Gang Member. Gang Leader. Pop Culture Icon. President of the United States?!? If that progression seems odd to you, then you need to get yourself acquainted with the Saints Row franchise. What started as a GTA clone has differentiated itself with its over-the-top action and crazy antics, to forge its own unique identity. Now, the fourth instalment in the series takes things to an even larger degree of absurdity.
Saints Row IV may be critiqued as a low effort rehash of Saints Row the Third, given its usage of the same models and map of Steelport. However, the game has enough gameplay additions and tweaks to feel like a proper sequel. The addition of Superpowers completely changes the gameplay, since the player is now able to unleash a lot more chaos in the city. The enemies have also become harder to kill and provide more of a challenge early on.
The story of the game begins with you defeating your old nemesis from the previous game, Cyrus Temple. You end up in the White House (now called the White Crib) as the President of the United States. As you are about to host a press conference, the Earth is attacked by aliens called the Zin under the leadership of Emperor Zinyak. They abduct most of your cabinet and finally, You. Waking up, you find yourself in an ideal 50’s world where everyone is too nice, courteous and a stickler for the rules. Something feels off due to all the pixellation around the people and your suspicions are confirmed by Kinzie, who reveals that you are trapped in a virtual world called the Simulation. The only way to break this orderly world is to cause chaos, something you are extremely good at.
This yarn is quite cliché and embraces that fully. The first Act in Saints Row IV ends with a triumph followed by a tragic event, just as in the previous game, and turns the game from defiance into a revenge quest. The game alternates a lot between the real world and the Simulation from this point. The Homies you’ve rescued from the Simulation will give you side quests to complete in there and these quests are usually the activities you see littered around the map. Thus if you free roam and finish all these activities earlier, you might miss out on some dialogue. You also rescue new Homies from within the simulation. This makes the game feel rather restrictive in terms of the openness of its world.
The fake Steelport of Saints Row IV is a little different from the previous game with lots of Alien structures added to it. All your familiar Crib spots have been reduced to ruins in an effort to taunt you. Zinyak’s touch is evident with all his statues that scar the face of the city. His minions patrol the streets and the human looking cops transform into aliens as your heat level increases. You can neutralise the heat level by destroying a special fast moving golden sphere, reminiscent of the Cores from Portal. These are called CIDs and their normal siblings frustrate your efforts to quickly kill the enemies warping in by providing a shield around them. If your heat level hits the maximum limit, the sky starts raining fire and a Warden comes forth to put you in your place. Should you manage to defeat him, you can absorb his powers in a button mashing Quick Time Event (QTE).
Many of the activities from Saints Row the Third return with a unique alien twist to them. The developers have been successful at not making them feel repetitive, despite the core gameplay being the same. Insurance Fraud benefits greatly from the addition of a ragdoll option making it much easier to score. The collectibles are also quite meaningful as they either let you purchase upgrades or tell you more of the back-story, or are just motivators. You need to play a hacking minigame to unlock stores, which involves playing a game of connect the pipe. There are some new activities that take advantage of the new superpower mechanics in Saints Row IV. You also have challenges that involve getting kills with certain weapons or doing some silly activities like super-kicking cars.
Saints Row IV has some interesting new weapons such as the Dubstep gun, the Inflato-Ray, the Abduct-o-matic and the Bounce Gun among others. The weapons introduce creative new ways to cause mayhem in the Simulation. Your standard weapons have also been overhauled and can be customised to change their appearance or even construction such as the rocket launcher can be made to look like a Guitar case. There are some hidden weapons to be found around fake Steelport including the giant purple dildo bat from the previous game. You don’t have the throwable weapons like grenades though.
