Saints Row: The Third - The Full Package

I get the feeling SR3 is an unfinished game that was patchworked into a functioning product, because the uncanny feeling that a lot of it is practically copy and pasted. The game is surprisingly barebones in that it offers next to nothing unless you're in it for the main plot, as even that has filler missions where you're forced to complete at least one optional side activity of each type. Adding to that feeling, you have this treadmill where you're asked to increase the amount of passive income so that you can become more powerful to overcome the spongey enemies that they throw in mass waves at you. There is no win-win: You either ignore the upgrades and the game becomes near unplayable on harder difficulties, or you lean into it and get rewarded with a dangling carrot where engaging with it is an exercise in tedium. Pick your poison, one type of tedium or the other. To make things worse, the main demographic for this game seems to be six year olds. Everything is tailor made to be as obnoxious as possible, from the awful licensed soundtrack to the W-A-C-K-Y characters and scenarios presented. While I can gel with fantastical moods, there is no grounding here to weave in-between segments with one another, it is full blast. Everything presented is as if a room full of children were the design committee. "The Saints are a gang of celebrities that fight businessmen, TRON, and luchadores, and the police all wear aviators and mustaches, and '80s anime soldiers have a massive airship and-" you get the point. Every little bit of gameplay feels extraneous, and the city is dull and uninteresting. I swear, they built the main urban island in the center and then filled the rest of the map out with copy-pasted suburban housing and industrial lofts. There is no character to the environment. It's like this game exists to sell the franchise out and not add to it. I do not recommend it. It is functional and fun here and there, and that is what keeps it from getting one star.

Four out of five? Just wish it was longer. Challenging, it has a ton of activities ( I'm talking about the full package one ). The vehicles are amazing, it is compared to GTA but up until the fifth one this franchise is the better one, except it has a weaker story.

a classic

fun

I remember this age, i also remember how the enviro mapping and textures was dull looking like using Allegro api with own callculations and vector rotate, and this is even dx9 compared with opengl when it was made, the humour are more fun than the saints before, its a good buy if you buy it when its on sale, else saint 2 is good enough.