TheCannon

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TheCannon Reviews: Saints Row The Third

Hey guys. Sorry I haven’t gotten any reviews up in over two months. I honestly just didn’t feel like playing any games. But now I’m back in the mood to play them and will try to get reviews up quicker. No promise on how often I can get them up, but I’ll try to do my best. Anyway, let’s start the review.

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Now, playing & reviewing Saints Row The Third is kind of hard for me. The reasoning for that is that I played Saints Row IV first, which made going backwards kind of hard. The story and no superpowers were the two biggest changes for me. I would say that I’ll just look at it by itself and not compare it to SR4 since that came after and had the chance to improve the flaws, but I had a hard time doing that. An example of that is when I was recreating my character from Saints Row IV, I was upset that I couldn’t get the exact same hair style or color I had in SR4. I know that was something they didn’t think of or add it until the next game, but I was still upset about that. The reason I’m saying all this is that way I make it clear that some of my criticism with the game might just be that it’s a bit different from SR4, but I’m honestly not sure. But, enough of that, let’s truly get started.

Since the events of Saints Row 2 (which I haven’t played), the Saints have become media icons (I guess is the best way to put it) with their own merchandise, energy drink, and even a movie in the works. The game gets off to a really good first impression with a fun & cool opening mission. It features The Boss, Johnny Gat, & Shaundi robbing a bank, dressed in giant Johnny Gat mascot heads. This was kind of stupid, but I just found it so awesome and it’s making me smile & chuckle as I write this. Fun & creative missions is actually something that this game has a lot of. Without getting too spoilery, two that stand out in my mind are: one where you get plastic surgery to look like another character, sneak into a place, and pose as him to get a few other Saints out of prison cells; and one where zombies are in a closed off area of town and Mayor Burt Reynolds wants you to deal with it. There are some missions in the game where things get kind of annoying and frustrating, but overall I though they were fun and thought some of them were pretty creative and cool.

The story of this game I think is alright. Nothing amazing, but again, it’s alright. The main set up is: After the bank robbery I mentioned earlier, circumstances happen that force the Saints out of the city of Stillwater and into the new city of Steelport. Here they once again have to start at square one while fighting three other gangs in the Morning Star, The Luchadores, and the Deckers. That’s the basic set up, I don’t go into too much detail about it to avoid spoilers. Overall the plot isn’t on the level of something like Mass Effect or Spec Ops: The Line, but it’s an alright story. I have a few issues with it though, which I’ll go over.

I really don’t think any of the other gangs you fight are that interesting. I’m not even sure I should use the word gangs and should probably cut off the s. They all merge together into one group, basically making them all the same. Fighting them is no different, the only thing that changes is the color they’re wearing. Even outside of that though, the only characters really shown the leaders, everyone else is just generic henchmen that look alike. To be fair, you do fight their leaders in some interesting & creative missions, like one where you face the luchadores’ leader in a wrestling match and one where you face the Deckers’ leader in a computer mainframe (I think is what it’s called). Still, I wasn’t too interested in the gangs I was fighting outside of a few scenes, which isn’t a good thing for any game.

This isn’t quite a problem with the story, but kind of is I guess. There’s an area of the game where literally nothing is happening with the story and the main missions I’m being given are nothing but different members of the Saints telling me to do a series of minigames that the game includes. I just got sick of all of these and felt it got repetitive during this time, so I just stopped playing for a while and did other stuff. Thankfully the game picks up again afterwards, but I just don’t like things like this. Some people might have gotten enjoyment out of them, but with the exception of one or two, I found most of them frustrating and wanted them over with. I would have been perfectly happy if we had just skipped these and gotten to real story missions.

They also kill off a fan favorite and my personal favorite character in the opening 30 minutes of the game for no reason. I’m still confused by their decision to do this. I guess it was to raise the stakes in the game, but even that doesn’t seem like a real reasoning. I can’t get too mad or anything about this, it’s just a confusing choice to me.

Now, one of the things that originally appealed to me about the Saints Row series was the customization. This game has very good customization. There is just a ton of stuff you’re able to customize your character with, from clothing to hair to face to body type to tattoos, etc. There’s just to many potential stuff here, there’s just great customization. Personally I just wrote down all my stats from SR4 and put the same stuff in for this game in the character creator, so I didn’t get to fully explore it. If you’re curious how she turned out, here are some pics I took (sorry for the poor quality pics):

Outside of character, there’s also vehicle customization. I complained in my Saints Row IV review that vehicles were useless since superpowers let you get around faster and were more fun, so I never had any reason to drive or customize any kind of vehicle. But with no superpowers in SR3, you’re gonna have to use vehicles to get around unless you want to triple your playtime. So once the set up was done and the game slowed down a little where I could do what I wanted without it feeling wrong, I grabbed a motorcycle and took it to a garage to customize. The customization I thought was really good for it, even if I didn’t do anything but make it purple & black. As the game went on I decided I wanted to try out some different vehicles, so I took some more to customize and really saw how deep the vehicle customization went. I actually spent quite a while doing nothing but stealing a car I thought looked cool, driving it back to a garage, and customizing it until I was happy with it. I spent at least 3 hours one day doing that. So if your a fan of customization like I am, this game is great at it.

The game throws a lot of humor in there. I have no problem with this, as I love to laugh. The only complaint I would have is if the humor wasn’t funny. Overall I have to say the game did have me chuckling a lot and sometimes fully laughing, so the game does have some pretty good humor. However, not all of it is. Some the humor just completely falls flat, usually on different levels. Sometimes I’ll just say “That’s not funny” and move on. Sometimes I won’t even have any thoughts and just pay attention to what’s going on. And sometimes I’ll just be facepalming at an attempt. An example would be the weapon “The Penetrator,” or probably better known as the/a dildo bat. What is this game’s obsession with it? Aside from being sold in weapon stores, they were one thrown in your face during a mission trying to get you to use them, I was once rewarded with one after a mission (so, what would have been the point in me buying one?), and one cutscene were a character is actually trying to mess around with the Boss by trying to shove one in her face. Some might find this funny, but I just don’t at all. Hopefully in Gat Out of Hell and Saints Row 5 (if it’s ever made) won’t include this.

