At the end, you probably won't remember any of them, except for Oleg, a nine feet tall 400 pounds guy who join your clan once you have freed him from the syndicate, your ennemy in the game.
The activities also play big part in Saints Row The Third. These are side missions you choose to do to earn cash and respect, which let's you upgrade your character to some new perks, like dual wielding pistols, increased stamina and health, more accurate with guns, etc. They are not just any boring drive there and kill that guy, they actually are a lot of fun to do. For example, one of them requires you to get hurt as much as possible, while the other one let's you drive a tank, causing as much damage as possible. Another one makees you fly an attack chopper while protecting your ally below or even a kill-themed tv show, professor genki's super murder fun time.
The Customization
Saints Row The Third's main pillar is customization and is not as strong as it looks. Pretty much everything you can customize in this game, Saints Row 2 does it in a better way. BUT dont let this make you think there is not a lot of customization available, there just is not as much as the previous Saints Row game.
At the beginning of the game, you get to choose what you want to look like. A normal white rapper, a prostitue, a grown pikachu man, a transvestite, a gorilla, skinny little green alien, etc.
Another thing you can customizeto your liking is clothing. From hip-hop bracelets to 70's sunglasses, from a cow-boy outfit to a dog mascot costume, ranging from sadomasochism to biker style, you can find anything you like. Your character will truly be your character, and there will never be 2 that look alike. However, you can't customize each part of clothe to ytour liking, lie you can't decide if your socks are rolled up or down, if you want an untucked jacket or the way you wear your hat. It's not that much of a big deal, but it's little details like this that made the Saints Row games so much fun to play.
There is also a gang customization option, where you can choose what your gang members look like, their callsigns and even what vehicle they roll in. Nothing new here. To sum it up, Saints Row The Third has a lot of great cusomizing options, but none of them are even close to what Saints Row 2 had to offer. Why take something good out of a game instead of polishing it?
Overall Score: 80%
There is also a gang customization option, where you can choose what your gang members look like, their callsigns and even what vehicle they roll in. Nothing new here. To sum it up, Saints Row The Third has a lot of great cusomizing options, but none of them are even close to what Saints Row 2 had to offer. Why take something good out of a game instead of polishing it?
The Fun Factor
The 2nd strongest pillar of Saints Row The Third is the fun factor. This is where I have a real problem with the game. It's not nearly as fun as they promised us it would be. They ran out of idea so quick that they had to put in a pimp with auto voice called Zimos. Jesus!
I'm not saying the game was not funny at some times, because I found myself laughing out loud all by myself while playing the game quite a few times. This game tries waaaaaay too hard to be funny, and doesn't have the subtle humor previous Saints Row games had. Stuff like flying motorcylce, dildo bats, fart in a jar, mollusk shooter are all things that work fine with me, but not if the story is broken or too childish. If the story took itself a bit more seriously, I would have had a lot more fun pooping on people on the streets but like this, I don't know.
Saints Row 2 had a perfect balance between the crazy and the serious, while Saints Row The Third has no serious at all. It's just overall too childish to enjoy. This didn't stop me from completing the game 100%, but I couldn't bear to come back and hear those horrible characters again.
However where the fun REALLY starts happening is when a friend joins you in your mission of killing every old lady in Steelport or when you're trying to see how long you can survive 10 tanks shooting at you. The fun is better when shared and boy is it true with this game. Nothing more satisfying than riding a flying motorcyle with your firend on the back rpg'ing pedestrians below. The co-op mode in this game features a drop in drop out whenever you like from someone's story line.
Overall thoughts, Saints Row The Third is a great game for newcomers, but if you have been a fan of Saints Row previous games, don't expect a lot from this one. Improved graphics, new cars and better weapons is all you will find in this game. However, if you pick it up and pretend it's called: Fear of rayguns 7: the toilet bowl's revenge or something else, then you will probably have a lot more fun with the game that I did. It's a good game but not a good Saints Row. They completely lost the felling they had on the previous games to replace it with pure non-sense.
Overall Score: 80%
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