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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Saints Row IV Review: The Saints Takes Over America

The Saints Takes Over America

Platform: Windows PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 (Review done for the PS3 version)
Published by: Deep Silver
Developed by: Volition, Inc.
Genre: Action-Adventure
ESRB Rating: M (Mature for Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs)
Number of Players: 1-2 (Cooperative play)
Release Date: August 20, 2013 (North America), August 23, 2013 (Europe), September 12, 2013 (Australia)



Saints Row IV is Volition’s 4th foray into the adventures of the Third Street Saints street gang.  The game begins shortly after Saints Row: The Third’s ending and features the Hero, Shaundi, and Pierce on a mission with MI-6 to stop the former leader of STAG from The Third: Cyrus Temple.  The ending to this battle feels more akin to a final level for a game than a prologue and is quite explosive!  Your actions here set up the rest of the game as you drop into the U.S. Presidency just in time for an alien invasion (quite literally).



One of the selling points for Saints Row IV is the fact that the President has superpower abilities akin to the ones from Prototype by Activision and Radical Entertainment.  These powers are like super sprint, super jump, ice blast, telekinesis, and elemental buff.  I don’t want to spoil how you get said powers but there is an explanation for it and it is done pretty well in my opinion.  It also has many nods to films and other games with the powers, missions, activities, and trophies / achievements.  If you watch and/or play a lot of action / adventure/ sci-fi movies and games you’ll recognize a lot of them.



Returning from Saints Row: The Third is the city of Steelport and the activities of Insurance Fraud and Tank Mayhem.  New activities in IV are Blazin, Prof. Genki’s Mind Over Murder, Fight Club, Platforming Rift, Speed Rift, Telekinesis Rift, Mech Suit Mayhem, UFO Mayhem, and TK Mayhem.  Several diversions from The Third return as well: Hostage, Challenge, Vehicle Surfing, Assassination, Vehicle Theft, Mugging, Streaking, and City Takeover.  Hotspots, Flashpoints, Cat & Mouse, and Alien Towers replace Gang operations.  Money returns in the game as well, useful for buying and upgrading weapons, purchasing new outfits, getting cosmetic surgery, upgrading your vehicles at a Rim Jobs, and purchasing player upgrades.  These player upgrades range from the NPC allies having better weapons, to you receiving less damage from fire and explosions, more ammo, etc.



The game retains its cooperative play that was in The Third.  I have not tried it out myself, so I don’t have an overall opinion on it but from videos I've seen it looks like a fun experience with a buddy.  You can grind out money with a buddy by going against what are essentially boss fights with Wardens.  Wardens appear once you have raised your notoriety to the sixth bar.  They’re not hard to defeat and are pretty standard overall.

The game is packed with many collectibles to coincide with the activities and diversions.  Eight adventure logs, thirty-six Zinyak Statues, thirty-nine audio logs, and 1255 power clusters.  The adventure logs serves as a back-story to Zinyak and his motives, the statues are for gaining more money/XP/cache, the audio logs give insight to returning and new characters through the course of the four games, and the power clusters are used to upgrade the super powers.



I loved Saints Row: The Third when it came out.  At the time I never played the first two despite being a fan of Volition from The Punisher and Red Faction series.  I regret not trying them out now but I am officially a Third Street Saint now.  I found The Third to be one of my favorite open-world third-person adventures, even thinking it out-GTA’d Grand Theft Auto IV.  With Grand Theft Auto V releasing on the 17th, and Saints Row going the superpower route, I don’t see SRIV being better than GTAV.  I would classify Saints Row IV as being on the same genre of games like Prototype, infamous, and Crack Down rather than in the same genre of GTA, Sleeping Dogs, or The Getaway.

My Ratings



Story: 8/10  The story isn't that cohesive but it’s so much fun.  I laughed so much throughout the game from the Easter eggs, to the references to the 3 older games, and it has an amazing ending if you complete all loyalty missions before the grand finale. 

Gameplay: 7.5/10 The controls are good for what they are: An open-world superhero game.  It kind of suffers like Prototype and infamous with how if you jump in the air or fly and you have trouble landing on a precise section.  Also, when shooting guns there is no shoulder-switch option which I hate not having in third-person games. Some system-locking glitches tracks points down as well.

Graphics: 7/10 They are uninspiring to say the least.  Other open world games look definitely better and the resolution is even worse than The Third’s at 960x720 compared to the previous 1280x720.

Sound: 10/10 This is where Saints Row excels for me.  When creating a character you have 7 voice choices labeled as: Male 1, male 2, male 3, female 1, female 2, female 3, and Nolan North.  The choices of music on the radio are outstanding as well and I can’t stop jamming to Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.”  Here’s the whole cast list:
  • The Boss:
    • Troy Baker as Male Voice 1
    • Kenn Michael as Male Voice 2
    • Robin Atkin Downes as Male Voice 3
    • Laura Bailey as Female Voice 1
    • Sumalee Montano as Female Voice 2
    • Diane Michelle as Female Voice 3
    • Nolan North as Nolan North Voice
  • Daniel Dae Kim as Johnny Gat[3]
  • Danielle Nicolet as Shaundi
  • Arif S. Kinchen as Pierce Washington
  • Yuri Lowenthal as Matt Miller and Professor Genki
  • Terry Crews as Benjamin King (replacing the late Michael Clarke Duncan)
  • Natalie Lander as Kinzie Kensington
  • Rebecca Riedy as Asha Odekar
  • Keith David as himself and Julius Little
  • JB Blanc as Zinyak, Zinjai and Phillipe Loren
  • Michael Yurchak as CID
  • Neil Patrick Harris as Veteran Child
  • Jennifer Jules Hart as Fun Shaundi
  • Tim Thomerson and Richard Epcar as Cyrus Temple
  • Andrew Bowen as Josh Birk / NyteBlayde
  • Ursula Taherian as Tanya Winters
  • TC Carson as Anthony Green
  • Ogie Banks as Warren Williams
  • Michael Dorn as Maero
  • Mike Carlucci as Zach
  • Rob Van Dam as Bobby
  • Roddy Piper as himself
  • Mark Allan Stewart as Oleg Kirlov
  • Eden Riegel as Jane Austen
  • Christopher Daniels as Tommy Macher
  • Lauri Hendler as Jane Valderama
  • Phil Morris as Mr. Sunshine
Replayability: 10/10 Just beating the game and doing nothing else you can probably get done in about 12 hours maybe less.  Doing all of the side missions and loyalty missions before finishing the game will get you done in around 22 hours like it did for me.  Cleaning up all the activities and collectibles had me done in around the 40 hour mark. 

Overall: 8.5/10 The game is fun filled, and has addicting superpower gameplay.  Super sprinting, jumping and gliding around Steelport doesn't get old to me and it beats driving vehicles down the street from the previous games.  I highly recommend this game to those who are fans of the Saints, fans of open world games, and fans of superhero games.

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