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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)
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.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
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