Saints Row: The Third | a Review
originally published on 11/09/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the world renowned gangster, even better than Giorno Giovanna, the one and only hoodlum of incredible potency - G.E.M.Simov. Today, I will be regaling you with the finest tale to have ever graced my ears - because I actually lived through it, and it’s all about Saints Row: The Third, henceforth known as SR3.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Let’s get this straight - Saints Row: The Third is absolutely amazing when it comes to gameplay. I do not know what kind of deal, with what kind of Devil, Volition made, but this game feels like crack cocaine. As in, it’s utterly bonkers.
While its origins were those of a simple GTA clone, albeit with a bit of a funkier approach, SR3 has totally transcended GTA and has gone into its own realm of immaculate madness. The game is a third person sandbox, of the most fantastic variety - the one that just drops the player off in a world (in this case, the city of Steelport) and allows them to go absolutely wild.
What does going wild entail, however? Well, in short - it means that the player can run around freely, can do any one of fifty whole challenges, can take part in small events, and can just cruise about while driving one of the many types of vehicles at their disposal.
The running around part of SR3 is very well done. The player can simply walk, or they can jog lightly. Jogging is reasonably fast, but the faster approach is to sprint, which depletes stamina, but generally doubles the speed at which the player moves. It is quite useful for navigating around a small area.
However, we all know just how long it takes to walk from point A to point B in any city, let alone a big city like Steelport. Thus, the best approach is to hop on a car, and that’s rarely difficult to do. Just walk up to the vehicle of choice, use the interact button, and the player hops in. The driving in this game is absolutely incredible, in part due to the fact that most vehicles have different types of movement.
Take, for example, a pickup truck. That thing can go at a decent speed, but is relatively slow and its maneuverability is not top notch. But, maybe, the player likes big trucks - armored ones. Those are slow as fuck, and their maneuverability is trash, but damn, do they handle loads of punishment.
Every vehicle is special, in its own sense. Be it the speed which it can keep up, be it how easy it is to control, be it how rare it is or how it looks, this game is sublime when it comes to that. So many options, even in the muscle-car market - and, not only that, but those are super different, too.
One can nab a balanced Raycaster and enjoy good everything, or they can jump in a Torch and feel the increase in speed. Slapping oneself into a Bootlegger will show the player how SPEED really does SPEED, but then remind the player that they need to be able to steer - which the Bootlegger really doesn’t do. Or, one could go for an Attrazione, which just swerves like a maniac and has such incredible sensitivity to its maneuverability it’s just bonkers.
This is the only game in which I have simply hopped onto a car and driven. For no good reason - I just did it, and it was fun. It was enjoyable, because this game has absolutely nailed the fundamental - and that is movement. Moving around in this game is a joy. It’s absolutely incredible, and it is reason enough for me to just give this game the highest score I can and call it a day…
But I’m not done YET!
This game has combat. A lot of it. And it has shooting. With guns. All kinds of guns. And the gunplay is really fun to engage in - as fun as third person gunplay can be. Combat is responsive, and enemies, most of them, at least, react to being shot. Getting a headshot really just instantly kills the goon in question, or makes them one shot away from death, even on the highest difficulty.
When it comes to difficulty, the experience is great, too. The challenge, albeit increasing in the form of the enemies having more health and dealing substantially more damage, never becomes too overbearing and never feels like it’s bullshit. If anything, boosting the difficulty makes it more fun, because the player has so many ways of approaching a situation.
And these situations could be anything the player ends up wanting. Oh, there’s a bunch of goons I need to get rid of, and they’re all clumped up together? Grenade launcher or grenade. Maybe I have to kill a certain enemy? Sniper rifle, or just aim from a ludicrous distance with one’s pistol and pop ‘em in the head. It’s fantastic.
The game also gets some spice in the form of specialist enemies - those are goons who are tougher than normal fellas one would need to get rid of, and have unique approaches to attacking the player. Not only that, but after killing them, the player can nab their weapons - in the case of the Police, a Riot Shield that makes it super hard for enemy shots to hit, and also allows for sprinting through enemies and knocking them to the ground like a battering ram.
I mentioned the Police, let me mention the Gangs as well. Steelport is split into a bunch of districts, and those districts have different gangs controlling each of them. There’s the Luchadores - green, mean; The Deckers - neon goth nerds; and the Morning Star - red brothel master scrubs.
The gangs are friendly with one another, and they don’t interact, but they interact with the player. The player, of course, is opposed to those gangsters, so they can kill ‘em and generate notoriety - much like getting police stars in GTA - the more notoriety (stars) the harder the gangs/police are trying to kill the player.
Whenever notoriety goes over a certain threshold, which happens as the player mows down pedestrians (for the police) or gang members (for the gangs), the gang that’s prominent in the district will send goons after them.
Luchadores send big macho men with grenade launchers that pepper the area with bombs which blow up after a second - naturally, the player can nab that weapon, after killing the specialist goon, and use it to their heart’s content.
Deckers send in anime characters who move at super speed, slow down time and use weird hammers that cause explosions. These hammers? Really good, they literally kill normal goons in one hit and blow up cars effortlessly.