The Trouble with Clones DLC in Saints Row the Third gave us a teaser of the superpowers Volition was experimenting with. Superpowers replace the throwable weapons and some basic travelling functions too. You can superjump, supersprint, air dash and glide around virtual Steelport, making cars redundant and also giving the real world travel a very lethargic feel. You can use various elements to cast superpowers such as freezing, burning or telekinesis. You can also use a superpower type called Buff that affects objects and people in your vicinity as well as any bullets you fire. Pounding the ground is another superpower type that serves as an area attack and can be useful when surrounded by a mob. A useful ability you can unlock later in the game is Death from Above that lets you hover in mid-air and plummet to the ground at speed, with area damage dependent on height. An upgrade to this power lets you cause a small nuclear explosion, which is the only way to take out flying targets with this power.
The enemies in Saints Row IV range from the basic human cops to Zin soldiers and specialists to Murderbots and Armoured Balls to vehicles like Hoverbikes, UFOs and Tanks. The ultimate Zin opponent is the Warden and killing him resets the heat to zero. There is variety added in some of the activities where you get bikers, Genki, mascots and distorted civilians as well as some gang members from previous games. Some quests where you invade the simulations of your homies to rescue them have their own gameplay rules and can even make you play through a 2D brawler or an illustrated text adventure, all sans superpowers.
If you get bored of all the regular quests then you can take up the challenges or hunt some interesting achievements. The game has plenty of Easter eggs and nods to popular events. There is some bonus dialogue on offer if you call in multiple homies to accompany you in the Simulation. While you can still customise cars and call in vehicles, the activity feels pointless once you’ve upgraded your superpowers. The Monster Trucks feel like a wasted effort.
The game allows you to purchase upgrades for your abilities, weapons and vehicles using a currency called Cache, a fine wordplay on the term cash. You can use cache to shop in the different stores that dot the simulated Steelport. The other currency in play is in the form of collectibles called Clusters. It can be used to upgrade your superpowers. Collecting clusters will see you hopping around the game world and using superpowers to get some hidden ones. This activity should easily consume most of your free-roaming gameplay time and should train your flying and jumping skills.
There are two content DLC and the rest are merely costumes. Enter the Dominatrix is more of a deleted scenes affair and is presented in that exact manner with some cutscenes being just concept drawings. The BDSM sections from Saints Row the Third make a return with there being an actual pony cart race! How the Saints saved Christmas is an interesting twist to the game and allows you to help Santa Claus get rid of Clawz, an evil manifestation of the jolly St. Nicholas created by Zinyak. The Christmas DLC also adds a couple of themed activity types, which can be quite challenging.
Saints Row IV does have its failings such as some activities being an exercise in frustration to get the gold medals on offer. It has two activity types exclusively for co-op, which can’t be accessed in Single player. It puts a bit of restriction on the openness of the world by making all the activities and stores part of sidequests that come with bonus dialogue. This can feel like a major drawback for fans of open world gameplay. You can sometimes get stuck inside objects if an explosion throws you there. The back and forth switching between the Simulation and the real world can get annoying. Some buildings in the DLC can show the blue areas under the buildings. The two isolated locations in the Christmas DLC also have a lot of blank space in the outer periphery that is noticeable as it is land and not water as surrounds Steelport. The updated character creator allows for much more customisation to your character and you can even import your old character from Saints Row the Third. However, this functionality has been broken since the franchise was bought by Deep Silver post the closure of THQ.
The soundtrack is decent and the most interesting songs are those you hear the characters sing along with, adding their voices to the mix. Sound effects are nicely done too with fine attention to details. The game consistently tries to break the fourth wall through its dialogue. If the player character is frozen in a spot for some time, you might hear them ask you to pick up the controller. From a visual standpoint, Saints Row IV is no graphical masterpiece, but it doesn’t look bad either. It embraces the glitch effects so much at times that it’s hard to tell if something is a bug or intentional.
All in all, Saints Row IV can be comfortably called a proper sequel to the franchise. It easily surpasses the pervious entry and adds a new dimension to the crazy gameplay that the franchise is known for with well-balanced superpowers. It does suffer some from some minor issues, but makes up for it by virtue of its interesting gameplay. There is fun to be had if you embrace your crazy side as well.
