Unreal Game Review: Saints Row: The Third
Laser jets might be a *touch* overpowered.
Though much is the same from the last title, one big difference is that graphically, the series has stepped it up a notch. The lines are much smoother, and there’s a cartoony sensibility to everything that has just enough realism infused to work. No, the landscapes and city aren’t exactly GTA IV stunning, but it’s a big improvement over the last game, and definitely an upgrade from other sandbox titles like Infamous or Prototype.
One of my favorite aspects of the Saints Row series is the ability to create your own hero. The character creator here is both simple but deep, and it’s probably the best experience I’ve had with such a system to date. I managed to recreate a far better looking version of my tough talking Asian chick from the last game, and you really do connect more with your hero when it’s something you’ve created and furthermore, is not a mute protagonist. I call it the Mass Effect effect.
Saints Row is great because it sees flaws with its own genre and goes out of its way to fix practically all of them. Screw up something in the character creator and want to start all over? Plastic surgery offices are everywhere where you can revamp everything about yourself after the game starts. Like collecting fancy cars and upgrading them to max level, but don’t dare take them out for fear of their destruction? Keep a running list of cars at your garage that will always be there with all your investments attached. Want that same car at your current location, but don’t want to drive home to get it? Call your homie and have him deliver it to you in seconds. It’s little details like this that make the series fantastic.
We’re only a few color changes away from Buzz Lightyear.
I really enjoyed the smartphone menu system, which even if it is somewhat stolen from GTA IV, is more modern as it uses an iPhone-like phone complete with tile icons and numeric notifications for things like the map, missions, upgrades and a contact list. It’s one of the best menu systems I’ve seen in a game like this, and my only issue is that half the time when I’d call my homies to come help me out the phone would be busy half the time. I never did figure that one out.
Saints Row: The Third’s most impressive achievement might be solving one of the most prominent problems in modern video games: the money pile. The money pile occurs when a game gives you a lot of income, either from questing or buying property which gives you a recurring cash payment, but then by the end of the game you find yourself sitting on half a million dollars with nothing to do with it. I’ve seen this happen in games from Fable to Mass Effect to even Skyrim, and it’s amazing to see Saints Row solve it there. Even though I’m a property whore in games like this, where I buy anywhere I know will increase my hourly income whenever I can afford it, Saints Row still had me spending my cash right up until the very end, even after I’d completed ever side mission, busted up every gang and beaten the main plotline. Even with 50K an hour coming in, there is STILL stuff to buy.
The reason being is that there are a TON of upgrades in this game. Every car has about 20 upgrades you can buy for it. Each gun has four levels of quality to upgrade. You can increase your gang’s health, decrease the damage done to you, increase your ammo capacity and a million other helpful things that will make sure you’re always spending your cash. By the end of the game however, the upgrades go a little overboard with ones that make you literally never have to reload or run out of ammo, and the final upgrade I just bought made me immune to all bullet damage completely. Where’s the fun in that? Even before the straight up invincibility upgrades, the others did make the game feel a bit easy, and I can count on one hand the number of times I actually died, which would seem to be unusual give than you’re facing explosions and gunfire at every turn.
It’s a guaranteed 20 hours of entertainment, and though I wish the story was a little more coherent, the missions a little more diverse and a bit more was changed from the previous game, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself. A lot of little improvements do make the game mechanically superior to its predecessor, and it’s a breather from most games out these days which all take themselves very seriously. As I’m running naked through the streets, beating down police officers with a giant dildo bat before I hope into my laser spewing jet and fly away, it’s readily apparent that Saints Row is truly one of a kind.
I’m not a gamer, but I really liked this one. My bf got it and it’s one of the few games I play. I love the character creator and all of the extreme upgrades. I don’t play a lot of the missions, mostly just run around finding cars to collect and pimp out. I also love all of the clothing options, although I do wish there were even more ><.
The only complaint I have is the god damn traffic. I am not very good at driving, but the game makes it so hard (at least for me) because it seems like every car is trying it's best to pull out in front of you or change lanes in your direction. I do okay in the long stretches, but neighborhoods are a pain in the ass. Using a motorcycle helps for me, though.
I’m not sure exactly which Syndicate leader you are talking about when he hobbles away. The first guy gets killed when you drop that giant sphere thing on him after falling through his tower, Killbane kills one of the De Winters and the other joins your crew, the Decker leader quits after you corner him and the Killbane either escapes or you kill him.
Also one of my favorite things to do after buying all the upgrades is to throw satchel charges on random passerby, letting them freak out and run into a group of gang members and then detonate.
@Alex
Oh that guy died? I heard something after about him going into hiding. I didn’t think he was killed.
Like you, I started with the second game in the franchise. I wasn’t expecting much from it, besides a GTA clone with the silliness ramped up a bit. I was pleasantly surprised to find the game had some serious heart, solid character interaction, and quite a few really badass cutscenes (house party comes to mind).
After beating the second game, I had to play the first one. Needless to say, it was a step down in almost every direction, but like the second one, it had a decent story, and some cool moments.
That left me anxiously awaiting the third installment for the last few years…
Sadly, I feel incredibly let down. The story is a mess and the new characters are lame (auto-tune pimp?)
