Saints Row IV Review (FefnirIRL)
It honestly feels like the Saints Row developers heard people say, "Oh, Saints Row? That cartoony, slightly goofier GTA? Yeah, it's cool I guess.", and just take full offense to it. "A little goofy? BULLSHIT. Turn it up to 11, our whole world is a simulation, there are glitches all around, but actually they're features, aliens are invading the real world AND the simulation, also you have super powers and can fly, but here, you can still steal a billion cars and make a sweet ass garage! GTA is a baby game for baby gamers." I wasn't at the table when Saints Row IV was pitched, but I imagine I wasn't far off.
I had my fun in Saints Row 3, but it did always feel like a skewed version of Grand Theft Auto in the sense that it was an open-world game where there were similar criminal-like stories, a random assortment of weapons, (with some added for absurdity, i.e. dildo bat), and the ability to hijack vehicles and commandeer them, assembling your own fleet of whips to cart you around town from mission to mission. However, Saints Row IV totally blew me out of the water with how they revamped nearly everything.
First off, while there is the same "weapon wheel" type gun system, the guns and upgrades in this game are way more out-there than the more grounded arsenal of 3. Due to the game's environment and enemies that you face, I think it really just opened the door for a ton of different options to spice up the game's variety instead of machine gun, machine gun, pistol, bazooka, machine gun. I particularly enjoyed the dubstep gun, which just fired sonic beams and played dubstep as you vaporized nerdz.
Secondly, I loved that the game took place in a simulation, because it was the perfect excuse to just throw superpowers onto your character. I'm not a car guy, so I'd usually just pick up some random car that seemed to go fast, but never really cared enough to customize it or hunt down better vehicles. I loved the power system in this because it immediately gives you super speed and super jumps, which are both able to be upgraded to the point that they can easily compete with any car in the game as far as traversal, and I spent the majority of my playthrough just sprinting from objective to objective.
Honestly it seems like the dev team was just completely unleashed in this entry, and even though all of these new mechanics and ideas were introduced simultaneously, the game is still cohesive and everything flows together. It doesn't feel like you're transitioning from shooter to driver to action RPG, which is great because I think that would've been a very easy pit to fall into with a game that tries to use all of these gameplay elements in tandem.
Also, they still have the dildo bat in this one, and it one-shots. 10/10.