Saints Row: The Third – hands on gameplay

Approximately three seconds. That’s how long into an exclusive, extended hands-on with Saints Row: The Third it takes to realise the level of crazy that this game packs in. Because before I can even take one step forward or spin the camera around, I’ve seen a man walking down the street in full-on S&M gear, followed by a guy in a string vest casually wielding an assault rifle. And oh, look – there’s a human-sized hotdog crossing the street. This is going to be fun, and with a release date of November the 18th the crazy is soon to be unleashed for everyone…

But for now I’m one of the lucky few to be playing the Saints Row threequel. So, like any self-respecting gamer, I immediately set out to discover just how fun it can be. And to give you a clue: I’ve got the army on my case within three minutes.

It starts innocently enough, with a simple suplex on an old lady walking down the street – wait, maybe innocent is the wrong word – and then a beautifully satisfying trigger-button enacted beatdown on a nosey police officer. But only when I whip out the giant purple dildo and start battering the aforementioned jaywalking frankfurter do things really start to get out of hand.

When some conscientious citizens try to fight back, I decide it’s time to bust out the assault rifle and calm things, but ‘calm things’ quickly becomes ‘panic at the appearance of an entire fleet of police cars’. Deciding it’s time to take this show on the road, I flag down a passing car (by drop-kicking my way in through the windscreen) before haring away in a squeal of tyre smoke.

And still the breathless action shows no sign of slowing down. Classical music blaring through the speakers suggests I ‘borrowed’ the vehicle from a culture vulture, and gives my trail of destruction a dignified edge.

I decide that this aural extravaganza needs an accompanying light show, so I casually lean out of the window to lob a few grenades into the suburban street I’m speeding down. Mailboxes cartwheel into the sky, telephone poles come crashing down and a few unfortunate civilians get caught in the carnage.

As the music crescendos, I’m feeling unstoppable – but my destructive high comes to an abrupt end as I turn the corner and plough straight into a personnel carrier full of army troops set on halting my fun. As far as last stands go, this is one of the more bizarre ones. It’s time for… the mollusc launcher.