Good
In the beginning SR4 is very much the same parody-packed third-person action game. In the first hour our hilariously customizable Saints boss character pushes the increasingly over-the-top premise of an idolized street gang well past its limits in a quick series of linear levels: you single-handedly bring down a nuclear missile, become President of the United States, and battle an alien invasion led by a British-for-no-reason warlord. It's so absurd and liberally peppered with well-executed gags and references that it works.
After that you're trapped in a Matrix-like recreation of the open-world city of Steelport, and Saints Row IV effectively becomes an entirely different game through the introduction of those genuinely cool superpowers. Super-leaping and gliding over the city (an alien-renovated version of the one used in SR3) is hugely liberating – there's nowhere you can't go on a whim, and dashing through the streets at amazing speeds feels like a glimpse of the Flash game I've always wanted. And those are just the first couple of powers you get.
That's combined with a sense of near-invulnerability. Unlike the regenerating health system of SR3, in SR4's virtual world enemies drop health pickups like candy from pinatas, so as long as
Saints Row IV
AUGUST 20, 2013
It's wild on the streets of Stilwater in this fourth game in the open-city action franchise.
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DAN STAPLETON SAYS
Superpowered gaming
Infamous 2Batman: Arkham CityCrackdown 2 you buy a few health upgrades and keep up a respectable pace of killing (hard not to do given the arsenal of infinite-ammo alien weapons) dying is something you usually have to work for. Even enemies with superpowers of their own quickly become pushovers, and all you ever have to do to get out of trouble is leap. It's only during minibosses fights where health is scarce that I was given cause to play carefully.
Even though I rarely needed weapons, SR4's gun selection has some winners. Beyond the pew-pew-pew of the alien pistol, the Disintegrator (borrowed from Red Faction) and the Abductor (which sucks everything into the sky) steal the show... even if the promising Dubstep gun ends up being an ineffective disappointment. I also love how most conventional weapons come with multiple cosmetic model options, such as pistol homages to Blade Runner and Firefly.
Yet with great power have come great drawbacks, as so many good features carried over from SR3 now feel completely vestigial. Why do I need gun upgrades when I can shoot fireballs from my hands? Why should I bother summoning homies to help me in combat when I can throw tanks with my mind? What good are customizable cars with afterburners when they only slow me down?