Morning Star send in choppers with snipers all over them, and, while the sniper rifles aren’t different from the sniper the player can buy, there’s another type of specialist.
They’re called Brutes, and they’re most notoriously used by the Morning Star, but, if the player’s running around at five stars of notoriety with the other gangs, they’ll also send Brutes after them. Brutes are big, mean bullet sponges. They run at the player, knocking cars out of their way, and then ragdolling the player if they run into them. They don’t get staggered by bullets, and are pretty much the closest to a boss, or a tank, that the gangs have access to.
The Brutes can have either no weapons, a flamethrower, which is the nastiest weapon to deal with as the player, or a heavy machine-gun, which is the thing the player wants to get after killing a Brute. The heavy machine-gun has a thousand units of ammo, doesn’t have a reload time, and shreds everything in seconds. It’s meant to be used to cause mayhem, and mayhem it is that gets caused.
Brutes are a bit unbalanced, in the sense that if the player can’t murder them immediately, the player either gets set on fire and loses control of their character, or they get knocked down and, again, lose control of their character. Other than that, the implementation of these big goons is a great meme.
Other things that the player can do: Find collectibles. Find special places from which they can get cool jumps with their vehicles. Find shortcuts. Complete minigames and MORE.
The minigames are a bit hit and miss. There are some that are incredibly fun - such as MAYHEM or INSURANCE FRAUD, which, respectively, have the player either destroying everything in sight or throwing themselves into cars to rack up as much damage to themselves, so as to get more money off of their insurance.
Then there are some that aren’t all that fun - such as TRAFFICKING and SNATCH, which are decently good, but get a bit annoying.
And then there’s the cool thing - all those issues, and MORE, can be literally solved by playing more of the game. The more minigames/events the player completes (Activities, as dubbed so by the game), the more RESPECT they get, and that allows them to purchase upgrades, such as: infinite ammo; more health; taking less damage/no damage from some sources; two guns instead of one; every car has nitro; sprint longer; etc.
That just makes things BETTER, does it not? I mean, I’m having an issue with X activity, in which I have to do Y. Funny how I can just get the upgrade that makes it so Y is easier, and, to do that, I just need to play the game for a bit longer, which means I can go have fun doing other shit - such as driving my car in oncoming traffic, doing wheelies, jumping off of planes and parachuting onto things. This game is fantastic.
But it does not end there. Saints Row: The Third, for some ungodly reason, has one of the best character creators in the world. It’s better than many modern games, and it’s awe-inspiring. Saints Row: The Third provides the player with the option to customize their favorite vehicles. Saints Row: The Third lets the player get their fucking SWAG on - there’s so many options for outfits and appearances, it’s incredible. I could spend hours just playing around with the character creator or playing dress up with my gangster, until they are a real STAR!
An amazing game, it is simply fun to play. 3/3
Presentation
SR3 is made using the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine allows for pretty looking things, and I’m quite honestly pleased with the way the game has been made to look. If anything, it’s so much more pleasing to the eye than most other games I’ve been playing recently, but not in the sense that its graphics are just better, rather, in the sense that it’s more… Alive.
There’s pedestrians walking about, cars passing by, folks talking, a radio playing, and a realistic Day/Night cycle. The game is splendid in the sense that it looks decently good enough on its own, and then, when one considers the atmosphere that has been created, it is quite splendid.
The voice acting is also quite on point, and most of the sound-design is great.
HOWEVER, there is one BIG issue. I could not care less for the musical choices in the game. Forgettable, anything that plays without being initiated by the player. Anything that might get initiated by the player, via the radio, is mostly just music that was popular at the time, and popular music is, in most cases, kinda bad.
Other than that, and the intense bloom of the Unreal Engine, there’s not much I can complain about. 2/3
Story
The story of Saints Row: The Third starts off with the gang robbing a bank, every member dressed up as a mascot, during which time they blow the roof off, steal the safe, which is bigger than a room, with a helicopter, get caught, get sent to jail, get bailed by a mysterious new gang, on a plane with that gang, the player’s gang breaks free and jumps off, cars falling, aerial combat while falling, the plane flies directly at them, almost hits them but the player breaks through the glass, falls through the plane, kills a bunch of goons, and then again falls. Finally, the opening sequence ends and the player is in Steelport, free to do whatever they want.
It’s about gang violence and how America is (mis)handling it.
The story features some really interesting Characters, presents the player with meaningful choices (like, super meaningful, actually), and it’s reasonably engaging enough to keep the player reasonably hooked… Although it isn’t truly fantastic. It’s serviceable. It’s decently good, and I think that’s all it needed to be. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Short answer: Yes. Long answer? Due to the fact that this game is a GAME, it is exactly what a game needs to be - something that you play and enjoy the sheer act of playing it. It’s not about playing to GET to something, to achieve something, no, it’s literally just all about playing for the sake of playing. 1/1
Conclusion
8/10. I was under the impression that it was gonna get a better grade than that, but the presentation and
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display.