Avoid the ones you don't like and when you're ready, recruit a friend to tackle them cooperatively. Work through your favorite activities all at once. Most likely you have to do one of the game's many activities. Maybe you just have to kill the cluster of gang members loitering around. Maybe you have to pony up $1000 to buy a meth lab in order to take over this neighborhood. You conquer Steelport chunk by chunk, but each chunk has a different goal, indicated by icons that pop up as you explore. But whenever you feel like it, you have a whole city for the taking. If you want to make a beeline from the intro to the conclusion, have at it. Progress the story by using your cellphone to start whichever story mission you want to tackle next.
Suffice to say you shouldn't get too attached to the skyline.įurthermore, Saints Row 3 knows how to balance scripted set pieces and dynamic mayhem. The city itself may not be very interesting, but the things that happen here sure are. You're in for such a treat, particularly if you haven't seen publisher THQ's promo videos. I'd just as soon not give examples, because there are some wonderful surprises here. The second important difference from the previous games is that Saints Row 3 has flat-out fantastic missions, all situated perfectly in the open world that is Steelport. The choice you make during the final mission wouldn't work if the villain were truly villainous and not just a loud-mouthed jerk. But just like Shaundi being so grating, I'm convinced it's intentional. It's the inverse of what usually happens in superhero movies. The only problem, if you can even call it that, is that the main characters are so good they upstage the villain. You think Shaundi is annoying and bitchy? It's intentional.
Volition also deserves credit for what they do with series regulars Johnny Gat and Shaundi, particularly for seeing it through. Oh, Volition, you really get us videogamer nerds, don't you? I defy you to come out of Saints Row 3 without an opinion about Kenzie, Oleg, Viola and Kiki, the main Decker, Zimo, Josh Birk, the mayor, and Kia. They're mostly goofs, presented with a good-natured likability that doesn't take itself too seriously, as was sometimes the case in Saints Row 2. These aren't "real" characters, of course. The first is that it finally gets how to do characters. But a couple of important differences go beyond the upgraded graphics engine and the new gameplay features. None of this happens in Saints Row 3, which is a textbook example of how to keep me into a game from beginning to open-ended end."Ī lot of what makes Saints Row: The Third great - and can we just call it Saints Row 3 from here on out? - is the same stuff that made Saints Row 2 great. You get stuck for a while, or it's slow to start, or you cruise through some filler, or certain design choices are clunky, or the characters are flat and you don't care about them, or you know exactly what's going to happen next and therefore when it happens you don't care. Most games can be insensitive clods with occasional rough patches. "It is immaculately paced because it loves you.