A reboot for the Saint’s Row branding, but you won’t find no 3-foot purple Saint’s fleur branded floppy dildo bats in this 2020’s woke version; a more civilised experience for all varieties of cowgirls, cowboys and cowtrans.
You start off in the game on the first day of your new job, working for Marshall as a foot-soldier, a large security conglomerate with next gen R&D technology, hunting down a bounty for a world-class criminal through his decrepit 1800’s western ghost town liar. Explosions and enemy gun fire pretty much makes you the last man alive in your squad in a matter of seconds, whilst still striving to make a good impression to the boss on your first day.
One thing leads to another, and you find that in-game, your undevoted loyalty lies with your roommates, a band of misfits looking to get by in today’s weekly coffee treat economy, as you attempt to start your own criminal business. There’s Kev, shirtless DJ for the Idols, a group of neon party-psyched millennials. There’s Neenah, art graduate turned getaway driver for Los Panteros. And Eli, business mogul wannabe, acquiring all the self-help tapes to jump start his ideas. It has to be said, I do miss the era now of being able to play as Playa, alongside Shauna, Kinzie and Pierce (wasn’t a big fan of Gat.)
Gameplay remains fairly similar to previous games, sandbox environment, guns, loose driving controls and a host of side missions involving taking over districts in Santo Ileso. There’s still some ingenuity in some of the new weapons and effects. Vehicles aren’t anything special, just a means to get from A to B as the game seems to lack as many fast travels as I would have liked it to have, so otherwise there’s a few extra challenges for driving in a particular style if you’re a hobbyist completionists.
Coop makes a return, though I didn’t get a chance to play this mode, as I don’t know anyone else who owns this game. There’s plenty of customisation options available for avatars. This feature was originally released as a demo of the game, allowing you to design a boss to use once the game was released. I think the devs where hoping this would cause some meme hype as previous character creator engines have caused in the past such as Skyrim and Fallout 4. Whilst originally creating a butch, brain damaged grunt, he eventually morphed into having a pair of tits, skinned with an animated kaleidoscope texture that made them look like a being from another Universe in a leotard.
Music in the game was major lacklustre for me, no genre’s I could jam to, so radio stations remained muted whilst a Twitch stream was on in the background whilst completing collectables.
There’s a portion of the game were you’re larping with your friends against other factions, no longer contempt with becoming the greatest criminal enterprise, but also being the best fictional role-playing faction across the land of Ileso. I felt it was too reminiscent of South Park’s Stick of Truth, and wonder whether the trope is overdone, but I guess the new element was that it was adults larping rather than kids, and I have to admit, I know people who dress up and larp in real life, which I always find weird (I can’t get my head around play fighting, either do it for real or stop wasting time and resources (I know I’m being immensely hypocritical whilst playing video games)).
Otherwise during my playthrough, I ran into only two bugs. One was during a car riding mission, in which whilst I’m riding on the top of the car, the driver is supposed to make a jump from a ramp onto a road on the top of a hill. Problem was that they weren’t getting enough speed, so we kept hitting into the side of the cliff, backing round to attempt the jump again but never completing it. I had to restart the mission completely a few times before it finally succeeded. Another was the camera getting stuck in a helicopter during a tow mission. Again, had to restart the mission again from scratch. I’m sure there’s since been an update to fix these bugs.
I played this on the PS4, and performance was perfectly adequate. I’d say it played just as well as Saints Row IV, probably closer to Gat out of Hell, which struggled on the PS4, though this game goes for a slightly more realistic texture pack. The architecture in the game is beautiful, very reminiscent of gentrified areas in America, alongside including Mexican and Western settler vibes. I feel this is Volition’s take on merging Rockstar’s GTA5 with Read Dead 2, though it probably could have done with the addition of horses.
It’s another box ticked of games played in the Saint’s Row series, whether it’s been rebooted and gives minimal credit to its heritage. I would have preferred a Saint’s V, though I’ve only played III & IV once, and can barely remember what really happened due to all the barminess, but it’s not like I’m gonna remember what happened in this reboot anyhow when the sequel comes out. Plenty of easter eggs scattered about. The role of kinship in the story was nice to experience, as doing something just for the sake of our friends seems to be a cliché these days and hard to come across genuine friendships. What wasn’t as nice was the attempt at Shrek karaoke.
