Saints Row IV

It's not often that I pre-order games. The only franchises that garner this kind of pre-order inducing fervor in me are Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, and Saints Row. I have an enormous backlog of games, and to even bother purchasing something at full price, I have to know I'm going to dive into my new acquisition immediately and not come up for air until I'm done with it. Otherwise, I know I won't get to it until it's like 2 dollars on Steam. Two of my friends were commenting on my Saints Row love, saying, "I like it when [she] fanboys about stuff. It's rare. And very intense." What's not to like? Everybody talks like they're in a Tarantino movie, I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, and I get to blow shit up while listening to classical music.

Saints Row IV starts off five years after the third installment, and you're now the President of the United States. Life is good until a bunch of douchey aliens come, enslave humanity, and explode the Earth a little bit. Zinyak, the head douche of the alien race known as the Zin, and his cronies have captured oodles of humans and have plugged them in to a simulated version of Steelport.

Yes. It's totally The Matrix. In said simulation, each of your homies are reliving and being subjected to their greatest fears over and over. You, as the most awesome one, must break out each of your homies in turn and unite to take down your alien overlords. And since you're pretty much Neo in this little tale, when you're in the simulation, you have super powers including Super Sprint, Super Jump, Freeze Blast, Telekinesis, Super Stomp, etc. It's an incredibly satisfying way to wreak havoc.

Outside of the simulation, you're on a ship. (I'm going to call it the Nebuchadnezzar because duh...Matrix.) While on the ship, the tone switches from Matrix to Mass Effect, as you can talk to and/or romance all your homies on the ship, resulting in many a laugh.

Gameplay itself has not changed a whole lot between games save the addition of super powers, which I mentioned are immensely fun. There's still a boatload of Activity mini-games to play. New ones have been added and existing ones have been tweaked to utilize your new abilities. There are stores to buy stuff, but instead of purchasing the stores, you have to hack into them to use them. Remember, this is a simulation of the world. Hacking. Viruses. All that. And of course, there's a heaping helping of new ridiculous weaponry that's sure to tickle your fancy. A few examples include an Inflato-Ray which inflates your target like a balloon until they explode, an Abduction Gun that places a beam of vertical light where you shoot and all caught within that light are sent skyward, the 'Merica gun, which plays patriotic music while shooting fireworks that catch people on fire, and the ever popular Dubstep Gun that pulses bursts of light to a dubstep beat which elicits cars to hydraulics hop and nearby people to dance until their hearts explode.

Saints Row IV leaves enough things intact to keep it familiar but adds enough new to excite and make it feel fresh. The things I like most about Saints Row in general are the ridiculous, over the top storylines, humorous dialogue, and kick ass voice actors. Female Voice 1 Laura Bailey is pretty much amazing, FYI. She made a simple sentence of "Well...fuck." make me laugh for like 5 minutes. That's fuckin' pro.

The Loyalty quests for each homie are generally the most humorous, ridiculous, and memorable. I don't want to give too much away, so I'm just going to say: Fun Shaundi, Paul, and Double Dragon, bitches.

Speaking of homies, one of the things that bummed me out was that I didn't really need to use them that much out in the regular game world. It's kind of a pain in the ass to use them, in fact. If my main mode of transportation is super jumping/sprinting everywhere, that makes it a smidge difficult for people with cars and regular legs to follow.

The concept of Notoriety kind of goes out the window for similar reasons. I don't fear you alien assholes chasing me with your insignificant vehicles. I'm the Gingerbread Man, motherfuckers. This makes things like Flashpoints a little less exciting. I remember in Saints Row III, rolling up with a carload full of homies, taking out a Flashpoint, and driving away with enemies in hot pursuit, while we're shooting out the windows and hucking grenades behind us. It was magical. Nowadays, I shoot em all in the head before reinforcements arrive and jump jump jump to freedom.

Sometimes I'd use cars just because of the nostalgia of it though. I actually wanted to use my homies, so I started taking out Flashpoints, doing Virus Injections (waves of enemies attacking), and Virus Collection (car stealing) with Super Shaundi in tow just for funsies. The car thieving wasn't any more or less difficult with Shaundi with me, but it was way more fun having her hanging out the window, shooting at my pursuers. Also, when waves of enemies are attacking me, having her around adds a little something extra when she Super Stomps the whole lot of them up into the air or starts hucking cars at people.

One thing that was a little frustrating with driving cars though is that I can't hop into them as easily as I used to. Super Sprint makes life a bit difficult in this regard. I'll run at the car, press 'E' to hop in, but instead of jumping into the car, my sprinting hurls it three city blocks away from me. Whoops. This must be how mutants feel. Someone call Professor X. I need to rein this shit in.

Also, I miss the concept of owning all the things. Even though Notoriety isn't really that serious, I have no place to call my own. I can't run into a Friendly Fire and have my Notoriety slate wiped clean. Plus, I have all this money and nothing to spend it on. Boo-urns.

And since this section has turned into the mild bitching and moaning portion of my word spew, I'll say I also kind of miss the different factions. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Aliens are assholes, and it's all well and good to blow them to hell, but sometimes you just want to find a nice Decker or Morningstar to hit in the teeth.

Those things are all super minor though. My main gripe about the game is how side quests were handled. When you free each of your homies, they'll have you do a series of side quests. However, these really aren't side quests like I was expecting. They're mostly sending you out into the world to specific activities already littered around the city. I like hacking the stores and playing all the mini-games without any prodding, so most of the time, I already did the quest objective before they asked me to. This led to me missing potentially humorous dialogue, which is one of the reasons I love this franchise. Sadness. I would start a mission and go talk to a certain crew member, which is generally the first objective. They told me to go do something that I had already done, so I immediately talk to them again. They'd tell me I was awesome and did a good job, and on occasion they'd reference something they would have said earlier when I was out doing the mission, but since I already did the mission, never left the ship, and never heard the dialogue, I was just confused by the reference. Then that mission would be over, and I would be sad because I obviously missed something. In the future, don't tie mini-games into side quests. It's lazy and makes me sad. Quit making me sad.

If I would have not done any activities until someone told me to do them, I probably would have had a better experience. Then I could just clean up any leftover activities right before the finale. However, this negates the sandboxiness that they're trying to tout. Let mini-games be mini-games and think up other legit side quests.

I don't know if it was because I dicked around longer in Saints Row: The Third or this one actually had less to do, but the game seemed quite a bit shorter and my total playtime corroborates that story. I spent a little over 30 hours in Saints Row IV, while The Third held me for 47 hours.

The last couple paragraphs have gotten kind of bitch and moany. Let's bring it back home. Overall, Saints Row IV is incredibly enjoyable. I have spent the last couple weeks playing it at every opportunity. Hour lunch break, time for Saints Row. 20 minute break during the work day, time for Saints Row. I enjoyed the shit out of this game and will be excited for any future installments. However, taking into account all the bitching I just did, I think Saints Row: The Third is stronger overall. I'm tempted to go back and verify that these perceptions and comparisons are accurate and not just based on the warm and squishy feels in my heart, but I have like a hundred more games to get through... Ain't nobody got time for that.