Saints Row: The Third

Saints Row: The Third is fucking mental. We don't even need to write funnies for this review - we can just describe our first few hours of play. This is the only game that you may find yourself running, bollock naked, apart from a viking helmet, from an army of cops trying to stop you continuing on your path of destruction caused by a rocket launcher and a dildo the size of a baseball bat. Or perhaps the only game that lets you wander down a street, performing pro wrestling moves on anyone unfortunate enough to bump into you, before you call an airstrike on a crowded intersection and then perform the salute from ‘The Three Amigos’ in celebration. This is the only game where you can phone Burt fucking Reynolds himself to come and help you blast some enemies with a shotgun to the breathtaking sounds of Tim & Eric’s ‘Sports’. Mental.

The Saints Row games have established themselves as the ‘Anti-GTA’. As Rockstar’s mega-series has gone down the path of serious, ‘mature’ storylines about the American dream and bowling trips with your cousin, Volition have taken the sheer chaos of the earlier Grand Theft Auto games and pushed them as far as they, and perhaps, the technology, can go. This is a game full of the most ridiculous ways to have fun at the expense of others. It is gleefully immature entertainment, revelling in every profanity and every single kick to the gonads.

Tying this all together is a simple narrative, offering little more than a bit of background as to why exactly you’re going on the kind of rampages that make Michael Douglas in ‘Falling Down’ look like a rank amateur. Despite the events of the previous games, instead of serving one million life sentences, the Third Street Saints are mega stars. Satire! They’ve got their own movies, energy drinks and everyone wants to know them. Except, of course, for some rival gangs in the city of Steelport. After being left for dead and penniless, your goal is to rebuild your criminal and media empire from nothing.

The most surprising part of this single player campaign is how strong it is. Usually, sandbox games have a story mode, almost out of duty, while the ability to go anywhere/do anything is where the fun is. The Saints' quest to get back to the top is full of genuinely memorable set pieces, most of which would be utterly unfair to spoil in this review. It is also playable in co-op, which as we all know makes everything more fun, especially mass murder. The touted character creation mode is also brilliant, allowing you to make pretty much anyone or anything you can think of. So, if you want to simulate what would happen if Tom Cruise had a huge psychotic episode and drove a truck into a crowded bus stop, a bit of work in the creation station and you can make this happen. If you’re creatively bankrupt, you can even download other people’s creations to use in your game, which is precisely why we are running around as Axl Rose.

Perhaps sticking to its 'Anti-GTA' manifesto too well, it also lacks a lot of the quality found in the Grand Theft Auto games. Getting things done in Steelport isn’t without its issues. The enemy A.I is poor, as they're all basically just fodder for your increasingly ridiculous weaponry, but let's be fair here, once you've beaten your first prostitute to death with a gigantic, wobbly, purple phallus [We've got one of those! -Ed] you really have seen them all. You’re left wanting a bit more of a challenge than ‘shoot all the men and try not to die’, which unfortunately makes up the majority of the game. The various side-missions vary in quality with even the best ones eventually becoming quite repetitive. It isn’t like they’re optional, either, as the game forces you to play through many of them to proceed. It is technically a bit of a mess, also, with bugs like you and your 'homies' getting stuck inside scenery, nasty slowdown and some incredible screen-tearing shows either THQ’s ambition simply not being matched by the aging current generation hardware, or a plain old lack of polish.

Despite these issues, for the duration of the fantastic campaign, and while you’re still finding new stuff to play with, Saints Row: The Third is an undeniable stack of puerile fun. If it wasn’t for the fun eventually giving way to dull repetition and the occasionally bug ruining your fun like a kick straight to the ballbag, it could’ve been saintly.