The Case

It was the Grand Theft Auto series that started whacky driving sandbox games, it is the Saints Row series that carries that torch. Why? Because with GTA IV the series lost its fun. While SR happily accepts the huddled masses under its violet wing, is it not losing its own heart? That is the question posed by Saints Row: The Third.

The Trial

By the end of Saints Row 2, the Third Street Saints had wiped out all competing criminal organizations in Stillwater and taken over the Ultor corporation. Merging gangbanging and corporate assets led to the Saints becoming worldwide celebrities, with whacky Japanese commercials, chains of clothing stores, TV shows and much more. When a routine bank robbery (yes, even robbing banks can get stale when you’re a Saint) goes awry, the leadership of the Saints are captured by the Syndicate, a multinational crime organization. It’s lead by Philipe Lauren, who offers the detained gangsters to cooperate with the Syndicate, taking two thirds of the profits. Now, the Saints aren’t a bunch of the most stable individuals in the first place, so it all ends in an airplane shoot out. That results in the Boss (the player character) and Shaundi (who in SR2 was mainly known for using drugs and having slept with nearly everyone) being stranded in Steelport and hungry for blood. Let the hijinks, tomfoolery and wanton murder of innocents begin!

And this is the part when I deleted some of the review and started over. You see, writing about SR3 is one of the hardest tasks I’ve got as a game reviewer. While playing EYE was painful, at least I knew what I was going to write, there was no internal conflict. I knew that anyone praising it was wrong. SR3 is another thing altogether. It had the most promising trailers of any game that year and probably some of the most awesome trailers in gaming history. But the game itself, while it had the parts promised, the developers failed to connect them into a pleasurable experience.

To me the humor just doesn’t cut it anymore and the game seems to be lacking in cutscenes. The jokes are over the top, but they lack the somewhat serious delivery or subtext of SR2. I don’t recall the Boss and Johnny Gat saying “hey, we’re killing bums in the sewer to clean up the place for our base, ain’t that whacky”. They were carrying conversations, business as usual, while resting their feet on stacks of corpses. Now...the magic’s gone. When you’re blowing up tanks and attack choppers on the third mission, it begins to feel tiring, not “wow, are we really doing this?”.

While I’m harping on about the bad things, let me mention the changes to the upgrade system. Previously you had to work your ass off to get character or gun upgrades. This gave a sense of achievement and an incentive to do activities and other violent shenanigans. Now such things as damage reduction, ability to double wield guns and stronger gang members are bought with money. And funds are automatically generated by the properties you own. Way to undermine any drive to muck around on an ATV while wearing a flaming asbestos suit.

Other than that, this game is bearable. The sandbox game mechanics won’t give anything new to those who have played other sandbox games, even less so for SR2 players. Though driving, as always, will take some time getting used to – vehicle physics never were the series’ strongest feature. Gunplay is generally fun and rewarding, especially for those who go for the headshots. There’s something about SR that makes headshots extremely easy yet satisfying to pull off.

Especially since this game has fewer guns. But that doesn’t matter – as long as you upgrade the basic pistol – an XXL sized hunk of angry metal – you shall not lack in killing power. In all seriousness, it’s probably the best gun in the game – an accurate, slow firing machine of death. Only the final rifle was able to overtake it and only because it doesn’t actually shoot bullets. Most of the time the pistols (especially when used akimbo) will satisfy all your killing needs, from close quarters to headshotting helicopter mounted snipers. Shotguns have the same reach as spitting, while SMGs can spray a lot of rounds that wouldn’t scare a tuberculosis ridden Victorian orphan. Assault rifles are the only real competition to the pistols. Only larger targets require heavy weapons and that’s not very often. Though when that happens you won’t hesitate to use them because there are more gun shops than fast food joints (and I’m not aware of any of those since regenerating health made food obsolete) and ammo costs a dime a dozen, even the UAV missiles are cheap. You have four types of grenades, though this player only found the run-of-the-mill frags useful.

