Saints Row 4 Review a.k.a. Saints Row 3.5

Lucas Versantvoort / October 4, 2014

Saints Row 4 is a game that builds on the ideas presented in Saints Row: The Third, but does so with too few innovations and laughs to really distinguish itself. Yes, we are in fact dealing with Saints Row 3.5.

            The story is simple and it’s all intended as a joke naturally. After years of dealing with street gangs, The Saints have finally made it and you’ve become the POTUS. After deciding whether to feed the world or cure cancer, earth is invaded by an alien race called the Zin, led by Zinyak who kidnaps all your familiar friends. It is up to you to gather your allies, including but not limited to, Vice President Keith David. A bit later, earth is blown up and your stranded on a Mass Effect-like ship as you enter a simulation of Steelport to free your crewmembers.

The zaniness continues in Saints Row 4

What does a Saints Row title need to do to succeed? It needs to be fun (of the crazy kind). Does this fourth entry accomplish that? …Mostly. There’s a lot of humor to be found, some of it good, some of it…not so good. I particularly liked the intentional 'glitches' that screw up enemy animations. In between you’ll be treated to what sets this game apart from its predecessor: superpowers. Are they fun to use? Sure. They’re quite a lot of them and you’re treated to them over the course of the entire game, so there’s no shortage of new things to try out. If only it were easier to cycle through these powers. There’s a total of twelve which is great, but trying to remember where each one is isn’t easy at all as they’re divided equally across the D-pad.

One of the things I’ve always found awkward about Saints Row are the attempts to make the characters more or less believable. Every once in a while, there comes a short cutscene that is pretty much intended as dramatic, like when Matt (the hacker guy) suggests that rescuing Gat may not be a good idea after which our main character goes into a fit and starts punching his lights out or when you try to seduce Gat. It’s obvious the Saints Row series is intended as parody, but these scenes don’t seem to fit a hundred percent, even if some are meant ironically. They’re not a regular occurrence, so it’s a minor complaint.

            A bigger complaint is that this game gets boring real quick. You’d think a parody of Grand Theft Auto would have something new to give you every mission and this is partly true. There are a lot of fun missions that try something new. One has you controlling a robot power armor and mowing down enemies (of course). There’s an early parody of the 50s that’s fun, etc. But the game drags on, especially if you’re doing side quests. Some side quests are great as they’re story-centered and upgrade your teammates, but the rest is basically doing variations on the same thing. More often than not, you’ll do mission after mission – bookended by a meaningless quote from one of your crewmembers – either hacking (which involves killing enemies), taking over an enemy base (which involves killing enemies), assassinating some ‘rogue program’ (which involves killing enemies), the list goes on… Don’t get me wrong, there’s variation (like the platforming side quests), just not enough to sustain the game’s length.

Hmm...how will I explain this to the people?

There’s also the issue of superpowers. Besides being hard to cycle through, they also screw up the believability of the city of Steelport. Granted, creating a believable world is less of a priority here than in GTA, but so much detail went into the design that I long for the reduced madness of Saints Row 3 where walking and driving were real options. Now, you just use Super Sprint and Super Jump and run and soar through and over Steelport. It makes the world feel like a level, not a city and the added speed paradoxically bores me. You’d think flying would be thrilling, but travelling quickly becomes a drag every time you see your objective is several kilometers removed from your current position and you’re just waiting for it to be over. It also unbalances the game. On the one hand, you have Super Sprint and Super Jump and on the other hand, your map remembers shortcuts for your gps once you ‘discover’ some random alleyway? For what, so I could save a few seconds driving through it which I never do, because flying is faster?

            It all boils down to the following: if you liked 3, you’ll like 4, but don’t go in expecting a major leap forward, go in expecting 3.5. In the end, I vastly prefer 3, as it felt more grounded and kept my interest for longer. This just feels like an occasionally fun add-on.

3 blowup dolls out of 5

Stray observation:

Speaking of major leaps forward (or lack thereof), a new clip showing gameplay footage from Gat Out of Hell appeared recently. It included flying as, and I quote, a “new key feature”…even though 4 pretty much did the same thing. Now why am I worried that Gat Out of Hell will feel like another add-on?