Saints Row - Review
It has been almost a decade since a new Saints Row game hit consoles, Saints Row The Third got a new lease on life via Switch and other platforms, but that was not a new game. Has the time away from the series, helped make the crazy antics of the series more relatable, or has it remained a relic of the past?
As this entry in the series is a reboot, everything you know about the series, or more specifically the characters and locations, needs to be forgotten. The name, logo and colour of the Saints can remain as they happen to use that same stuff, but everything else is all new and unlike past games where you are a gang member already, this time, you are not even considering that direction in life. You play the Boss, that is all your character is ever known as and along with Eli, Neenah and Kev, are living your best life, each with their own life outside of their shared place. You specifically are working for Marshall, a massive private army that does things like offer security for buildings and trains, as well as running a private prison and more. After a few spectacular victories, you are promoted and when things go bad, you take all the blame and your life loses its purpose. With your friends also out of sync with their lives, you all decide to band together and become a gang of your own and thus is born this new version of the Saints.
The order that the story plays out will be slightly different for everyone, because in order for missions to unlock, you need to achieve somethings, namely expanding your empire. Expansion comes in the form of businesses, which have some legitimate fronts and less than legitimate ones as well. Early on your choice of expansion is limited, but as you progress through the story you will unlock more and more, some of them are simple, like delivering a truck full of chemical waste to a depot. The catch there is you can’t drive it around like you would any other car, as to much damage and you will get covered in toxic waste. For others it is about repossession of items, medical insurance fraud and the list goes on and there is no requirement to complete any of them in order, or even all of them, just enough to progress. Outside of those ventures, you can also take the fight to the other gangs in Santo Ileso, which will cleanse the streets around your areas of them, but also get you a larger slice of the pie from any of the businesses that you have in them.
Progression is pretty smooth, for the most part you just need to either select a main mission from the list in your phone, or head out to any icon on the map and do what needs doing. The only issue I had with the gameplay is that its always the same, drive to a point, do something and then drive fast or safely away from it, rinse and repeat. The game doesn’t offer a lot of chances to do anything else, even a mission with Neenah to start her art collection, uses the same mechanic as saving Kev earlier on. For a city as vibrant as Santo Ileso, not having other activities to do is a bit of a letdown.
Speaking of Santo Ileso, there is a lot to see here, the city is themed like a town from the American southwest and set on Route 66. It feels like a hybrid between Las Vegas and Albuquerque, with a lot of desert surrounding it. The city is broken up into a number of regions, with each gang taking one for their home base, with Rancho Provedencia being where Los Panteros as based, as there is the location of the old Scorpian motor factory. While the groups call various regions home, there is plenty to see outside of them, from giant roadside dinosaurs to rock formations in the shape of a mountain lion. Because of the location, the game does skew a lot to using oranges and browns in the colour scheme, the only real time that is not the case, is when your hideout is fully renovated and showing its purple nature, or when you are in Lakeshore.
Thankfully, customisation is core to the Saints Row experience and it is never, ever forced upon you, letting you enjoy it and only if you choose to. Customisation can be applied to every aspect of your character, your weapons and your rides and you can even set the look for your Saints family, should you want to. While cars and guns need to be done in set locations, you can swap your look anywhere you want and by look, I don’t mean putting on a hat. Your look is never locked in place, it is always available for you to change, you can start the game using a base model of the boss and as you expand, you can start adding scars, maybe shaving the head and becoming more of a badass. Another option is that you can made yourself the most jacked male character possible and then give yourself a prosthetic limb, or the voice from the opposite gender, whatever choice you make. I really only changed my look a few times and then it was just with clothes, but just seeing the amount of options available was something truly wonderful to see. For the most part, the choices are never something that stand out, however there were a few times when I changed outfits, that the size of my guy clipped through the shirt and it looked weird.
Speaking of weird, there are a number of issues that I need to bring up, none of them break the game, but they are frustrating. The first is the games AI, there are times when it is dumber than a bag of door knobs, I have been shooting at enemies and they just stand there and ignore. The flip side of that is that when I was being chased, the AI would also catch up and be dead on with their shooting, there was never a good middle ground. Cars, or more specifically their handling was also impacted by the games unique physics system, in that I could mount a curb and plough through a dozen trees, light poles and other cars and it not be an issue. But there were times when I could bounce up above some of the surrounding buildings, from hitting a bush. Now these were never really an issue when I was driving solo, but when I was in a chase, trying to get away, finding myself launched into the air because the cops rammed me, only to land facing towards them, was just frustrating.
Neither of those issues though, beats out the best one and that is the controls, the default PC controls are ok, getting used to the phone takes time though, no it was when I tried to use a controller that things got weird. First up is that the face buttons were not mapped correctly, the A button on my Xbox controller would only work if I pressed B, X was mapped to A and B was X. The left stick, used for navigating menus and controlling the character, was mapped to the right stick and just other random issues. Now you might be saying, just remap the controls and call it a day, sadly the game had them correct, if I selected A to be remapped and pressed A again, it would accept it when I pressed A, however that still wouldn’t work. My controller worked in other games I tested, Spider-Man, Skyrim and Forza Horizon, but only Saints Row had this weird issue.
Moving away from that and looking to the presentation, things are ok with a dash of odd, nothing was ever broken, but I did experience some weird frame rate issues at times, cars and items randomly showing up and some LOD issues. As I mentioned earlier, for the most part the character customisation never impacted the gameplay, there were times I noticed the model clipping itself, but they were rare. The game itself, at least the world, looks amazing at times, from the dust covered landscapes of the desert to the brightly lit Lakeshore district, it has moments where things really shine. The problem is that the game had this weird LOD effect, that is the level of detail for the world, the road would often get a tear across it, showing where the game was attempting to load in the higher quality assets, usually seen while attempting to drive away from someone. Sadly the most annoying issue is that of the cars and other items in the world, randomly spawning in or vanishing, without any real reason for it. Sometimes cars and trucks would spawn in at the side of the road, as if decoration that didn’t get placed in time, but they would often vanish and appear around me as I was driving, enemy cars and the people themselves were notorious for just appearing in front of me.
On the sound side of things, the game is pretty spectacular as it features a kickass soundtrack and some amazing voice work across the spectrum. Each of the members of the Saints sounds great, there were times when they were enjoying Mugmosas and their conversations just sounded authentic and it really made me connect with the characters. I did start the game with one style of voice for the Boss and it was fine, but after the first hour, I swapped and even then, it still fit in perfectly with what was going on. The sounds of the city are a little too free at times, people will call you out should you walk anywhere near them, but they would also have conversations on the phone, even when broken down on the side of the road. The music will vary for each player, there were a few radio stations I enjoyed, but others I did not and that’s ok, its why they had a good variety.
Saints Row is a really enjoyable game, there are a number of rough edges, but they really just give it texture. The character and world customisation are fantastic, given how much freedom they provided, but they never feel silly or out of place, though if you are bright silver that may change. The AI and driving physics can be weird at times, but for the most part, they are good enough that you won’t mind the occasional freak out. As far as the story goes, there is a lot going on here, and while you don’t get to make a lot of choices about how it goes, it still feels very much like your tale. A few fixes to smooth out those burrs and this could be a great game, but even without, there is a lot to enjoy with this one.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Deep Silver
The Pros
+The character customisation really let me connect with the world
+The rest of the Saints are interesting and the world they bring to life is fun to discover
The Cons
-The games systems do freak out from time to time, which can make the game suffer, that controller issue though…
-Some weird visual issues do pop up from time to time, but never really break things
