Some might have believed that after “Saints Row: The Third,” that it was impossible to one-up the amount of ludicrousness that the Saints Row series has become. With all the insanity that pours from every orifice of the previous title, one might have believed that “Saints Row IV” would be nothing more the download content it had originally had been intended to become, only repackaged as a full game. And truthfully, at the onset of the first few moments of the game, it was hard to disagree.
But “Saints Row IV” is like everything and nothing you’d expect from a Saints Row game. Just when you think the developers couldn’t push the envelope any further, you find out that they just decided to set the envelope on fire and throw it away, because, hey, who uses the post office to mail letters anymore?
The boss of the Third Street Saints has come a long way since induction into the gang. Once small time gangster, then leader of the Saints, the boss has now decided to widen territory and arsenal exponentially when he or she takes position as President of the United States. Your experience playing the role of POTUS is short lived, however, as aliens decide to attack the White House no more than a few minutes into the game, abducting cabinet members, while they also seem to try to make a point to destroy everything in their sight. Inevitably, the heroic president is also grabbed and abducted, and thrust into the world of the apparent new alien overlords.
From the first moments a player throws their first fireball, uses telekinesis, or fires the Dubstep Gun, they’ll know that Saints Row isn’t Kansas anymore, metaphorically speaking. More specifically, most of the game takes place inside a computer simulation, where the player will once again control the Saints Boss, who wants to take a shot at demolishing the evil alien leader Zinyak, as well as his imperialist Zin Empire. Players will now have loads of new skills at their disposal, from the ability to glide to super speed sprints, as well as the ability to even jump clean over some buildings with a single press of a button.
Due to this, players will probably use certain things like cars or aircraft due to the lack of the necessity in their use as transportation devices. However, Saints Row adds a few new vehicles that, if only for the novelty behind them, are extremely fun to take around the city for destructive joyrides. When the tire of your hot-rod monster truck is as big as some of the cars you drive alongside (or over, depending on what kind of person you are), things get pretty interesting.
While the overall story campaign is relatively short experience, it is an incredibly hilarious and enjoyable one, stuffed to the brim with pop culture references and hilarious homages to other well known game series, from “Mass Effect” to “Metal Gear Solid.” Aside from the relatively short main campaign, the sandbox environment Saints IV offers is also loaded with many items to collect and side missions for the player to complete. Race against the clock in point-to-point race missions to earn cash and XP, or blaze around the city completing missions alongside his faithful friends and compatriots.
Some missions even call upon the POTUS to enter a secondary reality inside the virtual reality system which seems to invoke the spirits of Disney’s “TRON.” Due to the fact that the game is so short, players might want to take their time to explore many of these other missions. There are also small “data clusters†scattered across the city which allow the player to upgrade the plethora of super powers the character gains as they play through the game.
Half the fun of playing “Saints Row IV” is exploring and generally causing havoc with the weapons, powers and vehicles provided, much in the same way of other sandbox games. The city is almost indistinguishable from that of “Saints Row: The Third,” besides a few buildings and the darker color palette of the virtual environment.
Saints Row has now become the wonderfully freakish baby of “Grand Theft Auto,” “Crackdown” and the charm and humor of “Borderlands.” Besides the short story and the sometimes annoyingly similar side missions, “Saints Row IV” presents the player with the thing we’re all looking for when we’re playing a video game – fun. If you’re that person that’s looking for pornographic amounts of violence and creative ways to destroy everything in sight while having a good laugh at the same, or you’re a politician looking for a new game to lobby against, look no further, because “Saints Row IV” has got just what you’re looking for.
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