Saints Row: The Third – Videogame Review

Sinners march in

See, it's sci-fi. Honest!

UK Release date: Friday 18 November
Price: £49.99 Format reviewed: PS3
Also available on: Xbox 360 and PC
Publisher: THQ

Look, it’s got zombies and a Tron lightcycle level, that makes it sci-fi, alright? This is definitely not an excuse for us to blaze around Steelport – which has the most liberal attitude to law breaking in the world – firing OAPs into the sea and whipping hippies to death with an oversized sex toy. Ok, maybe a little bit.

We have a valid excuse, because this is the biggest and best Saints game yet. It’s also madder than a tombola full of otters, but we’ll come to that. The premise is that the Saints, now a world-famous brand, fall foul of new criminal supergroup the Syndicate. Having exiled you and offed your mate Johnny Gat it’s time for revenge, so you need to win back your territory piece by piece.

Doing this involves nothing less than full-scale mayhem: raining down RPGs from helicopters, parachuting from jumbo jets, murdering a penthouse full of heavily-armed turncoat strippers. You know, the usual. It’s brilliant fun at times, the shooting feels solid and the dialogue is genuinely funny.

Trouble is it gets repetitive real quick. Minigames are disguised as main missions and there are way too many of them, and the epic set-pieces are few and far between. It also looks dated for an open-world game. However for a carefree tear-around, and indulging fantasies so wild that you won’t even have had them yet (we hope) you can’t do much better.

Joel Gregory