Saint's Row has always been about ripping off GTA, but making it less about pseudo-serious, morose storylines about "the death of the American dream" and more about blowing things up and killing people.

It looks like they took all the awesome stuff about GTA (blowing shit up, driving over people, stealing vehicles) and took away all the penalties for doing so. I'm in.

To be fair, GTAs self-serious plots are a new thing, with only 4 and it's DLC being that way. San Andreas was much more like Saint's Row, which was the real inspiration.

+1 San andreas was like the precursor to SR. GTA4 was a huge step back in terms of interactivity, fun, and not being stupid.

The thing that's bothering me about SR3 stuff so far is that it looks like maybe they haven't given the player much to actually have goals about. I mean, a sandbox of insanity is great, but if you can access so many things right up front without having to earn much of it, I dunno how that will play out. In SR2 there was at least some pacing...first you got to restyle your cars, then you got custom gang members, then you had to earn more teammates, then you had to win better bonus weapons, etc... it still built up, so I hope they keep some of that.

San Andreas had a self serious plot. Maybe your copy was broken.

Maybe it's when the gang banger steals a jet pack from area 51. I see now that represented his inner soul lifting from the bonds of economic depression.

It's being done in-house this time, the latest Red Faction ran flawlessly on modern computers so there's no reason to this Saint's Row 3 won't be the same.

You don't have to say anything.