Although I came late to the party that was Saints Row: The Third
and only played it last year, by the end of it I was wondering just how they
could top it, and somehow, they managed to do so with Saints Row IV. Saints Row
IV continues off of Saints Row: The Third’s open world format, but amps it up
greatly. Instead of driving around in cars or piloting helicopters and VTOLs,
you run around the city at super speeds and leap over buildings, making the
open world travel even more of a blast than it was in the previous game.
However, the open world travel isn’t the only place where Saints Row IV amps it
up massively from the previous game; the story does so just as much, if not
more—and within the first twenty minutes, too.
The game opens up with a rather simple first mission to get
you back into your character, the leader of the Saints, Shaundi, and Pierce,
alongside new characters, and with the mission ending in an absolutely perfect
music cue of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”, it quickly became
apparent just what I was getting into with Saints Row IV; a lot more of what I
got from Saints Row: The Third, but more bombastic than ever, and I absolutely
loved that. After the fantastic first mission, the game skips forward about
five years, and it turns out from the events of that first mission, you become
the president of the United States, with your crew from the Saints and old
friends (as well as Keith David) running all of the important positions under
you. The honeymoon of being president is short-lived, however, as Zinyak, head
of the Zin Empire, invades Earth, kidnapping you and your friends, and trapping
you in his ship, and from there, the game takes a strange turn to an almost
parody of science fiction, but it still works, doesn’t feel overdone, and
retains that same Saints Row style and humor.
Playing through Saints Row Iv, I almost feel like it was
similar in some ways to a Mass Effect game—and definitely takes some nods to
Mass Effect 2 and 3, between the invasion of Earth and loyalty missions.
However, Saints Row IV is so much more than just drawing a comparison between
two similar things that both games have done. Saints Row IV, if it were to be
compared to a movie, would be most comparable to Spaceballs. While both of
these pieces of entertainment are meant to be parodies of the particular genres
that they’re portraying, they also stand incredibly well on their own as
hilarious and solid things. The game is not without its humor, and only very
few times did I not laugh at a joke or find myself shaking my head at what was
happening. The music cues that happen with different story beats is absolutely
perfect and fitting, and seems to be an almost specialty of Volition at this
point.
The controls for Saints Row IV are mostly fine on the PC. I
say mostly only because I had some minor trouble with a somewhat small keyboard
and a small space where my keyboard is held in my desk, makes swapping between
powers a bit of a pain at times, but overall, it isn’t too bad. The controls
are solid on a mouse and keyboard without a doubt, if not a bit of annoyance
with power swapping—though that’s a negligible complaint.
The combat in Saints Row IV is also incredibly solid. The
addition of powers not only adds to offensive capabilities, but also mobility,
with powers like the super speed and super jump allowing for ease of maneuvering
in a firefight. While powers are a great addition to the game, guns are still
just as big a part of combat, and with new guns like the Singularity Gun and
the Dubstep Gun, there’s a lot of new variety where you don’t need to stick
exclusively to an assault rifle, a pistol, and an SMG (though, admittedly, I
did most of the time). However, towards the end of the game, it almost feels
like the combat gets a bit *too* chaotic, even if we are looking at a Saints
Row game. With so many enemies on screen, so many explosions, thins can get
overwhelming in a sense, with explosions knocking you around, fires causing you
to lose control of your character, and just overall mayhem—it’s a good and a
bad thing, though at times it tends to lean more into the bad side.
The missions themselves have definite variety, and between
story missions, side missions, and loyalty missions, and overall, at least
compared to Saints Row: The Third, gave me a lot more variety and a lot more to
do throughout the course of the game. Some missions are, without a doubt,
better than others, especially when it comes to Loyalty missions, but overall,
the missions are all fantastic, especially when it comes to looking at all the
characters that have been around the past few games (and for myself, learning
about a few of the characters from earlier Saints Row games).
While the game is overall fantastic, that’s not to say there
aren’t any technical issues with the game, because there definitely are. While
I played on a mostly high-end PC, and therefore cannot comment on console
performance, I haven’t exactly heard good things about it, and would probably add
to the recommendation of playing Saints Row IV on the PC if possible. I was
able to run it on Ultra settings with not hiccups or hitches in frame rate.
The technical issues I encountered though tended to be
broken scripting leading to having to restart checkpoints in missions multiple
times. There would be points in multiple missions (not every mission, but it
did tend to happen somewhat frequently and did leave me rather annoyed) where a
certain enemy or NPC would stop on their path, where the radar would lead me
3000 meters away, or an enemy would just be unkillable. The issues that this
game had aren’t exactly excusable, and while I’m sure (or at least I hope) that
they’ll get better with time; it makes the whole game feel a bit rushed and
unpolished as a result of experiencing these issues.
In all, however, Saints Row IV is a very solid game marred
by issues that range from minor to decently annoying. It’s a great open world
experience that suffers a lot of problems that most open world games have:
bugginess. Despite that, the presentation makes up for most of it, without a
doubt, as well as incredibly solid gameplay and missions—as well as an almost
surprisingly solid story. I had questioned where they could go with Saints Row
IV after Saints Row: The Third, thinking it couldn’t get any better or over the
top. Finishing Saints Row IV, I find myself thinking the same thing, wondering
if Saints Row 5 could be any better or
more over the top than the previous incarnation. And, if Saints Row IV is the
final story before a change in characters and setting, then it is definitely a
fantastic note to end the story of the Saints on.
4/5
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