In the opening monologue for Saints Row IV, a narrator states that the Saints decided they wanted less mercy killing and more fun. Looking back over the course of the entire series it’s obvious that there was a clear decision to change the tone of the series after Saints Row 2, which, in my mind, is one of the few games I’ve ever played where I genuinely hated the cast. You spent the game playing a psychopath carrying out a campaign of terror which made no sense to me.
It felt mindless and cruel, your character’s actions were nonsensical and stupid culminating in you locking an innocent girl in the trunk of a car and then tricking her boyfriend into killing her by crushing her in a monster truck, understandably he then tries to kill you. He fails and then your character taunts him while you slaughter him too.
It was a shame because if you stripped out the morally vacuous parts of the story there was actually a lot of fun to be had, especially whilst completing the games activities. Committing insurance fraud by chucking yourself in front of cars, driving around the city on a flaming quad bike, causing millions in property damage and slowly turning the map purple as you ousted rival gangs was incredibly compelling and addictive.
Then came Saints Row: The Third, a game that managed to finally drag the series out of the shadow of GTA and right a lot of the wrongs of the previous instalment. It was over the top, it was funny and succeeded in making the Saints much more sympathetic and likeable characters by basically making them a parody of themselves and the whole game a kind of spoof of open world games and the media’s obsession with gang culture and celebrity.
Saints Row IV takes the craziness of Saints Row The Third and runs with it, far beyond its logical conclusion, aiming its new found satirical eye at the superhero genre, science fiction and the wonderful world of gaming whilst making the leader of the Saints arguably one of the most powerful people in the World: The President of the United States.
The games hilarious opening set the tone for the rest of the game pretty much from the off as the Saints go to some middle-eastern hellhole to stop terrorists lead by Cyrus Temple from nuking Washington in a level that apes gamings recent infatuation with Michael Bay-esque military shooters, discusses why barrels explode and takes the piss out of Resident Evil 4 before ending in a sequence which is equal parts Armageddon and Dr. Strangelove.
The references come thick and fast, the jokes are much better written, sure there’s still plenty of profanity and you can still kick someone right in the plums if you want to, but it no longer feels crass.
Although the jubilation at saving the world doesn’t last long as after a scene straight out of The West Wing if it had stared Charlie instead of Martin Sheen, The Zin Empire invade, destroy the Whitehouse and enslave humanity inside a series of computer simulations built to imprison and break the spirit of the occupant like that film with Keanu Reeves in, I think it was called The Gift.
Turns out the leader of the Saints really hates 50’s sitcoms, sharing similar proclivities it was almost cathartic to be able to fuck up Pleasantville at several points during the game.
After the Saints leader breaks out of their own personal hell, the leader of the Zin then comes up with another cunning plan: toss you back into a simulated version of Steelport in which the 3rd Street Saints never existed.
What he didn’t bank on though was Kinzie using her hacking skills to provide you with super powers and the means to be able to enter and exit the simulation at will, but to rescue the other members of the Saints and take over the simulation.
This is done by first rescuing your target from within the simulation done then taking them back to your new base of operations in the real world, a stolen Zin ship. Complete with futuristic skin tight space suits and Bioware baiting, ship wide, hanky panky with the other members of your crew. Except for Keith David, he’s a professional, damnit!
The campaign is split between the simulation and the real world. Which, despite not having super powers in the real world, you do still get a very fun new robotic toy. Although over the course of the 20 hours it took me complete the campaign I spent 90% of my time in Steelport.
Over all, Steelport hasn’t changed much at all. The map is pretty much the same except there are some new alien towers to climb, a menacing independence day style alien ship lingering in downtown and parts of the map feel taller to accommodate your new found super powers although that may just be that beforehand I never really thought about how high buildings were because you couldn’t dive on top of them.
The city may be the same but thanks to your new found abilities how you interact with the city and the feel of the game is completely different. It’s much less GTA and more akin to the likes of Crack Down and Prototype.
Once I had unlocked Super Speed and Super Jump, I didn’t bother driving at all unless the level demanded I use a vehicle. It was much quicker and more fun to just bounce and glide around the city, doing my best Alex Mercer impression.
Buildings ceased to just feel like decoration and become vaulting points for your next leap. Whilst you feverishly scour rooftops and open spaces looking for the next cluster to further augment your growing arsenal of super powers.
This, in many ways, is a double edged sword as you no longer need to drive there’s little point to any of the games vehicles and the games soundtrack, although mixed, can often go unheard. Although if you do get in a car, create a mix tape. It will continue playing after you leave the car.
