I had been eying Saints Row: The Third ever since it was released back in 2011. But there’s been a long time since I purchased a game at full price and shelling out €50 for a computer game seems borderline insane to me. Thankfully, Steam has a lot of sales and when Saints Row: The Third dropped below €11 in the end of May, I brought out my credit card and added the game to my Steam collection of licensed computer games¹.

From the Wikipedia Saints Row: The Third article: “Since the events of Saints Row 2, the 3rd Street Saints have turned their street gang into a media empire after merging with the Ultor Corporation, becoming icons and household names across the world, with their own energy drink, Japanese commercials, toys, a large fanbase, and a movie deal in the works. But when they attempt to rob a bank with actor Josh Birk in tow, their everyday routine takes an unlikely turn when the bank tellers unexpectedly fight back with military grade weapons. The Saints attempt to airlift the vault out of the building, but when Birk foolishly sets off the alarm, it alerts the Stilwater P.D. and, after a large-scale firefight with police and S.W.A.T, the Saints are incarcerated.”

And it pretty much goes downhill from the for the Saints.

There is a lot of things to do in Saints Row: The Third. There’s the main story line, which will take you both high and low in Steelport, tons and tons of the entertaining mini games we found in the other Saint Row series games, secret items to find and even more side missions. In short, you can play for hours and hours without beating everything in the game.

But you can’t play Saints Row: The Third without comparing it to the Grand Theft Auto series and while they are very similar in that they are open-world, sandbox games, they are also very different. Saints Row: The Third doesn’t stop to take itself seriously for a second: Everything is exaggerated, everything is bigger, everything is louder and the main story takes some pretty surprising turns every now and then. Compared to GTA, Saints Row: The Third has more of an arcade feeling to it and I often found that the entertainment value of the game surpassed that of the most recent installation of GTA.

Where Saints Row: The Third fails, however, is on the polishing. The game is somewhat buggy, and I experienced two crashes to desktop while playing. I also witnessed weird graphics glitches quite often, like people being embedded into the pavement or pieces of debris getting stuck in cars. Also, the main story in Saints Row: The Third fails to engage me in the same way as the main stories in the Grand Theft Auto series do.

But, all in all, Saints Row: The Third is a solid piece of work, that was well worth the €10,19 I paid for it. The game is now available for €29,99 on Steam and I’d be frank enough to argue that it’s worth buying at that price as well - it will give you many, many hours of top notch, although a little buggy, entertainment.