Developed/Published by: Volition, Inc. / THQ
Released: November 15th, 2011
Completed: 26th January, 2014
Completion: Final mission completed both ways, and every activity and gang operation in Steelport completed.
Trophies / Achievements: 50%

The Saints Row series is one of those things that people who should know better seem to love. An open world crime-em-up that revels in its stupidity, grotesque violence and bad taste, it seems to have its worst excesses often forgiven because of a character creator that allows you to create anything; heck, a grotesquely obese woman with a man’s voice if you feel like it (which I’m sure makes the otherwise pervasive casual sexism feel utterly bizarre.)

(I made myself, because I always do. And I managed the best facsimile of myself ever thanks to clothing options allowing you to wear a hoodie with the hood up and—something game developers always seem to miss, despite being a shower of specky bastards—glasses.)

Do you know what, though? I’ll admit Saints Row: The Third is, at points, inspired. Where Rockstar is awkwardly determined that its work be taken seriously—Goodfellas, except Henry Hill eats at Fanny burger and drives a Vulva—Volition barely bother their arse to make it coherent. So it’s not really about the parts where the game comes apart, but where it comes together.

For me, it was the point a few missions in where, having just fallen out of an airplane, I (and it was me) dive down to catch Shaundi, a key character, in mid air—only to notice that another airplane was preparing to collide with us. And, scripted moment it may have been, but the point where I (yeah, me, only with Nolan North’s voice) tell Shaundi “remember how happy you were when I caught you?” only to drop her, fly through the plane’s windscreen and out the other end, and catch her again… well, it was pretty much the best thing I’d seen since I last watched the bit in Fast and Furious 6 where Vin Diesel reveals he can fly. It felt like an entire cinema going mental, but I was at home.

After that kind of genius, I mean… the fact that so much of the game is probably some of the weakest gunplay I’ve experienced since, I don’t know, Saints Row 2 is barely a dampener. The driving at least feels excellent, so when you step out of the car and you mostly stand or strafe about getting filled with bullets—hoping you can kill enough (too many) dudes that you don’t have to awkwardly run behind a wall to restore your health—you just kind of get on with it.

To be honest, a lot of the game is—in fact, as a lot of these open-world games reveal themselves to be—a real-estate simulation. You wander/drive about, buy stores/do activities/kill dudes to claim part of the map, and you wait for the money to roll in. Saints Row: The Third does this pretty well (even if I did sort of wish I could just click on the map to buy stuff rather than have to drive there, but then there’d barely be any game at all) and as a result I did actually end up doing everything in the game so I could fill in the whole map and feel satisfied. I didn’t have a bad time doing it, but if I was going to recommend one of these games Saints Row: The Third pales in comparison with Sleeping Dogs, which manages to do open world with a fairly coherent story, memorable city and genuinely successful mechanics (all of ‘em: man shooting, face punching, thing driving). However, as far as I’ve been told, Saints Row IV re-uses the city from The Third but turns the dial so far up the series has morphed completely into a superhero title, which is rather pleasing as I’ll be happy to return to Steelport at some point in the future for some more occasionally inspired antics.

Will I ever play it again? No.

Final Thought: It’s not just the character creator that gives the player a sense of ownership in Saints Row: The Third. The game constantly throws THIS? or THAT? questions at you that slightly change the world/deny you other options. It doesn’t make a huge difference but it’s nice to feel that in your world you chose to—for example—blow up a tower and see that reflected for the rest of the game. Look, it’s not Mass Effect, but somehow these small changes with obvious, direct effects really worked for me, ok?