Imagine a huge bustling world yours for the taking. Beautiful sandy deserts, towering skyscrapers, endless enemies to kill. Now imagine doing the same things you’ve done in other video games countless times in this beautiful world. That’s Saints Row.
Saints Row
Developer: Volition
Price: $60
Platform: PC, PS5, XSX
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review
It’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s some joy in the expected; comfort in familiarity, but coming from a franchise that seemed hellbent on pushing the envelope as far as it could go in previous games, a back to basics reboot is frankly disappointing.
This isn’t to say the game isn’t fun, because despite everything it is. It’s still kind of got that puckish roguish feel that the Saints Row franchise is famous for. The game absolutely wants you to use every toy in its sandbox and go wild with them however you see fit. The problem is if you’ve played an open world game in the last 10 years you’ve done this before.
Sure the first time you throw the rocket propelled football at someone’s face you laugh, but the weapon isn’t that much different from weapons from previous Saints Rows or even Just Cause. It’s silly but incredibly by the numbers in a market that is already hyper saturated by big open world games.
What the game does right however is customization, a hallmark of the franchise and it goes so much further than any game previously. It has one of the most in depth and wild character creators to ever grace a game. It looks at Cyberpunk 2077’s 3 penis sizes and gives you a slider for that schlong instead, as well as 6 nipple options! Want to play as a stylish cowboy elf woman? Done. Want to play as a giant hulking humanoid meat monster? Done.
A lot has been said about putting more inclusivity into the character creation process, and Saints Row genuinely excels at that, there are no set genders for any body type, voice, or genitalia. It actively wants you to make a character that YOU feel the most comfortable with. That any person regardless of how they look can be the hero of this story and that should be praised. In a world that feels increasingly hellbent on policing bodily choice, it’s nice to see.
From there you can also customize every vehicle, gun, and clothes in the game as well. Making everything in your possession tailor made to you. Which is very fun and very silly, but that only goes so far.
For the most part, the game is to arrive at a location, find enemies, shoot enemies, characters make silly quips. Some land, some don’t. Humor is subjective so there’s no point in harping on it too much, but the game feels restrained. Sometimes it wants to be whacky like Saints Row the Third but it also wants to try to tell a semi-serious story as well. It never carves out its own identity in the process.
The basic setup of the plot is that a group of gang affiliated 20 somethings get tired of the doldrums of their lives and gangs and decide to start their own in the style of a tech startup. From there it plays that thread pretty straight, there’s not a lot of jokes about start-up culture or what they’re trying to do. Which is fine on paper, but none of the characters are endearing enough for you actually to care about their rise to power. A character will tell you their traumatic backstory, but that has little effect on you the player, your character, or the plot. They’re spouting lines because they have to, because this is what happens in a story.
On top of that most of the story is locked behind a system called Criminal Ventures, locations that you buy to increase your hourly income. The more you have unlocked and completed the further into the story you can go. All of these ventures are really just minigames, one of which is the series staple Insurance Fraud, which is still fun, but the rest range from mediocre to insufferable. It’s a grind to finish them and it’s a grind to get the money to buy them, and unlocking them only unlocks another chapter in a loosely connected story that you have little connection with.
Maybe it is a decent send up of start-up culture after all.
The Final Word
All that said, this isn’t a BAD game. If you’re looking for some mindless fun while listening to a podcast or to kill time there are worse games you could get. It’s just an incredibly mediocre one that is stacked against some of the more beloved and goofy open world games of the PS3/360 era. You can’t help but look at it and fondly remember Saints Row 2 or Saints Row The Third in comparison. There’s nothing that comes close to singing in the car with Pierce or shooting people with a septic truck. It’s like meeting your highschool crush years later and thinking to yourself “Have they changed or have I?” After watching some clips from Saints Row The Third I can thankfully say it’s them.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
