After 10 hours of racing gimps, appearing on game shows, playing text adventures, and fighting zombies for Burt Reynolds, I stood victorious above my nemesis, Killbane. My gang, the 3rd Street Saints, had tracked him to the planet Mars where we fought in an epic battle that culminated with his ultimate defeat and me screwing up my dialog for the film “Gangstas in Space.”
Saints Row the Third was that game. A bundle of pure, concentrated fun that made the Saints Row franchise into something more than just a Grand Theft Auto wannabe. While its gameplay wasn’t particularly different from other, similar games, it shed the veneer of seriousness and embraced the absurd, providing the mission types we’ve come to love and loathe with a different spin. Developer Volition’s all-in approach to making the most fun video game they could was rewarded with both critical and commercial success.
Following up such a successful release has led to many subsequent failures for companies over the years. Volition faced that same threat with Saints Row IV. Making matters even more stressful was the impending dissolution of their parent company THQ. But instead of packing things in and making a quick rehash of its past successes, Volition found a new and even more absurd vision for its star franchise.
In the wake of the events from Saints Row the Third, the former leader of STAG, Cyrus Temple, has gone rogue and is intent on destroying the world as revenge for the Saints making him look downright silly. Being the worldwide heroes that they are, The Saints are called in as part of a joint task force with MI6 to take him out. Playing like a poor-man’s version of Splinter Cell, I take out Temple, jump onto a nuclear missile, and save the world. It’s all in a day’s work as the boss of the Saints.
Fast forward five years and The Boss has become the President of the United States. The White House has become a purple den of debauchery and as the leader of the free world I am forced to make tough decisions like whether to eliminate world hunger or “Fuck Cancer”. It’s about as over-the-top as one could expect in the opening moments. I found myself proclaiming the game to be, “So stupid” while simultaneously, the dumb grin on my face revealed my absolute enjoyment. But all that ridiculousness is simply an appetizer of what is to come.
Over the course of the next 20 hours I see humanity enslaved by an alien dictator, have sex with my friends, develop superpowers, have sex with my friends, fight for the survival of the species, have sex with my friends, sing Biz Markie to myself every time it rolls around on the fantastic retro-station that plays in my head, and have Keith David shoot me down after I proposition him for sex. After all, I’m his boss, and he wouldn’t want things to get weird. And that just scratches the surface of what happens in this game because there is so much more that I love but don’t want to spoil.
Mixing aspects of past Saints Row games, with homages to past and present gaming and film greats, Saints Row IV is a wild bundle of absurd storytelling and videogaming fun. It is also a very different game than any of its predecessors.
The introduction of superpowers to the mix forces a few key changes to the traditional Saints Row formula.. For one, when you can run faster than anything on wheels and jump whole city blocks in a single bound, cars become essentially useless. And with cars holding no worth, outside of specific mission objectives, the awesome radio stations needed to be put somewhere. That somewhere is inside your head, as music can play consistently throughout the gaming experience.
The other big change is in using the special powers as weaponry. As the game progresses, The Boss will unlock different powers to be used in combat. The primary one, blast, shoots elemental power out of The Boss’s hand. Other powers, like telekinesis, has players manipulating the environment with the power of his mind. Later powers even make The Boss a small nuclear missile that can decimate an entire area with one hit. However, while these powers might make it seem like the guns are no longer needed, that very much isn’t the case. Utilizing combinations of powers and firearms is the key to success against the alien invaders.
Even the guns get a super-powered upgrade, featuring a host of alien weapons in the classic categories such as pistols and submachine guns while also introducing a line of creative new firepower. The one most publicized is the Dubstep gun which shoots waves of music at enemies ultimately killing them with the power of its awesomeness. Personally, I had considerably more fun using weapons like the Inflator, which inflates the heads of enemies until they explode and the Bounce Shot, which fires a beam of energy that will bounce from target to target, making it a great tool for amassing headshots quickly.
The game gives you all the tools to cause wanton destruction at a moments notice but, and this is key, the game falters a bit when it sends you out to do said destruction. In Saints Row the Third, even though I was doing traditional open-world based missions, the game seemed to always know how to maximize fun and never push it to far. Saints Row IV doesn’t. While a lot of the missions are hysterical from a story standpoint, some aspects of them tend to drag on and on. And the game knows this as well. At one point in the later stages of the game, a quest actually makes reference to the fact that it is just padding for paddings sake.
Still, even though some of the core missions can’t quite gauge the fun as well as they did in the last game, the majority do get it right. There are a select few missions that are among the best I have played in a game. Without spoiling the surprise of what they are, some missions are comedic homages to some of the fine games ever designed.
Much like past Saints Row games, Saints Row IV has a variety of silly activities to go do. Fan favorites like Insurance Fraud and Mayhem return but, like with everything in the game, they have a superpowered twist. Even with this reworking of the activities, my personal playstyle tends toward ignoring these sorts of optional activities. But the game masterfully spins these silly endeavors into sidequests complete with rewards that are were highly desirable. For what may be the first time ever, I completely ran every side activity down and completed it. The other thing Volition got me to do against my very nature was collect everything in the game. This is because there was significant meaning to it. From the 39 audio logs detailing the story of Saints Row to the over 1200 power orbs that work as currency to upgrade your powers, I got them all. Sadly, because I got everything, the open world after the game proper is a touch empty.
Unlike the city though, Saints Row IV will leave you anything but empty. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed some more, and my thought at the beginning of the game still stands now that I am done with it. Saints Row IV, which on the surface is so very stupid, remembers that games are, more than anything, about fun. In an age where everyone wants the medium to grow up, Volition gave them the finger and made something special.
Note: This review was written with material received from the publisher. For more on our review process, please read here.
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