Saints Row: The Third review (PS3)

I only really began to grasp the level of Saints Row: The Third’s unashamed absurdity when I found myself clubbing gangsters to death with a three-foot purple dildo as I rescued a pants-less pimp who speaks in AutoTune from a BDSM club.

Salacious? Yes. Over-the-top? Most definitely.

However, it is zany moments like these that make The Third truly shine above the typical sandbox mediocrity: it’s not about you causing mayhem in the most depraved fashion possible; it’s about you doing so in completely unrestricted and imaginative ways.

In fact, while there are numerous parallels between this series and the Grand Theft Auto games (before they became so insipid and self-important), the level of freedom and ridiculousness here is without genre equal.

If GTA IV lets you play colour-by-numbers, then The Third lets you colour in the lines, outside the lines, and all over the surrounding walls.

Naked.

Saints Row The Third

Sure, there are confines in the form of a main story (albeit a remarkably varied one) that sees you and your Third Street Saints crew moving to the city of Steelport to topple the evil Syndicate gang, but the staggering amount of content outside of the campaign suffers no such restrictions. Traditional side missions such as assassinations and escorts are present if that’s your vibe, but these are almost bland alongside the likes of base jumping, barnstorming, jumping into oncoming traffic to commit insurance fraud, or taking part in a gameshow where you’ll murder guys in hotdog suits while avoiding the unethical killing of pandas.

Even streaking and flashing are reward-worthy activities that generate Respect, a clever mechanic that permeates practically everything you do in The Third. By letting players accumulate Respect to unlock upgrades and customization options instead of unlocking missions as in the first two games, there’s never any feeling of limitation as to how you want the game to play. Just doing a handbrake turn in a car nets you more experience points, so you’ll spend oodles of time tricking out your appearance, strongholds, gang members, vehicles and weapons with an upgrade buffet to make some role-playing games jealous.

It’s an absolute treat being let off your leash to explosively punch civilians into mincemeat with your Apocafists, or to summon a VTOL jet that gets delivered to you on a whim, but The Third does encounter limitation when it comes to the technical side of things. Shadows and textures are sub-par by any modern game’s standards, and pop-in is often unforgivably horrendous.

Saints Row The Third - Furries Gone Wild

Steelport looks decidedly better by night though with the gaudy purple-infused art direction finding its way into an entire metropolis of neon lights, but even an evening flight around the city in your pimped-out chopper can be let down by it clipping into a nearby building and getting stuck. Vanishing waypoints and checkpoints that refuse to activate further spoil the immersion, but it’s hard to complain when you’re forced to replay an escort mission where your passenger is a tiger that mauls you for improper driving.

On top of the ridiculous variety of missions and customization options, The Third isn’t shy with its vehicle and weapon selection either. Car modding rivals most Need for Speed titles, and if you’re a gun nut you’ll feel like a kid in an ammunition store thanks to a chunky weapon wheel filled with an entirely upgradeable arsenal.

And most importantly? You do in fact get to use a giant, purple dildo instead of a baseball bat.

Saints Row The Third - Saints lineup

How anyone could get bored with this amount of content and at least 20 hours of game time is beyond me, but should you tire of latching mind-controlling octopi onto innocent bystanders by yourself there’s a cooperative mode to double your sick and twisted fun. Add to this a Whored Mode (see what they did there?) where you’ll fend off endless (w)hordes of attacking gimps and other absurdities, and you’ve got enough smutty, tasteless mayhem to last you for weeks.

Saints Row: The Third is without doubt one of the most ambitious open-world titles ever made. It’s completely self-aware of its brazenness and stupidity to the point where it actually becomes sublime, and it’s guaranteed to give you that almost guilty feeling of power and possibility every time you take off your pants, grab your sex toy, and wreak total havoc in a sandbox that’s not afraid to let you spill a whole lotta sand.