In the past, we've tended to dismiss Saints Row as a less well-executed clone of Grand Theft Auto. At times, the first two games felt uncomfortably as though they had been put together by middle-class white boys (and it takes one to know one) indulging their gangsta fantasies. But judging what we saw of the third instalment at E3, it's time for a major reassessment of the franchise. Because this time, developer Volition has really gone for it, abandoning all pretence of gritty realism and aiming to create: "The biggest, most over-the-top guilty pleasure in the world of gaming." The results were impressive and constantly hilarious to behold, if likely to generate more than a soupcon of controversy when Saints Row: the Third comes out on 15 November.
The E3 demo opened with some open-world action in a new hood for the Third Street Saints: having achieved total dominance in Stilwater, they've moved on to a new city, Steelport – a once-great industrial hub reduced to a giant den of iniquity by the shadowy Syndicate. Not that the Saints exactly intend to clean the place up. By now, they are bona fide celebrities, with their own branded trainers, energy drinks and bobble-head dolls (at last, a game with the nous to take the mickey out of the 21st century's dread celebrity culture).
That status has an impact on Saints Row the Third's gameplay: because you're starting from the top, you have access from the get-go to a ridiculous array of toys. The E3 demo began with a cruise around town (instead of fiddling around picking the locks of parked cars, Saints merely leap, feet-first, through the driver's window), where we were introduced to the Luchadores, a gang comprising Mexican wrestlers. A foray on the streets provided an opportunity to investigate some of the weapons on offer – a random hobo, for example, was bludgeoned to death with a giant purple dildo, and we donned the Apocafist – a giant pair of fists that fragged anyone unlucky enough to get in the way of a single punch. Being Saints Row, you could change into all manner of bizarre outfits, or get naked whenever you wanted.
More sandbox action involved jumping into a tank for a mini-game in which you tried to cause as much financial damage as possible to the city before the tank was destroyed. A whole gang of Luchadores were taken out by an air-strike – handy when you're feeling a bit lazy. You could even jump into a VTOL hover-plane, equipped with lasers and homing missiles, earning points for stunt-flying. Plus we saw a clownish van equipped with a giant cannon, which you could hop into and, at the press of a button, send a human flying out of the cannon (invariably to splat into the side of a skyscraper). Or you could jump into the cannon and launch yourself.
Finally, Volition launched a story/mission, in which the Saints set out to rob a bank. This involved action sprinkled with cut-scenes, but you could tell from the cut-scenes, many of which were laugh-out-loud funny, that the developer has really gone to town with the idea of the Saints being celebrities, and pretty much everything in the game is done for comic effect. We saw the Saints bickering as they prepared themselves for the job, before running into the bank wearing giant bobble-head masks in the image of Johnny Gat, gang-leader of the Saints.
All went well until the tellers started shooting back, at which point it became clear that the bank was merely a front for some nefarious Syndicate operation. Which raised the intensity of the resulting firefight several notches. Making their way into the bank (and pausing occasionally to sign autographs for those they were robbing), the Saints found the vault, but couldn't get into it, so set an explosive charge on the floor above and lifted it clear of the bank with a helicopter. You were left hanging on to the vault, firing a powerful machine-gun with one hand while beset by an entire squadron of Swat helicopters .
That joyously over-the-top, cinematic action was enjoyable enough merely to witness – we're really looking forward to participating in it. One thing is for sure: the mediocrity which often pervaded previous iterations of Saints Row has been well and truly banished from its third incarnation. Given that there will be no Grand Theft Auto game this year, Saints Row: the Third looks beautifully placed to step into the breach and satisfy our perennial craving for gang-based action this Christmas. And to satisfy a certain sector of the press's perennial craving to work itself into a lather about the iniquities of videogames.
• Saints Row the Third will be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on 15 November
