We'd never played a Saints Row game before we played Saints Row 4. Somehow, we'd always dismissed the series as a shoddy GTA wannabe, and the sort of thing that we didn't want tainting our refined and delicate palette.
Why, it would be like eating a week-old Meatball Marinara sub out of a drain, after decades of eating at a posh restaurant like Nando's - or so we believed.
Why, it would be like eating a week-old Meatball Marinara sub out of a drain, after decades of eating at a posh restaurant like Nando's - or so we believed.
What changed our mind about giving the fourth instalment a crack was twofold: 1) We'd been starved of games for a while, and we were desperate; 2) Its predecessor was promoted with a bunch of viral promos created by Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker, from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job. Which we slightly love.
And alright, we didn't play Saints Row 3 off the back of them, but those commercials stayed with us sufficiently that we were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt when number 4 flipped and tumbled through our awareness.
You can see one of those commercials - which our older readers may recall us mentioning in the previous sentence - right here:
And alright, we didn't play Saints Row 3 off the back of them, but those commercials stayed with us sufficiently that we were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt when number 4 flipped and tumbled through our awareness.
You can see one of those commercials - which our older readers may recall us mentioning in the previous sentence - right here:
SURPWISE!
Aaaaanyway... imagine our surprise when Saints Row 4 turned out to be everything we expected... and that we enjoyed it regardless. Indeed, we enjoyed it precisely because the game was a sort of crap knock-off of GTA, and - by Zoot - seemed to revel in the fact! It didn't even try to compete with bigger budget games, and for that we saluted it. Literally. Every morning for a week until our elbows bled.
Gloriously, shamelessly, dumb and stupid - you started out as a gangster-turned-president, before the game morphed into some bizarre super-hero romp (your powers explained by supposedly putting you in a Matrix-like recreation of the real world). It was sort of like Prototype or InFamous, but bigger and madder and more OTT. You never quite know what sort of nonsense the game was going to throw at you next.
Frankly, it was never the prettiest of experiences - and things aren't much improved on this next-gen re-release - but rest assured that it honestly doesn't matter. You're not playing this to gawp at the pretty sunsets, or to tell your friends about the clever water effects. You're playing it because you can customise your character to resemble the Incredible Hulk, and then make him run around the city in a bra and high heels, while kicking cars at aliens who are dressed like a can of energy drink.
Aaaaanyway... imagine our surprise when Saints Row 4 turned out to be everything we expected... and that we enjoyed it regardless. Indeed, we enjoyed it precisely because the game was a sort of crap knock-off of GTA, and - by Zoot - seemed to revel in the fact! It didn't even try to compete with bigger budget games, and for that we saluted it. Literally. Every morning for a week until our elbows bled.
Gloriously, shamelessly, dumb and stupid - you started out as a gangster-turned-president, before the game morphed into some bizarre super-hero romp (your powers explained by supposedly putting you in a Matrix-like recreation of the real world). It was sort of like Prototype or InFamous, but bigger and madder and more OTT. You never quite know what sort of nonsense the game was going to throw at you next.
Frankly, it was never the prettiest of experiences - and things aren't much improved on this next-gen re-release - but rest assured that it honestly doesn't matter. You're not playing this to gawp at the pretty sunsets, or to tell your friends about the clever water effects. You're playing it because you can customise your character to resemble the Incredible Hulk, and then make him run around the city in a bra and high heels, while kicking cars at aliens who are dressed like a can of energy drink.
EXTRA EXTRAS
There's a smattering of extras with this re-release, the most robust of which is Gat Out of Hell - a fully-rounded expansion, which sees the President sent to Hell, after his former gangmates wrongly dabbled with a ouija board. Two of those gang members try to rescue him.
We all have our own vision of what Hell is like. For us, it's being trapped in a lift with Ainsley Harriott and a bag of potatoes. Every couple of seconds he licks his lips, talks in that grating posh accent, and reaches into the bag to withdraw a potato, waggle his tongue, and say: "That's gonna make a lovely rosti, isn't it, Ains? Honestly, what am I like!?". And then he improvises a calypso song about potatoes, before laughing uproariously at his self-perceived wit.
Amusingly, the Saints Row version is just another sandbox city - populated with condemned souls. You can fly, thanks to the introduction of wings, but it's mostly a series of familiar side quests, which lead up to an encounter with the arch-dude himself - Santa Claus (Satan Claus).
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite attain the glorious levels of nonsense as its parent game. There is a slight, unavoidable, sense of going through the motions, and it feels like a setting and a set-up that is begging for a full game to really explore. But - hey - we're not recommending this for the expansion. We're recommending it for the main game. Which is crap. But it's sort of genius crap. Ie: Stephen Hawking's poo.
SUMMARY: Gat out of Hell might disappoint, but if you've never played SR4, and can overlook some really quite poor visuals - do play this.
OVERALL: 85.983%
There's a smattering of extras with this re-release, the most robust of which is Gat Out of Hell - a fully-rounded expansion, which sees the President sent to Hell, after his former gangmates wrongly dabbled with a ouija board. Two of those gang members try to rescue him.
We all have our own vision of what Hell is like. For us, it's being trapped in a lift with Ainsley Harriott and a bag of potatoes. Every couple of seconds he licks his lips, talks in that grating posh accent, and reaches into the bag to withdraw a potato, waggle his tongue, and say: "That's gonna make a lovely rosti, isn't it, Ains? Honestly, what am I like!?". And then he improvises a calypso song about potatoes, before laughing uproariously at his self-perceived wit.
Amusingly, the Saints Row version is just another sandbox city - populated with condemned souls. You can fly, thanks to the introduction of wings, but it's mostly a series of familiar side quests, which lead up to an encounter with the arch-dude himself - Santa Claus (Satan Claus).
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite attain the glorious levels of nonsense as its parent game. There is a slight, unavoidable, sense of going through the motions, and it feels like a setting and a set-up that is begging for a full game to really explore. But - hey - we're not recommending this for the expansion. We're recommending it for the main game. Which is crap. But it's sort of genius crap. Ie: Stephen Hawking's poo.
SUMMARY: Gat out of Hell might disappoint, but if you've never played SR4, and can overlook some really quite poor visuals - do play this.
OVERALL: 85.983%
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