Saints Row IV

Saint’s Row and Saints Row: The Third have now been completed while I’m slowly working through the arduous progress of getting all of the multiplayer done in Saint’s Row II and now they have released Saint’s Row IV on Games with Gold. I couldn’t help but pick it up and start playing it straight away... despite the fact I had already got it on the One as part of a compilation – which means that Saint’s Row IV will be the second game after The Wolf Among Us to have two completions on my gamer profile.

In Saint’s Row IV, you pick up where you left off in the last instalment although it’s fantastically more ridiculous as the leader of the Saints is about to become President of the United States. Fast forward to you actually being the president, and then the world is then invaded by aliens. The aliens conveniently abduct the leader of the Saints and the entire crew before destroying planet earth and flying off. This is a massive far cry from the Grand Theft Auto clone that was the first one of the series – it just continually refuses to take itself seriously.

The main body of the game sees you fighting against the alien forces within a simulated Steelport created by the aliens. The alien abduction is basically a framing device to make the gameplay as weird as fuck. You have ‘superpowers’ and crazy weapons in the simulation as you fight back against the aliens by trying to crash the simulation. However, it all feels a little pointless as the aliens have already destroyed earth so you have nowhere to go even if you do win.

As with any Saints Row, the gameplay is very clean. My only real criticism is that sometimes the rag doll physics can be a little too crazy at times and the difficulty curve is non-existent. It suffers from the same upgrade philosophy of the third game where you basically become indestructible with unlimited ammo, only this time it seems to happen even quicker. It’s also a bizarre change of pace that when you unlock super sprint, you no longer have to use cars as it’s faster to run. Mental.

Interestingly, for me, this made the game’s licenced soundtrack redundant but you did have the option to play music while running around – it was a simulation after all. I found this too immersion-breaking though, which I accept doesn’t make a lot of sense when you are fighting an alien race through their artificially created world.

Achievements – 1,200 Points – 70 Achievements

Where to start with this one... Missables? There are only two, thank God. One of them is for giving up on fighting the aliens and simply submitting during the middle of the game. You can be quite easily forgiven for not doing this. Why would you voluntarily kill yourself in a game for an achievement? Oh, and it’s a secret too.

The other one is basically for completing all the side missions for your homies before completing the game, however you get a ‘point of no return’ warning and you also need to do them all for the other achievements if you are going for the 100% anyway.

Another notable one, or at least it was for me, was the achievement for creating and sharing a character online as Volition worked hard to fix this, as per Saints Row: The Third. This is only achievement that requires an online connection.

The rest of the game is pretty much as per my Saints Row: The Third review, with the exception of one achievement which allows me to rant. Saints Row: The Third had an achievement that required you to play the game for 30 hours. I remember saying that I was quite happy with this as it allowed you to complete the entire game and DLC in roughly 30 hours. Saints Row IV wants you to play for 40 hours with less DLC content and a noticeably shorter main game – a tad annoying. The timing of my achievement unlocks shows this as well. I completed all the other achievements, inclusive of DLC and had to leave the game running over night two nights in a row to get the required time to complete it. Ridiculous.

Downloadable Content

There are two separate DLCs for this one. They are both ridiculous but, How the Saints Saved Christmas is possibly one of the worst DLC expansions I’ve ever played, even going as far as making that stupid space thing from the third one look good by comparison.

Again, I won’t say much more than that. The DLC achievements don’t have any notoriety and they aren’t massively different from Saints Row: The Third.

If you liked Saints Row: The Third, Saints Row IV acts as possibly the biggest DLC pack you’ll find offering more of the same at an increased level of craziness. It did get a little bit boring towards the end but not enough to put me off finishing the series. With just Saints Row II and Gat of Hell to go, the end is at least in sight.