Saints Row IV was easily one of my favourite games of 2013; funny, irreverent and a hell of a lot of fun. A big, dumb unapologetic satire of popular culture’s current obsession with superheroes that happily jumped the shark whilst dressed as a hot dog.
I’m not one for repeating myself, and since Re-elected offers nothing new in terms of content over the Game of the Century Edition, featuring the Main campaign and all the DLC released for it – including the hilarious Enter the Dominatrix and How the Saints Saved Christmas along with all other additional weapons skins, clothes and general fluff, I’ll just point you in the direction of my original review for the ins and outs of the main game and my general feelings towards it;
TL:DR I fucking loved it!
No, what we’re here to talk about today is whether Re-elected is worth picking up on the PS4 or Xbox One. The simple answer is that it depends on what you played the game on previously. If you already played Saints Row IV on the PC the first time around you may as well move along, because despite some obvious improvements over the PS3 and xbox 360 versions of the game, the PC rendition still reigns supreme and you probably played the game in 1080p at 60fps in the first place.
However if, like me, you played the original on either the 360 or PS3, Re-elected becomes a much more tantalising prospect because (as I pointed out in my original review) Saints Row IV, on Xbox 360 at least, ran like an utter pig at times. It gave me all the fun and frolics of bounding around Steel port as some kind of bastard child of the Flash and Hulk, but whenever the Zin turned up to spoil your fun, the frame-rate would drop through the floor, chugging along numbly, completely incapable of keeping up with the level of destruction and mayhem unfolding on-screen.
Thanks to the PS4 being a wee bit more powerful than its previous-gen brethren, this is no longer an issue as the game now runs at an uncapped frame rate which initially rolls at a relatively-consistent 60fps during the game’s ridiculous Call of Duty-inspired intro, before petering out to a somewhat more variable 30-40 once you reach Steelport again. Oddly though, the game doesn’t have an option to lock the frame-rate at 30fps. It’s not something that I personally mind so much since it now never drops below 30fps, but for people who prefer a slightly more consistent experience, it would be a nice extra and something easily added in a patch at a later date.
Along with the much rosier frame-rate, Re-elected now renders at a native 1080p, with a much greater draw distance and slightly higher resolution textures compared to previous-gen versions. This serves to make the game-world more detailed and vibrant. Just don’t expect Metro: Redux or even GTA V levels of reworking. Re-elected is pretty much a straight port of the PC version on high settings and with some minor tweaks, most noticably the lighting and a slightly higher level of detail on some models. Zinyak in particular looks much more imposing and gnarled than he did before. However, most improvements feel subtle unless compared side-by-side to last generation’s versions of the game.
On the gameplay front, there has been almost nothing added save for touch pad controls for the games numerous QTEs, which is great if that’s your thing, but during play I was never quite sure if I’d managed to successfully input the desired command and they could often be a little awkward when you then had to use a button press afterwards.
So is Re-elected worth a second go? It all depends how much you enjoyed the original. If you hated the original Saints Row IV, then this release will not bring enough to the table to change your mind.
However, at a mere thirty notes, and with the inclusion of the new hell-bound spin off – Saints Row: Gat out of Hell (review coming soon!), the entire package is a pretty enticing one for fans of the series who traded in their PS3/360 in the rush to go next-gen. Likewise, if you missed it the first time around Re-elected is an easy recommendation to make, although far from the best in the recent crop of remasters, with that crown going to Metro: Redux. Saints Row IV Re-elected nevertheless remains an incredibly entertaining exercise in excess and the best way to experience the Saints’ super powered shenanigans on consoles.
