Saints Row IV Review

Saints Row IV is an open world action game released in August 2013. Published by Deep Silver and developed by Volition, an old game by today’s standards but one full of humour and originality.

In Saints Row IV you play the role of the leader of the Saints and President elect who is just named “The Boss”. The game starts in a situation where you are trying to stop the launch of a nuclear weapon. After this short mission is finished you find yourself in the White House, about to give a speech to the masses. But before this can happen aliens invade Earth and all hell breaks loose. With over the top action and a dose of humour its up the Boss (President elect) to save the day. This does not go to plan and you find yourself in a simulator created by the evil aliens (Zin). It is now up to the Saints to break out of the simulator and get revenge on the evil Zin empire.

Most of the game is played in an open world style of play with primary and secondary quests. To finish the story, you need to accomplish all the primary missions. As a 3rd person shooter, you can expect it to be like other games in that genre, the exception being you can customise your character and in the simulation of Steel Port city (where most of the game is played) you have the ability to upgrade to super powers such as running really fast and jumping really high. These powers also translate into weapons like super stomp and fire balls as well as telekinesis. The weapons are the usual. SMGs, rocket launchers, pistols, shotguns etc. With some interesting inclusions involving a gun that shoots music and an all-American gun painted in stars and stripes that shoots just about everything at once.

The game stays interesting if you play through the story missions as a lot of them are different. For example, there is one mission that is just like the scene from the movie Tron with the motorbike and there are levels that are just like a 1980’s pixelated side scroller of yesteryear. There is even a level that is just text dialogue with a series of pictures. This makes the game quite funny and original and I like how they just called the actor who played Vice President by his actual name in real life, Keith David. There is also an appearance by the professional wrestler “Rowdy Roddy Piper”. To add to the humour, during the most action intensive missions they normally play some old classic song that everyone knows but does not relate to what’s happening on the screen in any shape or form.

The graphics are starting to get a bit outdated for this game. Still looks ok but by today’s standards it defiantly detracts from the enjoyment that could be had from the game. Also, the aliens all look the same. I mean they all look the same, every last one of them, and they are just called the Zin. That is a bit boring. But the game makes up for that in its outrageous action especially during missions where they attack you from the sky, on foot, in tanks, robots, lager shooting nearly indestructible robots and at the end Zinyak himself (the evil alien leader). The open world aspect of the game also has many hours of things to do like hacking shops to buy guns, customise your character. The character I customised had a George Bush mask in a tuxedo with a hello kitty backpack on my back. The options are endless. If you want you don’t have to follow the main story at all, you can just cause death and destruction in the neat little city called Steel Port.

Overall if you just played the main story missions you will probably find the game ended a bit abruptly otherwise there are plenty more hours of enjoyment to be had with the side missions and the cheesy one liners. All in all, I found this game fun to play (due to the humour) a nice change from the more generic triple A titles out there. The only reason it didn’t score higher is mainly because it’s a bit outdated as its from 2013.

7.5/10