Saints Row: The Third

It's hard to really decide how I feel about Saints' Row: The Third. It raises a lot of conflicting emotions. On one hand, it's fun. All of the Saints' Row games are great open-world games because they haven't forgotten that you can do anything you want in them. On the other hand, it's really stupid. It hovers right around Soul Plane on the Drew Norton Scale of Stupidity that I just made up and refuse to calibrate. There's a thin line between fun and stupidity in the world of video games, and Saints' Row: The Third poops all over that line. I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.

The story is non-existent. Everything that happens is just a setup for a raid on a sex dungeon or an excuse to blow a skyscraper sky-high. For the purposes of this review though, I can tell you that the boss of the 3rd Street Saints (a gang from the imaginary town of Stillwater) gets screwed over again and ends up in a new town called Steelport. Underneath all of the baseball bat-sized dildos, this is just a revenge tale. Of course, it's really hard to look underneath dildos of that magnitude. 

This game was sold on its zaniness. It seems unlikely that anyone has failed to see one of the commercials for this game parodying Japanese game shows. Yes, there are killer game shows, multiple missions involving free-falling out of airplanes and a street gang that has become a commercial force to be reckoned with. Everything glows in the city of Steelport, from casino fronts to the lighting underneath a custom sports car.There are references to everything from old-school gaming to old-school film actors with fantastic mustaches. It seems like the developers cranked everything to eleven for this game, which I have to give them credit for. This does lead to situations that may turn-off people not entrenched in the culture of gaming. People who have played these types of games for years, blowing up a town full of people with an RPG is par for the course (though this game goes much, much farther than that.) However, I can see how other people might be turned-off by this excessive violence, sex, drugs and sheer volume. Those people also don't know what fun is, but I digress.

An argument could easily be made that this game lacks any kind of narrative depth. In fact, I doubt there would be any argument. There's little to no character development, there really isn't a plot so much as a general theme of destroying gang leaders and anyone with even the slightest tendency to deviate from the path of the main story-line could easily lose the thread altogether in a mash-up of side quests and mini-games. Even when there is something resembling a story, all of the dialogue is silly. Don't get me wrong it can also be awesome, but in more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando way than in a way that connects you to the characters. Really, it's just poorly written. It is.

However, while everything in the story is silly (and that's being kind), two things about this game are done better than almost any game I've played; the customization and the developers' imagination. Volition made an amazing world in Steelport. All of the neighborhoods are fantastically realized with a ton of flair. The gangs are amazingly cool, with a group of luchadores, some Tron junkies and a group of Matrix-esque badasses ruling the various islands. The situations in the game, while sometimes cheesy or forced, are almost always entertaining. 

That's what this game is; entertaining. I can see how people could feel disconnected by the sheer stupidity of the game, and I can't disagree with them or say that I don't wish this game was better written. However, I had so much fun shooting tanks, flying high-tech fighter jets and killing hookers with giant rubber penises that I could look past the sub-sophomoric humor and god-awful writing. It's a romp, best played drunk with friends. At least it was more fun than Battlefield 3.


Edit: I realized that I completely forgot to talk about the second thing I thought was amazing; the customization. It was nagging at me all day, so I've finally gotten to it. The character creator in this game is phenomenal, allowing you to tweak your character's features to the smallest degree. The only thing I wanted that wasn't there was a great bushy beard, but alas we can't have everything in life. Instead, I made mine look almost exactly like Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead so I was happy. It's also possible to customize your vehicles to the tiniest detail as well as make somewhat minor changes to your wardrobe. It's a lot of fun to play around with.