Something I loved from the game was the interaction that the members of the Saints have with each other. Some of it is pretty funny. This isn’t something major, I just felt I had to mention this. I simply love the interaction & dialogue the characters have with each other.

Now, we’re over 1,500 words into this video game review and I have yet to talk about the gameplay, so let’s do that now. The gameplay is just what you’d expect. You can walk, run, shoot things, jump, lead, punch things, and driving is what you’d expect. Nothing revolutionary, but it is functional and can be a lot of fun. Some of the most fun I had in this game wasn’t through the story or customizing (as much as I did enjoy that), it was through just doing random sh*t on my own. One of my favorite things to do was shoot a few random people on the street to get the cops’ attention, then just keep fighting & killing them as more and more of them came in (and eventually SWAT teams), and test myself to see how long I could survive. I think the longest I went without cheating (taking a tank to a garage then coming back out would be an example of cheating) was about 20-25 minutes. Something else I loved doing was taking a plane, flying it all over the city, and then flying it over the penthouse to jump out of it and parachute into the pool. I unfortunately only managed to do that one or twice, but it felt really good when I did do it. I will say that all of this did get kind of repetitive after a while, but luckily the story missions were enough to get me interested again (except for the filler minigames that is).

Another minor thing I feel like brining up is the way the game looks. The graphics to this game aren’t that great, but they’re not outright bad, but that’s not my main thing here. I usually don’t bring up graphics unless they’re really good or really bad. I just wanted to comment on other aspects of the game’s presentation (is that the word?). The draw distance to this game isn’t that good. There were so many times I was driving along and was surprised by the lack of cars on the road or people on the sidewalk, only for them to suddenly pop in when I wasn’t that far away from them. This isn’t a huge deal, it just struck me as odd since other open world games from the same year like L.A. Noire didn’t have a problem like this.

This game has a choice system, but it’s not something you’d get like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, or anything like that. Here, there are some missions that end with you having two choices. Some early examples are one where your hauling something and have the option of taking the load to the rival gang for some up front money, or take it to another Saint for smaller amounts of money over time; and the option of either getting a discount on weapons & ammo or a discount on things for customizing vehicles. There are some ones with a little more consequences later on, but overall it’s nothing too major. The only one I had to give much thought on was the final one which will give different endings, but even then that’s pointless since Saints Row IV shows one is canon and the other isn’t. The game does give you the ability to replay the final mission after completing the game, allowing you to see both endings, which I thought was a good thing. Much better than forcing you to replay the whole game if you didn’t save before. I thought this choice thing was an interesting idea, choices that don’t impact the main game too much and offers different rewards instead, but almost nothing you did meant anything (really only two of them I can think of actually meant something). I would say they should have kept it in Saints Row IV and tried to improve it, but I’m honestly not sure what else could be done with it. I don’t know where I’m going with this section...

Also, this is very minor, but it’s something that irritated me. As previously said & shown, I played as a female in the game to recreate the Boss from Saints Row IV. But there were a handful of moments in the game where she was referred to as a male. I don’t know why. This isn’t anything major, just something that annoyed me and I wanted to bring up.

To summarize, Saints Row The Third is a game where you can kill zombies for Burt Reynolds, compete in a wrestling match and use chainsaws outside the ring in it, drive around with a tiger in your car, and can drive a flying motorcycle wearing nothing but a kitty backpack. And it’s f*cking awesome. The game is just pure fun, which sometimes is all you want & need in a game. I can’t give an exact length for 100% the game, but I finished the entire story and did some of the side stuff, giving me 63% total, over the course of 20 hours & 33 minutes, which I think is a decent length. I plan on messing around with it some more later on and plan on playing it again down the road with another character, which is a good thing. I will say that I enjoyed Saints Row IV more, but it’s really not fair to compare the two since 1) SR4 came after and had the chance to improve on things, and 2) SR4 had you using superpowers as the thing in the game, meaning the main gameplay was different and thus the two can’t be compare. Personally, I’d recommend Saints Row The Third if you’re looking for a fun game to just kill some time with. You might be asking “Well why don’t I just get Saints Row IV if you’re saying it’s better?” I’d say get SR3 first, because I think my opinion on the game is being ruined a bit since I played SR4 first, and I want people to judge a game fairly. I went back and forth on whether or not this game deserved a 7 or 8 out of 10, but I eventually decided to give it an 8. It’s a good, fun game, but does have some flaws that could be improved.

Well, that does it for the review and I hope you enjoyed it. My next review will probably be for Bayonetta, but I’m not going to guarantee anything. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who felt this way, but I feel like this review wasn’t too focused and seemed like I was rambling. I apologize for that if it was an issue. I’ve got to get back into writing stuff so this seems better. Anyway, I will see you guys on the next review.

Summary

The Good:

  • Great Customization (both character & car)
  • Decent Story
  • A lot of good humor
  • Great opening
  • Gameplay can be fun
  • Fun & Creative Missions
  • Good interaction between the Saints

The Bad:

  • Some of the humor fails
  • Story has a long time where nothing happens and gets boring
  • Villains aren’t that interesting
  • Graphics aren’t that great and the game has low draw distance
  • Some very annoying sections
  • Choices don’t mean much

Overall Rating for Saints Row The Third : 8 out of 10

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