Saints Row: The Third stars Lara Croft, Christina Hendricks, and Zack from Dead or Alive. At least my playthrough did. The game, like its predecessor, lets players change their appearance any time for any reason. As the leader of the street gang turned international celebrities (The Saints), you can duck into a plastic surgeon’s office at any time and change from an Elvira look-alike to a 300-pound blue-skinned cross-dresser with a beehive hairdo and a pink Snidely Whiplash mustache; and your fellow gang members won’t bat an eye. It’s also worth noting that this is probably the least absurd thing about the game and its story.
The Third doubles down on what made Saints Row 2 a notable game in a post-Grand Theft Auto IV world. It opens on your gang robbing a bank in order to give a ride-along actor inspiration for his upcoming role in a Saints Row movie. The mission begins with your gang barging in disguised as giant bobble-headed versions of Saints superstar Johnny Gat. The heist gets foiled not by the cops, but by an international crime syndicate that would feel more at home on The Venture Brothers than in Grand Theft Auto. The Saints are told that they can either pony up the majority of their profits to “the Syndicate,” or die. The leader chooses the former option and guns down armed goons, jumps out of the plane, kills enemies in mid-air, pulls the parachute only to crash through the windshield of the same plane, free-falls through the entire cabin (killing enemies the entire way through), falls back out of the plane, catches a parachute-free Saint on the way down, and lands safely. That’s just the tutorial. Then it’s time to raid an army base for supplies.