Those are the big problems, here is some nit-picking:
You can’t replay missions or cutscenes anymore
You can’t customize your crib anymore
Where’s the Bezier?
There’s more, but I’m drawing a blank.
Just a quick note: Another side mission is Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax.
@ Mandy: Steal a cop car and pimp it out, traffic pulls off to the right whenever you turn the siren on.
@ Alex: I’ve been playing for a bit and havent unlocked the Satchel Charges yet, what do I need to upgrade?
@ J5: this may be spoilers here, so don’t read if you care about a minor story point but: when you’re on the STAG aircraft carrier you get to choose two prototypes to try out of 3 (VTOL bike, upgraded tank and satchel charges) and you get to keep the two that you choose.
@ Paul: Yeah, Alex was right, when you’re riding the giant ball that’s falling down Philippe (the Belgian Syndicate leader) is hobbling away and you land on him.
Another problem that I noticed after beating the game is that it becomes impossible to collect all the challenges/ vehicle heists/assassinations if you decide to put all of them off until after you gain 100% control over each island. Unfortunately found this out after I had all the upgrades and control and wanted to finish everything out in order to get all the achievements.
@Alex
Why is it impossible?
I did have problems with vehicles being autodestroyed when I was sent to find them, so I gave up on the car heists pretty early on.
Favorite thing I did today? Skydiving into the restricted area, stealing one of the weaponized Eagles, and luring the Tornadoes back to your rooftop helipad, then using the vehicle control tool to glide the gunships down to where you can hijack them.
As for the things like assassinations and auto thefts, I’ve been working on those more than the story. Honestly, the story isn’t as interesting this time around, but I’m more interested in the side missions and secrets anyways. Do you have any idea how hard it is to outrun a 3 star police notoriety in a street sweeper?
One thing I really wish they had was replay. I’d love to go back and re-watch some of the sicker things I’ve done a la Call of Duty. Today, I was speeding along in a sports car, with no notoriety or wanted level at all. All of a sudden a Challenger Tank appears in the opposite direction of travel, and turns across my lane of travel. Instead of flying out the windshield, the car was instantly crushed under the tank, all 4 wheels falling off by the tank, and my paper thin car floated out the other side and landed like a feather on the wind as I died instantly. It was so surreal and unexpected I couldn’t help but laugh.
Sure, it lacks some of what made Saints Row 2 so good, but its still a helluva lotta fun. And its pretty funny how my Facebook friends keep asking why I’m posting so many status updates about how many people I’ve assassinated or run over (hint: its a lot).
@ Paul
It becomes almost impossible because after you take over an island 100% then the gang members that owned that island completely disappear from walking around on the street. That becomes a problem when trying to get the achievement/challenge for taunting 50 gang members because it doesn’t work with your gang or opposing gang members once they start shooting at you (which is the case for the only time they appear after you clear the island, during car thefts and survival missions). It also makes the assassination attempt of the guy who only comes out after you kill a bunch of morningstar and a bunch of his hookers nearly impossible (the way I cleared it was driving into the district after completing a car theft that pissed off the Morningstar so I dragged a Morningstar tail into the area). I also have the problem with the cars being destroyed when I enter the area after I defeat STAG (collecting the STAG planes becomes impossible).
Im a Huge Saints Row Fan, been playing since the beginning! Just like to point out that The Original Saints Row had a cell phone menu waaaaay before GTAIV
correct me if im wrong but the saints serise has always used your phone as a menu, so i find it hard to say it was stolen from gta, you know since the first game was out in 2006 and gta iv was out in 2009, unless THQ went “your phone makes a good menu” and traveled back in time to put it into the Saints Row.
Saints Row for Life
Definitely a fun and entertaining game, but I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who found the story a bit shoddy compared to the last two. The whole thing you mentioned about the Saint who apparently dies in the beginning is incredibly lame. I’m really not understanding the decision to have a major character death take place off screen instead of in a badass cutscene. Plus, his death is really vague, so most of us were expecting him to show up again before the game ended. Only he doesn’t. Meaning that when the end came, I wasn’t excited so much as confused and let down.
Again, good game, lots of fun, but a handful of odd plot decisions for sure.
Whenever you do a game review, it always seems like you’ve skipepd all the cut scenes or something… There’s susually at least a handful of blatantly inaccurate things said about the plot, along with the usual (forgivable, since you’re not a video game website) fallacies about the game and the nature of some of the mechanics (the phone thing here, for instance).
I don’t know how you missed crushing the mother@#!$er with the giant globe; did you think they just did that to scare him? I’m trying to rememebr the other one you did semi-recently where you made a comment about something being left so ambiguous, and I was left saying “does he play with the sound off? They outright say ‘Wow! X happened to Y! That means Z!” immediately after the scene, but here we are acting like it was the end of Inception (rather than every word of exposition throughout the film).
Paul almost certainly skips the cutscenes. This is a habit I don’t share, but I don’t condemn it. It’s perfectly acceptable to skip them if you don’t care. It is not, however, acceptable to criticize the story in that scenario, because YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE STORY!!! I mean, geez. . . .