Yesterday, I showed you a video of how I begin my day in Saints Row: The Third. I said it was emblematic of the game—one sequence that sums up the total experience. Saints Row: The Third is full of such moments. Many of them involve skydiving, or tigers.
Today's video is more low-key, but it showcases one of my favorite features in Saints Row: The Third. The team at Volition has never quite had Rockstar's ability to assemble radio station playlists—the music in the game is hit-and-miss for me. Some of the tracks are great, but others are boring or even just plain bad.
But in the spirit of Saints Row's love of customization, players can put together their own "mixtape" playlist of any of the songs from any of the radio channels. While the original Saints Row allowed players to make a radio channel of ripped MP3s, the ability to remix the in-game radio stations is almost cooler, to me, particularly because it's so easy to use. It lets me stay in the game's "world" while also getting to listen to my favorite tracks.
Better, the ability to browse and listen to all of the tracks in-game is huge for me. I can't tell you how many tunes from Grand Theft Auto IV I can sing for memory without being able to tell you the name of the artist or album. I can only hope that this feature will be emulated in future open-world games. (Yes, a similar feature was available in Saints Row 2, but you had to go to the record store and actually buy the tracks you wanted. In the new game, it's all unlocked and right there on your phone—it makes a big difference in how usable it is.)
I'll have more Saints Row moments to share as the week goes on.
You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at kirk@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.