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Saints Row: The Third footage is seven minutes of open world mayhem

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Saints Row: The Third looks like full-contact Fable. That’s the impression created by this latest gameplay clip, which basically amounts to seven minutes of mantastic posturing and crotch-punching, with the occasional game feature demonstration thrown in for good measure. Some standards need to be maintained, after all.

The Saints Row series has always existed as a bizarre sort of polar opposite to Grand Theft Auto. While the Rockstar Games franchise reaches for more serious fare, delivering an intricate narrative alongside a realistically gritty take on violence, Saints developer Volition, Inc. is more concerned with rendering unique weapon animations for those aforementioned crotch punches. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The latest Saints Row follows the visual cues of Rockstar’s GTA IV; the Liberty City adventure looks better based on what’s shown in this brief video, but the color and light filters used in Volition’s newly created sandbox city definitely feel like they’re ripped from the earlier game. Also, GTA IV DEFINITELY didn’t have a people cannon.

A number of new weapons and vehicles are shown off during the video, but the highlight is Professor Genki’s Super-Ballistic Man-a-pult. Essentially a pickup truck with a giant cannon loaded into the rear well, the vehicle comes equipped with a vacuum-like device that sucks random pedestrians into the cannon as ammo. They can then be fired off into the distance (or a nearby building), accompanied by a satisfying “popping” sound. If you happen to be playing a co-op game, you can also have one of the human players climb into this puppy.

Joy.

Saints Row: The Third is coming at the tail end of the holiday season, set for a November 15 release.

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Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
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