The third installment in the Saints Row series, appropriately titled Saints Row: The Third (SRTT), makes me happy as a gamer because it’s what I want an open-world game to be, but it also makes me a bit sad because I’m going to have to hold this game to the same standard I would any other game, and that standard doesn’t favor SRTT.

Saint’s Row: The Third starts out well enough with fairly large, fairly high-contrast lettering on its main menu and its submenus, but once players get to the options menu, which can be found by navigating to the EXTRAS menu from the main menu, and the options menu from the extras menu, hope of accessibility soon fades as there are really only a few options that gamers in need might find useful; there are subtitles that can be turned on and off, brightness and gamma can be adjusted, difficulty can be set to casual, normal, or hardcore, and stick sensitivity can be adjusted.

Equally important is what was left out; there is no ability to reconfigure the control scheme to suit players’ individual wants/needs – there aren’t even multiple schemes to choose from, and there is no auto-aim or aim assist to make firing weapons that much easier for those who want to play this game.

Those still optimistic once inside Steelport will soon be met with disappointment if interacting with their surroundings in certain ways interests them; most notably the campaign for those with hearing disabilities, and that goes double-y for those with a combination of hearing and visual disabilities because the subtitles are whatever’s worse than lackluster. The follow the generic white font, surrounded by a thin black line, on whatever background they find themselves on which isn’t exactly favorable, but to make matters worse, the font used is a bit too small to be read comfortably. To make the subtitles even more unpleasant, subtitles don’t even spend the amount of time the character is talking displayed on screen. Subtitles also don’t follow a recent trend of pointing out who the speaker is.

There are also a few considerations to be made where those with mobile impairments are concerned; along with those problems mentioned above, there is also an issue with close-quarters combat acting like a quicktime event calling for the L1, R1, and Left Stick to be used to enhance the effects of the attack.

There are missions over the course of the campaign which are timed missions which doesn’t increase the playability of Saints Row: The Third as there is no set amount of times that a mission can be failed and then skipped which means that there is no guarantee players will be able to make it through the game all the way to the end.

On a positive note, Steelport is actually pretty easily navigated thanks to the GPS function which can be accessed through the smartphone (which is all around pleasantly accessible) which displays routes to the targeted location on the mini-map and arrows in intersections which makes things a little easier for those unable to see the mini-map, though it is possible for vehicles to block these arrows making it somewhat easier to get lost.

Players uninterested in the story, who are more interested in causing trouble, SRTT will take care of those wants easily as the city is not all that hard to look at, and is even harder to not find trouble to cause.

Another positive issue of note, which really only benefit those who have trouble distinguishing colors, car and clothing customization gives players names to associate with colors such as “violet 1” and “platinum” unlike other games who just allow players to choose randomly from a wheel.

At a glance
Hearing:
~Subtitles can be turned on and off.
~Subtitles follow a small white font with thin black outline on an unspecified background. (-1 point)
~Subtitles at times act more quickly than speech. (-1 point)
~Subtitles do not specify the speaker. (-1 point)
~No captioning in game. (-1 point)

Recommended score of 6 out of 10

Visual:
~Font size used for subtitles is too small. (-1 point)
~GPS not only plots course to destination on the mini-map but also places arrows which are most of the time hard to miss in intersections.
~Games setting is usually easily seen, but gamma and brightness can be adjusted in options menu.
~Cross-hairs/dot are sometimes hard to place in certain environments or on distant targets. (-1 point)
~Colors on customization menus are named and not just general areas on a color wheel.

Recommended score of 8 out of 10

Mobile:
~Control scheme is not remap-able, nor is there choice of schemes. (-1 point)
~Control scheme doesn’t seem beneficial to one-handed gameplay without assistive technology. (-1 point)
~No auto-aim/aim-assist. (-1 point)
~Close quarters combat can either be a button-masher or trigger a quicktime-like sequence which can be made more devastating by correctly timed button-mashing. (-1 point)
~Some missions are timed. (-1 point)
~No failure limiter which makes it entirely possible to not see the end of the game. (-1 point)

Recommended score of 4 out of 10