Not a GTA clone, Saints Row: The Third has its own identity with a wide open game world, customization, and humor.
As you progress through the story missions, there will be opportunities to upgrade your character and fellow gang members. Thus, there is an RPG element to the game and it is fun adding new weapons to your protagonist's arsenal as well as new weapons for your comrades. You, as the Saints gang leader, are trying to take over the city of Steelport and there are plenty of rival gangs to battle. Rival gangs have their own operations that you can eventually take over. The gangs have unique identities such as the Luchadores, Morningstars, and the Deckers. Luchadores are dressed like professional wrestlers, Morningstars are dressed like corporate men and women, and the Deckers are dressed in blue and show a lot of computer savvy. One objective that's constant throughout the game is to earn respect. More respect means more access to more powerful weapons, the ability to recruit more gang members, and the ability to physically strengthen your character.
You can spend a lot of time outside of the story missions by completing wacky challenges such as surfing on top of cars, performing wheelies or stoppies on motorcycles, stunt jumps, performing dangerous windshield cannons from the driver's seat, and much more. The challenges are plenty of fun and completing them will earn your more respect. Whenever the game gets serious there seems to be some factor that adds humor so that the game is not taken too seriously.
There are plenty of activities with their own share of wackiness including insurance fraud, mayhem, trafficking of hookers. Insurance fraud is really insane since your objective is to get hit by as many vehicles as possible and create chain combos, many hits resulting in hilarious hit and run scenarios. The DLCs offer more activities that display more goofiness and action, as well as funny looking vehicles and costumes. I like Professor Genki's game show that displays plenty of deadly traps like fire and electricity while trying to fight off gun-toting mascots and Brutes willing to tear you to pieces.
The missions are fairly linear, but some give you the choice to end them in one way or another. For example, in one mission you have to option to dump a chemical truck carrying a zombie virus that will earn you Mayor Burt Reynolds (yes, the Hollywood legend) as your homie and he will tell the police to leave you alone if they are pursuing you when you call him using your all-important cellphone . The other option would be to send the chemical truck to Oleg, who will extract the virus to make zombie homies. Either choice will lead to rewards, it is just a matter of which reward you prefer.
The graphics in the game are nice, but not ground breaking. There is plenty of purple and green in the background, but I think the graphics are definitely are up to par and worth enjoying. There are funny animations from the various attack combos you can use against your enemies. You can shoot males in the nuts and perform a testicular manslaughter, a move in which a punch someone in the nuts resulting in his death.
The A.I. of the gang members is decent, but there are times when it is deficient. Sometimes a fellow gang member may get in your way while you are in a shootout with a rival gang, resulting in unfortunate friendly fire. Other times rival gang members don't move realistically enough when fired upon. These A.I. deficiencies don't do much to take from the fun of the game, which is what Saints Row: The Third is from the first mission all the way to the end.
I strongly recommend this game to fans of the GTA series and anyone who plays video games because of the high replay value and the high entertainment value. I highly recommend buying every DLC offered by Saints Row: The Third. All DLCs associated with this game are worth their low prices and much more. There is the option to play the game in Whored Mode, a mode that allows one or two players to play in survival form that comprises thirty waves for each of three maps and five characters. I spent more than 100 hours playing the single-player campaign alone and it felt like every minute was worth it.