By Chris Mueller /
7. Saint's Row The Third
The Saint's Row series has been considered a GTA clone for a long time, but the way they took the game and turned it into a virtual reality menagerie of insane enemies and superpowers your character never could have had in the real world created a new feel for the franchise. However, Saint's Row The Third was the pinnacle of the series. The large city setting, the hilarious stereotyped characters and Mayor Burt "F'n" Reynolds made it a fun romp and helped to carve a legacy that made it a game that was not automatically compared to Grand Theft Auto every time. The brightly colored city was peppered with various types of neighborhoods, with some areas boasting massive skyscrapers and others having small houses and little businesses.
Not only could you customize your character to look any way you wanted, with some options being downright disturbing, but you could collect tons of weapons, safehouses and vehicles to make your gang the strongest in the city. The graphics were a big step up from previous installments and some of the side activities like Tank Mayhem were major highlights of the whole playing experience. They even took a popular video game cliché and threw in some zombies in one section of the city. What's more fun that taking out zombies with a rocket launcher? Nothing, that's what.