Vehicles are another thing altogether. While driving and physics tend to be a little iffy (you can ram through almost any wheeled obstacle). There are a whole lot of them, yet not one of them really stands out as the most pleasurable to drive. If you just avoid the slow ones - you’ll be ok. Motorbikes are a lot of fun, especially the more futuristic looking ones. At any rate, almost all cars can be modified in various garages all over the city. While this won’t add machine guns on top (it’s one of the reasons why I don’t drive in real life), both its survivability and swag can be improved considerably and it all costs pennies. Increases in speed, structural integrity and ram capability sometimes results in vehicles that, when going really fast, can instagib other wheeled buckets. This is certainly more fun than the quite often “driver flies out through the front window”. The level of exterior pimping varies from car to car (or from motorcycle to motorcycle, which is awesome – ever tried putting neon lights under one of those?), but you can achieve some very pleasant results. Heck, choosing the color of any part is probably more varied than the whole tuning thing in, say, GTA: San Andreas. Best of all, any car that you try to spruce up a bit is automatically saved in your garage, from which it can be retrieved even if it was destroyed. Quite the improvement over other games like GTA. A pity that you can’t modify aircraft as some of those come in less than optimal paint schemes.

The character customization has suffered somewhat in the way of clothing, but it still has more options than a spoiled rich 16 year old could ever imagine. After you select your physical build and features (which can be completely rebuilt later, for the meager sum of 400$), you can mix and match clothing and tattoo options till you drop from exhaustion. Being naked not only lets you ogle your pixel blurred naughty bits, but also engage in the Streaking distraction. And while I’ll grace this article with screenshots, I flat out refuse to do “lol, fat guy naked/in lady clothes” when there are so many cooler options. You can dress as a plain, every day citizen or – if you’re not boring – a red cop, a space man, gimp or even a Neo look-alike. The choice is yours and the clothing costs a dime a dozen.

Yes, it’s the visual part of the game that stands out. While Steelport is not a city you will remember forever, it has its moments (like a red lantern district under a freeway ramp). The really nice thing is the permanent damage to the city that some missions make (like putting a plane crash in the middle of a neighbourhood). The bases are definitely less impressive and most share the same interior design (right down to a Saint eating a sandwich in the kitchen), while the exterior was done with one thing in mind – “let’s make it bigger”! But the clothing options look nice, the retro cops (with mandatory aviators) in reinforced sports cars are beyond cool. Character design is pretty damn decent and vehicles can be impressive. Besides, one of the helicopters is a “Hind” clone and Mi-35 is the helo-love of my life.

The controls are quite a bit more responsive that SR2 and the cars can be actually driven now. And God (and maybe God-Emperor, just to be sure) help you if you run out of RAM - the controls lock and the game plays them with delay.

Unfortunately, the sound design suffers a lot, as you will be forced to turn off the car radio completely. The selection of music tracks are sparse and horrible! Why did they sacrifice the radio, why? Well, at least the characters are voiced well and the guns sound pleasurable.

The multiplayer component is here as well. “Whored mode”, a play on Gear of War’s Horde mode, pits you and a friend against giant hookers, dwarfish mascots and normal-sized gimps in thirty matches. There’s no better way to sate your thirst for furrie’s blood than to shoot some dog-shaped mascots. The campaign can be played in co-op without any tether holding the players. They can dick around, separately, at different ends of the map if they want, only the missions and activities are to be done together. Pity that Mercenaries 2 didn’t give us that luxury. There should be no worries about losing connection since both players can save their individual progress.

Now, what I find annoying – not only about Saints Row, but in sandboxes in general – is the endless stream of enemies once you do something wrong. You shoot a cop – two show up, you shoot them – more come, maybe bring SWAT, too. In the end you’re fending off tanks and helicopter gunships, eventually this becomes really annoying. While SR3 solves heat problems by letting you unlock phone numbers that drop the cop or gang heat, I find Assassin’s Creed’s approach better – there’s a fixed amount of enemies after you and if you kill them, you’re free to go, but the city is on higher alert in case you do further shenanigans. Why can’t they do something like that with these games too?

The Verdict

Saints Row 3 is a fun game of exciting gun play and wonky driving. While I feel that the game has lost certain things that it had in the second iteration, it does show improvements in other areas. So if you want a game that has more color than the present GTA games, Saints Row 3 is your best choice.

Case Review