Saints Row: The Third

As a lot of the PC gaming community will probably know, the Saints Row 2 PC port was an absolute disaster. Fortunately, within my experience, this is certainly not the case with this particular title. Now that we've dealt with the elephant in the room, I can actually address the game itself.

One of the immediate qualities of the game which immediately got me hooked is its sense of humour (I'm British; deal with the spelling). Yes, it's obviously crude and immature, but who the hell cares!? The way Saints Row delivers it's comic side is perfect, and has had me laugh out loud on numerous occasions. It is delivered through a genius mix of witty anecdotes from the characters (Armed Johnny Gat walking into a bank with a loaded machine gun calmly saying "come on people; you know the drill"), or just how over the top the game can be (falling through the sky in a freakin' tank, blowing up the law on the way down). It's moments like this that I like to call the "HELL YEAH!" principle; if a game can incite that kind of reaction from me, then I know I'm onto a winner.

Aside from the games comedic factors, it's important to realize that even with that stripped away; there is still a very high quality gaming experience available here. Granted, it has its faults, but unless you happen to be Tetris then that's going to be a problem with any game. The game has an unusual style of storytelling, in that you accept all of the missions from your phone as well as stumbling upon additional side activities in the world. These side activities pose one of the games few faults. Despite the-over the-top and very unusual nature of the tasks (getting repeatedly run over to claim insurance money), they can fast get repetitive and tedious if replayed for extra cash within short periods of time. You'll probably find yourself attempting to stick to the main story as much as possible, as the ongoing plot (although nonsensical), is a true strength of this title. You will either get wide-eyed or burst out laughing at multiple points in the game's "story".

Another very large selling point of this game is the character customization. Simply put; it's astounding. It's not the Sims 3, with fully customizable colour (again; British) palettes for every item of clothing, but the sheer size of your potential wardrobe makes up for this. Also, car customization follows the same pattern, except this time colour is very much an option. It actually reminded me of Need for Speed: Underground 2, it's that polished. Don't expect the same depth, car customization is hardly a focus of this game, but it's still very good, and you can easily produce a totally rad ride yo.

Graphically the game is very impressive, coming with support for DX11 among-st other things, guaranteeing a very pretty looking city; particularly in the air at night. It features a fleshed out video options menu, allowing for a decent amount of fine tuning. DX9 is also an option for lower powered machines. I'm not an expert on the optimization of this particular title so it's probably worth checking out if your PC can run this game; it is quite graphically intensive.

Now for the games faults, don't get me wrong, I barely consider them an issue. Apart from a few minor bugs here and there (mostly in co-op from what I can see), the main issue I have is with the AI of enemies. Aside from cosmetic and weapon differences, the various "factions" you fight against (Police, Gangs, STAG etc.) all seem to behave in the same way, that being standing out in the open shooting blindly at you, hoping to not get shot. The AI in that regard is fairly lackluster, and is a bit daft. Gang members or cops will occasionally hide from your line of sight, but a lot of the time they'll screech up in a car, just dive out and start shooting at you. Another problem is that every enemy, particularly at a lower "level" (the game has purchasable upgrades) seems to be very "spongey". This is to say that unless you headshot with a pistol, they can take a ridiculously large number of bullets, with some surviving a full round of an SMG on occasion. Whilst this may be there for the difficulty, it still looks a bit dumb.

To conclude, these faults are mere blemishes on an otherwise incredible game. It features a completely nonsensical but hilarious story-line, great graphics and a gigantic open world. Due to the availability of aircraft, exploration consists not only of the X and Y dimensions but makes room for Z too, truly expanding the size of this world. The ability to fly a jet as high as possible and then bail out, only to open your parachute 100 ft from the ground to participate in a base-jumping mini-game should be a selling point for anyone who simply enjoys fun. Granted, "fun" can be seen as a very broad and generic term, but when applied to this particular situation, it fits perfectly. This is definitely a franchise that needs to be supported, particularly with the difficulties THQ are unfortunately experiencing at the time of this reviews production. A must buy in my honest opinion.

By the way; if you don't choose the British male voice option at the beginning of the game, you are SERIOUSLY missing out, just saying.