It's fun to have fun. Things don't always have to be deadly serious. In fact, when people do start to take themselves too seriously boring things like war, genocide and Liz Jones happen. And we're pretty sure no-one's ever died from a shortage of Liz Jones as far as we know.

Which is probably why Saints Row: The Third has exactly that as the driving  idea behind it (being silly, not Liz Jones). Not breaking boundaries, pioneering new techniques or finding new ways to exert the human brain. This game is one in which you just have fun, and you have it all the time. Huge guns, octopus rockets, 8-bit tanks, dildobats, customisable weapons and a hoverjet. Which of those doesn't sound fun? Fun, fun, fun.

Admittedly, on first glance, Saints Row looks a lot like Grand Theft Auto. There's the third-person viewpoint, the open world city to explore and even the map looks kind of similar. But that's where it ends. While GTA was about gradually progressing through an increasingly dark and violent criminal underground, Saints Row is about progressing loudly through an increasingly bizarre criminal overground.

The plot starts as your gang from the previous game, the 3rd Street Saints are transplanted from their previous home of Stilwater to the bigger city of Steelport, where they're no longer the big fish they were and where they face The Syndicate, a much more serious criminal organisation who run the city. From here you can take missions with any one of a selection of crazy NPCs to advance the main quest, although it doesn't really seem to matter if you do (although they are hugely enjoyable to do, as well as being increasingly bonkers). There's enough to do without it.

For starters, you can customise your character from a huge range of bodies, clothes and voices. That blue prostitute cat you've always wanted? Easily done. It's this freedom to do whatever you want that really makes Saints Row as good as it is. You can do pretty much whatever you want, blow up everything, drive everywhere, kill everyone and parachute jump from planes, not just that, but almost everything that you do do earns you respect points and money that you can then use to upgrade your weapons, health and all manner of other aspects of the game.

In fact, the only real problems we had with Saints Row were visual ones. As many users have complained, the graphics on SS:TR can are low quality and bland at times, plus it's a little disconcerting to constantly see items popping into view on the horizon, although these never truly affect the game in any majorly negative way, it's still a valid niggle.

Essentially, Saints Row is a huge amount of fun, with a vast number of things to do and it will easily keep you occupied for quite some time. Any problems that we found were fairly minor, and we can highly recommend giving it a go, even if it's just to shock your more liberal friends as you beat someone to death with a dildobat. Now you want it, eh?