A while ago,
I committed to doing the only online achievement in this game with my friend
who did Saints Row II with me. It’s
taken a while for us both to be available at the same time but we finally
managed it at the back end of my Bean Dive so I added another game to my
backlog. Not to be fully bogged down by a host of unfinished games, I cracked
straight on with the rest of the game as soon as I finished 6 out of my 8 Bean
Dive titles.
Gat out of Hell picks up where Saints Row IV left off. The earth is
destroyed, and the Saints are sailing through space just chilling. The next
thing you know, the leader of the Saints gets kidnapped by the devil and it’s
up to Johnny Gat (and Kinsey) to bust in to hell, murder a bunch of demons and
bust him out of there.
The
storyline is almost pointless in terms of how stupid it is but what the Saints Row series offers now is just hours
of wacky fun… for the most part. More on that later. The gameplay is the same
as Saints Row IV. You gain some super
powers, grab some guns and go around completing challenges and taking over
sections of the map, called New Hades. Along the way, you meet notorious
characters from history such as Blackbeard, Vlad the Impaler and Shakespeare?!
Yes, apparently Shakespeare was inherently evil and hell-worthy according to
the Saints. Once you’ve taken over most of the map, you annoy the devil enough
to face him in battle and once you beat him, you complete the game.
There’s not
much to it really – there’s the standard faire of activities and take-over set
pieces, the most notable changes being the challenges that involve flying with
your new-found demon-slash-angel wings.
Graphically
it’s the same as Saints Row IV and
doesn’t really need any more. I had a couple of crashes and got stuck on
scenery a few times but all in all it’s a fairly solid build. Musically, it
does have a soundtrack but like Saints
IV you won’t hear any of it because
it’s infinitely easier to travel using powers. The background music becomes
very repetitive towards the end though.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 45
Achievements
For the most
part it’s a fairly straightforward achievement list. There are only two
missables, one for collecting five orb thingys without touching the ground and
another for completing an Extraction Facility on a motorcycle. The hardest part
of this last one is knowing it’s an achievement (it’s not a secret but you need
to read the list) and getting a motorcycle. Vehicles in the game are a bit
weird in that there’s only about 5 or 6 different ones and if you need a
specific one, it will never show up.
The in-game
unlockable abilities are great because you can unlock a collectible indicator
which shows you where all the collectibles are. I love it when games do this as
it’s then about you collecting all the shit rather than having to search the
entire map for the one you missed (I’m looking at you Crackdown).
The rest of
the achievements are easy to get but the biggest issue with it is that it’s
grindy and repetitive. It would have been nice if the game rounded itself up
nicely, but the fact is after you have done everything that Gat has to offer, you will mostly likely
have another 10 hours of grinding weapon and power kills on enemies to do. And
even this wasn’t enough to get me to the 20-hour mark required for what was my
final achievement - for playing for 20 hours. I unlocked this last while asleep
as I left it rack up gameplay hours over night.
So the
biggest problem with Gat is that it
doesn’t have enough content to match it’s achievements and Saints Row IV had double the play time requirement too. It’s just a
bit disappointing.
Multiplayer
The only
multiplayer requirement is to play co-op online for 3 hours. It doesn’t have to
be in on go but that’s what we did and we also used the time to get all of the
missable achievements. And it’s always fun to play with friends. I’m just glad
I had one rather than having to find a random to play with.
Gat out of Hell was an enjoyable game
for around 8 hours or so and this time flies by. After that though, to get the
rest of the achievements, it’s a grindy slogfest that will bore you half to
death.