Within the simulation, as well as the aforementioned speed and jump, you also have access to four main offensive powers: Blast, Telekinesis, Shock and Buff, as well as Super Strength, which makes your nut shots lift the poor bugger receiving it off the ground, Death From Above, which lets you slam into the ground at the end of a jump and Super Shield which deflects bullets whilst you use Super Speed.
Blast enables you to hurl elemental bolts of fire, ice and weirdly enough mind control at groups of enemies which will as you’d expect either freeze them. At this point you can hose them down with a gun and shatter them, set them on fire and, after a nice little upgrade later on, will then explode when they die, or lastly they’ll fight for you for a bit.
Telekinesis works as you’d expect, enabling you to pick up pretty much anything that isn’t bolted down and chuck it with the power of your mind, with variants to charge what you pick with electricity which arcs between the object and whatever it hits or alternatively to leech the life out of whatever you’ve grabbed.
Shock lets you stomp on the ground creating a shockwave which knocks everything backwards, with variants that shrink everything it hits and another which holds them in the air so you can easily pick them off.
Finally, Buff imbues your weapons with one of three different types of elemental damage fire, which burns, electricity which stuns, and ice which freezes. Another fun side effect is that it also enables you to use your guns to drop enemy’s shields. Something you’ll be really thankful for.
On the whole, the game does a great job of making you feel powerful, but not invincible. Your offensive powers complimenting your arsenal of weird and wonderful weaponry nicely,
Sure, you could use a shotgun or a pair of pistols to take out foes but alien weaponry is much more fun. Favourites included the Singularity gun which creates black holes that suck in and destroy nearby enemies, the Dub Step gun which attacks enemies with powerful homing shots in time with the wub, and my personal favourite, the Inflator, which creates a ray that inflates the head of whoever gets hit with it until they explode.
As you would expect, if you start running down the road inflating everyone you come across you will very quickly find yourself on the wrong side of the law. Within the simulation things tend to esculate pretty quickly. First off the ZPD will show up, basically rank and file cops. You kill a few of them and they will morph into Zin Troopers. Keep pissing them off and then they’ll open portals full of super powered Zin with little robotic buddies providing them with a shield. And murderbots with miniguns for arms. Beat them and you’ll have to fight a Warden: a big, hulking, super powered bastard that will chase you around the city until one of you is dead.
Although to be honest by the end of the game you can kick the crap out of anything the city throws at you. They’re still a bit of a bugger.
This can all be avoided though if you can catch the Golden Cid. A big shiny Harry Potter reference. Catch it, kill it and all the Zin forget you were just hacking into a shop or that you just did millions in property damage in a tank.
As with previous entries in the series there are plenty of activities other than the games main missions to keep you busy while you tear the city apart. Fraud, Mayhem and Fight Club make all return except now make use of your new super powers. Fraud in particular is now absolutely ridiculous as you can now basically toss your avatar from one end of the city to the other by rag dolling at the right point after a super jump.
Mayhem makes use of new Tanks and weaponry as well as your telekinesis skills to throw massive balls at bad guys that crush and destroy everything in their paths.
There’s also a new Genki game to play: Mind over murder, in which you have to throw cars, people and Genki heads through different coloured hoops for points and fabulous prizes.
The biggest new addition to the activities are the Rift missions that take place in the simulations back end to perform various tasks using your super powers such as racing, platforming and destroying things with your Telekinesis powers.
As much as I enjoy painting the town purple, the games activities can wear a little thin after a while but are still worth pursuing for those all important weapon and power upgrades.
This is in stark contrast to the game’s main missions which are varied, inventive and genuinely funny at times. Highlights include, defending Pearce from a fifty foot can of Saint’s Flow called Paul, rescuing Mat Miller from an old school text adventure, saving new girl, super spy Asha, from an evil version of the Saints leader in a level that sends up the spy genre complete with cardboard boxes and plenty of light bulb murder and rescuing Johnny Gat, I would tell you what from, but I don’t want to spoil it. What I will say is that if you grew up in the 90’s and owned a Megadrive you’ll love it.
The only thing that holds it back are some technical issues, on the Xbox 360 version at least. Most notably is when the on screen action gets particularly hectic the game will begin to chug along dropping well below 30fps, even when installed to the HDD. Also I had clipping issues on a few occasions with enemies getting stuck in odd places forcing a restart, on one occasion the bike I was riding sank into the floor and got stuck and the game crashed on more than one occasion.
Despite these niggles, I would still recommend picking up Saints Row IV. It’s a raucous, self referential and keenly satirical exercise in excess that does it damnedest to put a smile on your face and keep it there from start to finish.
By metaphorically jumping the shark, Volition have finally managed to shake the GTA clone moniker properly and establish Saint’s Row as a series with it’s own bold identity and brand of humour to boot. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what their band of puckish rogues do next.
