Saints Row: The Third

Having never played a Saints Row game before (always been a GTA man) I initally was not interested by this game. However it seemed to gaining very good reviews and, after watching a few gaming videos of it (Dopefish, such a hero), I decided to buy it. I was not disappointed. The biggest thing of note about this game is that it doesn't take itself seriously. At all. So you shouldn't either

Gameplay
This game is a very user friendly, pick up and play game with a very gentle learning curve. The difficulty can be chose at the start (easy, medium hard). I chose medium. I found that I rarely died playing this game (I usually failed missions due to other reasons) so if you are a Saints Row veteran I would put it on hard to give yourself a challenge. The button configuration was very friendly and I found myself used to the controls fairly quickly. I'm not usually the best driver in games (especially driving games) but I found the driving in this game fairly easy to master. Of course since it's Saints Row it doesn't really matter if you crash your car too much (within reason of course). There is also a large variety of vehicles, some more focussed on speed where others focussed on smashing through other cars. Unlike GTA, SW3 has a regen health system (the same as Cod). This works well and if you're in the middle of a gun fight you can simply hang back, get your health back and go kick some ass. However this does make the game a lot easier. Since it's Saints Row you expect there will be a lot of killing. There is. There is a fairly large variety of weapons to do this with. Although only a few different weapon slots (pistol, smg, shotgun, assault rifle, melee, hand, special) there are 3 or 4 options for each slot which gives you variety. Instead of slowly giving you better weapons, you have to upgrade your weapon sat the gun store. You basically find what weapons you prefer and stick with them. Upgrades eventually give bigger clips, more damage and better accuracy. The upgrades feature is massive and allows you to upgrade a large variety of attributes (health, sprint, your homies to name a few). All of this can be done conveniently from your phone. All you need is money. Money is used to upgrade all things and can be gained by completing missions and buying certain buildings. These buildings include gun stores, plastic surgery (you can make your character look normal or completely outrageous!) , car garages (you can pimp out your cars and increase their strength and speed), clothes stores (there is a huge variety in clothes with some being completely outrageous and hilarious (gimp masks!)) and tatoo parlours. There are also other landmarks which simply increase revenue. The more buildings you own, the higher your income (you access this income on your phone). You can also gain territory and increase revenue by killing gang locations (group of gang members) and by completing side missions (really are a lot of fun, include destroying everything in tank and picking up hoes!). Missions usually involve a lot of driving (I didn't find it tedious but some might) and a lot of killing (again I didn't find it tedious but some might). Overall I found most missions enjoyable, hilarious and action thrilled. On negative point is that I did come across a few bugs. Although to be expected in such a large game, they did sometimes cause me to have to restart my game (I had a bug on the final mission!) That is just a brief overview of gameplay, there is still a lot of stuff I have't mentioned that I'll give you the pleasure of discovering yourself
Overall I would say the gameplay is great and is simple and a lot of fun, despite the few bugs that occur.
Gameplay: 9/10


Basic Storyline
If, like me, you didn't play the earlier titles don't worry! Although it is probably nice to see familiar characters, not knowing them didn't lessen my experience. I quickly warmed to them. The game is set in the fictional city of Steelport, a different location to the first 2 games, which means you have no power or control over the city and have to chip away at the dominant gangs empire. You do this through a variety of missions and trust me, the outrageous start is no different the rest of the game. Eventually you will become powerful enough that the military (STAG) is brought and this is where the real fireworks begin. Over the course of the game you will continue to wrestle for control of the city from STAG until one of you loses (no spoilers here ). One thing I really like about this game is, in key missions, it lets you have significant decisions over the ending of the mission. Each decision will give you different perks to what you want. This gives significant re-playability. These choices will affect the rest of your game. Overall I found the story great and had some genuine laugh out loud moments playing some missions but could understand if some people found some missions a little tedious
Story 8/10

Graphics
I do like games to have good graphics but it wouldn't ruin the game if it doesn't have great graphics as long as the gameplay is good. SR3 has both good graphics and great gameplay. Characters look good, clothes look good, character animations are smooth, cars look good (especially if you pimp them out). However I wouldn't say the graphics are as nice or realistic as GTA IV. That wasn't what the makers of the game were going for, they wanted fun and relaxed graphics, which they are.
Despite the graphics not being super realistic, I think that would look almost out of place due to the relaxed nature of the game.
Graphics: 8/10

Online
Obviously this is game focuses on single player so has a fairly limited multiplayer experience. However it is still very good. You can actually play through the entire game 2 player with a friend. You already know how much I enjoy the story and gameplay so I won't go through that again. It can be a lot of fun laughing with a friend over xbox live at the outrageous characters you have made or the fun dialogue. Although a very limited online (especially if you compare with GTA IV), it is still a lot of fun to have a laugh with a friend
Online: 7/10

Re-playability
I have already touched on this slightly but will expand further. The different mission endings are an obivous way to get players to play the game again (further incentive added by gamerscore being awarded for it) but I think I would play it again, even without the different mission endings. Some may think the outrageousness of the game will wear off quickly. For me it didn't. I still found the dialogue and the missions hilarious right until the end. I look forward to playing the game again.
Re-playability: 8/10

Overall
This game isn't perfection, it does have faults. But what game doesn't? I absolutely loved playing this game and recommend it to any kind of game player (even if you're not usually into this kind of game). There were so many small features that made me love the game even more (killing animations of melee weapons, ability to change voices, interactions between characters) just to name a few. Really I couldn't recommend this game more. One of the best, if not the best, game of 2011 for me (and that's saying something, compared to other great games released last year). I would love to give it 10 but one or 2 things let it down so it can't quite be 10 (I also don't like giving 10s )
Overall 9/10

I was very tempted to get this the other day, but I opted for MW3 instead. Im sure it was less than £20 pre-owned, cant remember now. You can pick it up on Amazon or somewhere like that for about £27

poor choice my friend

Haha. Having never played GTA/SR before, I wasnt sure. Plus I wanted to complete the MW series haha.

I had this game. It was alright, but not really my style of gaming tbh

Jordan I am disappoint
What didn't you like Davey?

Ive moved this so it can be displayed in the portal