I have been playing Saints Row: The Third recently and I have been having a really good time with it. I am about 35 hours into the game and I have just a few more missions left until I am finished with the game. I am trying to get the last of the Vehicle Thefts done before I finish Act 2 because S.T.A.G. ends up lifting all of the bridges in town. I have been having a lot of fun just getting all of the Challenges out of the way.

The game has a lot of good points that keep me coming back to it. The opening to the game is really clever. Most of the actual story missions are cleverly written and reference pop culture in funny yet not overly clichéd ways. I thought that the Star Wars scrolling open was a pretty funny way to start the game. The driving in the game is really tight. After customizing some of the cars, it is easy to tell the difference in the way they handle. It isn't a big change but it is enough to notice.

The music stations in the game are also top tier. I like the variety and I love the on-air chatter between the songs. It should go without saying that for Saints Row to have grabbed the Adult Swim license is a big deal. The Venn diagram that THQ set up to find possible licenses that would appeal to the Saints Row crowd was spot on. I think that these two properties go together like apple pie with a slice of Kraft cheese on top.

The only complaints I have about this game are really just complaints that I have with the open world genre. Some of the side missions were bland. I really didn't like doing the drug missions. When I first started doing the cell phone missions I got my ass handed to me every time because I didn't realize that I needed either some buddies or some serious fire power to finish 5 to 7 rounds against these gangs. And the jank, oh god the open world jank! I got stuck in the environment so many times I can even try to count. If I blew a helicopter out of the sky, one of it's occupants was bound to get stuck in the the ground. I had endless numbers of cars get stuck in the ground, which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been in the middle of a mission a few of those times.

I have a few more missions to go before I finish the game and put a final review on it. I really do like the game and I am even thinking about going back and playing the second game, but, of course, there are so many games sitting in my backlog that I doubt that is going to happen any time soon.