This game is notorious for not living u to the first two, plus there were developmental problems like THQ going bankrupt, Pandemic not being involved and the game only being available on PS3 in Australia, with that copy having less bugs and more content compared to the Xbox version. Still, better than Big Willy Unleashed, especially since Pox and Crypto are still voiced by Richard Horvitz and Grant Albrecht in this one.
The gameplay was very clunky, the character designs were kind of ugly and unfinished (aside from Pox), the general vibe feels like the vibe you'd get from the last two saints row games but trying even harder and falling even harder, mental abilities were too easy to upgrade while weapons were too difficult to upgrade, the plot is contrived, confusing, clichéd, too long in some parts and too short in others and some of the jokes are pretty lame, outdated, predictable and derogatory, it just pales in comparison to the forward-thinking critical, fun and ingenious humor of the first two games, and there's an eerie sense of barren loneliness once you've finished every objective in the game, I'm not just talking about a lack of replay value, but an actual stillness, lifelessness and overwhelming aimlessness to the game worlds.
But it's not a total trainwreck, I think it still did a handful of things really well, the relationship and chemistry between Crypto and Pox keeps the game alive, it's also probably the most emotionally charged the two characters have been, without giving crypto a human love interest or something like that either, this game felt like a good end to the story of crypto and pox, in the first game pox basically just barked orders at Crypto and he was snide and sarcastic in return, at this point in the series; you actually see how much pox cares about Crypto and how Crypto kind of struggles to deal with depression compared to blowing stuff up, that's not to say the game is sad or unfun though, there's still a great deal of comedic banter between the two of them.
Aside from that, character models are really nice and varied in terms of shape and animarions, textures suck but it's nice to see the variety in other places, the 70s aesthetic was done fairly well and the music by Garry Schyman is still excellent, some of the guns are sucky and useless while others are extremely fun, vocal perfomances from some of the random scannable NPCs are hilarious, and the temporal fist ability is a lot of fun to use, can also be used to break the game, and while some of the jokes aren't as good, the classic destroy all humans humor and observations aren't completely gone, there are still some very memorable lines in this one. The boss battles are kind of buggy but they are also really awesome.
I would only suggest playing through it once, and though it may feel tedious at times; there is still some great stuff to be found here. And again, it's much better than big willy unleashed, anyone who rates that game higher than this has obviously not played both of them.
