Saints Row once again delivers on a guilty pleasure gaming experience! Love it
No 24 hour day/night cycle - This bothers me the most, given it's a sandbox game along the lines of GTA, and Just Cause, I would have thought you'd see a day/night cycle especially in real time. It appears to be cut from the game and only when you go through a loading screen to begin a mission/activity will the time change. It's a bit of turn off and this was a quite disappointing
Car sounds - The vehicle sounds when you start driving, seem out of sync and would sound like they're constantly changing gear…
Bugs? - The odd bug and graphical glitch showed up every and then but not a big deal.
Now the good stuff!!
Gameplay - Despite the above, the game is really addictive and has become my guilty pleasure. As well as the main story where you're the saints leader and after a bank heist going wrong in Stilwater, you find yourself in Steelport the new city and now take on the Syndicate crimmal group, you've got tons to do and loads of activities/side quests. A few favourites return like insurance fraud, trafficking mayhem etc, you got some new ones, tank mayhem, guardian angel and my personal favourite Professor Genki's Hyper Ethical Reality Climax Show – a Running Man style game show with a Japanese feel, where you have to do an assault course filled with traps, and people dressed up as furry animals trying to kill you, it's hilarious! Steelport is quite literally your playground!
Graphics – This a better than it was in Saints Row 2, charctarer movement is really fluid and the city looks quite eye candy. Also when on foot, the frame rate is around 60 FPS! This is for both just walking around and in combat. I understand that some customisation was sacrificed to cater for this. So there is no day/night cycle, but the graphics are certainly not the most important thing here.
Sound – So the car sounds aren't perfect, but there is a lot of cheesy dialogue which quite me amused, you got 7 voices to choose from (one of them being Troy Baker from Final Fastasy XIII) for your character. Another host of celebrities take up some of the cast of SR:TT – Troy Baker, Sasha Grey, Hulk Hogan and an appearance by Burt Reynolds. Also Daniel Dae Kim returns to reprise his role as Johnny Gat. Overall its great.
Combat – one of my favourite parts of the game, combat is fluid and smooth and quite straight forward to get into, but if like me you're a Saints Row Vet, you might struggle to get used to some of the new controls but it won't be long until you get used to it. You have a couple new moves, You can roll, do nut take downs with the right analog stick, and you got the awesome button. Loads of weapons, advanced weapons like reaper drones, energy weapons etc.
Customisation – Again you can customise your character in anyway you want, you now got skin colours, more taunts/compliments, so whether you want to make a smurf, a total freak or a sexy female protagonist, SR:TT delivers.
I love this game, GTA for me is too serious and although I'm sure it's a great game, it doesn't take great graphics to make a great gaming experience.
I've played other games before with day/night cycles, great graphics but get bored of them quickly, saints row the third makes up for this with great gameplay and a hilarious story and know I'll be back for more.