Saints Row (2022)

[AndyKurosaki]

Well, the reviews have not been kind to this. I’ve certainly played far worse. But in attempting to reboot the franchise, it might end up killing it stone dead.

 

I’ve always enjoyed the Saints series. It found its footing with SR2, then went completely mental in tone, for 3 and 4. Personally, I loved it. It was over the top, ridiculous, and just a sheer joy. 
 

When the trailers for this first hit, with a new cast, concerns were raised. The devs tried to pass those off, that we needed to “wait to the final product” before judging it. Part of the hate being thrown it’s way comes down to the story being crap, and the characters being total wankers. Unfortunately, that’s a claim that’s bang on the money. I hate these fuckers already, and I’m only a few hours in. You get zero introduction in to who they are, or how you came to friends with them. It’s just “here’s this dickhead, here’s this arsehole”. Everything that comes out of their mouths is pure cringe. Johnny Gat might have been a bit much, but at least he was a laugh. At one point, Kevin whinges about never having a Happy Meal toy, so off you go on a killing spree to get some. Finishing with him saying “I only want one, let’s drop the rest off at the orphanage some day”. Sure, we can do that, while passing the funerals of the multiple people we killed along the way. Bababababa, they’re lovin’ it. Then later he even talks in hashtags. Prick. 

 

It also feels dated already. Nerdy bow tie wearing black guy, enemies wearing neon masks. Watch Dogs was doing that ages ago.
 

 

Combat wise, it’s fine. Though having your melee attack be on frequent cool-down gets a bit annoying, especially when things get busy. I’ve not had the glitch that stops you from firing your guns. But I have had a couple of hard crashes while customising my character. So that was fun. 
 

The driving feels off, in as much as everything you hit just seems to fly off into the air at top speed. I drift around the streets, sideswiping everyone in my path, and nobody seems to give a shit. I’ve not had the police be even remotely bothered about me yet, other than in missions.

 

The reviews claim it’s an open world that feels totally lifeless. They’d be right. There’s no character in the city, nothing worth parking up to take notice of. 
 

It doesn’t feel “next gen” at all, and makes you wonder what they’ve been doing since Agents Of Mayhem wrapped up. I’m glad games like Gotham Knights are sacking the PS4 off, because it’s time to properly use the PS5 hardware. 
 

Nothing has really stood out in the soundtrack thus far. Maybe it will later. 
 

I’ve had the bank holiday weekend off, and I’ve barely bothered to play this. When I do, It’s for an hour or so at best. I’ve been playing the vastly superior Cult Of The Lamb instead.
 

Something different needed to be done by the end of SR4, it’s hard to really top going into outer space. But this doesn’t really feel like a story worth carrying on to a sequel. Fans of the series aren’t too impressed. Newcomers are left thinking “Is this it?”.

 

Its not terrible, but it’s not great either. Just feels like a real missed opportunity. The character creator is brilliant. Just a shame you can’t use it to make a crew of Saints that aren’t colossal wankers. 

[AndyKurosaki]

Played 5 hours of this. Hoo boy. It’s not very good. 
All of the radio stations are bloody awful. I spend the entire time driving around in silence, as the soundtrack is just shite.

 

Driving feels wrong. Every time I clip a car, it flies off into the sky at full speed, often exploding. Not that it matters, the police don’t seem to give a shit. 
 

The new Saints are complete wankers. One minute they’re “We need to do better than the other gangs, we can make a difference”. The next, it’s “Lol, we’ve killed loads of people, let’s kill even more”. Totally unlikeable cunts. 
 

The game does a terrible job of telling you what’s going on. Turns out you start off with a wing suit. Does it give you a tutorial to tell you how it works? Nope. 
 

The new skills seem to work when they can be arsed. Which half the time, they can’t. 
 

I think it was Skill Up that mentioned a particular bug in his review, where during a mission he had to kill a group of cops, but the problem was, they spawned on an overhead motorway bridge. Meaning it was impossible to get a shot on them, as you were lucky to even see a glimpse of their fucking heads. But if you tried to leave the location to get a shot at them, you were hit with a “Get back to the location in 10 seconds or it’s Game Over” warning. 
I had that exact same glitch happen to me. Rendering the mission impossible. So I reloaded it. Got to the same part. And it happened again. I got lucky that time, as a car appeared between the group of cops. So after a couple of minutes of shooting the car, it exploded and killed them all. 
The play testing department should be fucking ashamed of themselves. 
 

Quite often the audio totally disappears, leading to gun fights in total silence. 
 

It’s a shit show. And if this game ends up being the death of the Saints franchise, good riddance frankly. And I say that as a huge fan of SR 2, 3 and 4. 
Agents Of Mayhem was boring. But this is just a fucking mess. 

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

This is definitely getting close to getting “fucked off”. I’ve had all week off work, played maybe an hour or two of this. Soon as I start playing, boredom rapidly sets in. Or some glitch makes a mission impossible to complete. Or one of the Saints opens their mouths, and comes out with yet another cringe-inducing load of bollocks, making me think even more “Why the fuck did they replace the OG Saints with you total cunts?”.

 

Honestly. There’s just so many vastly superior open world games out there. Games that actually function properly, and have stuff to actually do. 
 

When I’ve a ton of other games to play, firing this up just makes me think “Why am I playing this shit?”. It won’t get better, as the YouTubers I trust in terms of opinions, have all made perfectly clear “The story is utter gash”. 
 

I wasn’t expecting Triple A, as the Saints series has always been a bit janky. But fuck me, I wasn’t expecting this. It’s just so boring.

[shinymcshine]

Janky !?!

 

Nah, I'm sure this is how you 'sit' and drive a monster truck down the street....

[shinymcshine]

and regular trucks too...

 

[Nag]

That's actually how I drive to work... 🙂

[shinymcshine]

TBF I'm having some fun with this - trouble is it's exactly the same dumb fun, with lots of side mission/ challenge diversions, that I'd have if I stuck in SR/SR2 into the 360 and played a 15 yr old game.

 

So, as long as I think of it as a retro title then it's alright, and most things are reasonably forgivable - but, as a 2022 release.......

[AndyKurosaki]

Well, least you’re having fun with it. I really tried, but found it boring as fuck.  I replayed both SR3 and 4 on PS4. Both of them are vastly superior to this utter wank.

[shinymcshine]

Credits rolling and I had a blast.

 

It's "Saints Row San Andreas" reimagined, would have been fantastic had it come out a few years back, and if you treat it as such you'll have a good time - so a one for the bargain bin perhaps (once you have that inkling to play an old school sandbox).

 

It was surprising, albeit in a good way, that despite other gangs controlling different areas, they don't bother directly attacking your assets, which they have done in the previous SR (and GTA SA) games - but after the first couple of time it always felt bit of a ballache anyway to stop what your doing to drive back & defend your territory - so was happy to see that'd been dropped.

[AndyKurosaki]

It might have been ok a few generations back. But this to me was one of the most tedious GTA style games done in years, and absolutely piss poor compared to the far superior Saints 3 and 4. 
 

It’s definitely one of the most broken games I’ve ever played, from guns not working, to missions not being completeable, to constant jank and hard crashes. Combine that with an absolutely shite soundtrack, a cast of utter pricks, and you’ve got a recipe for “How to kill a franchise stone dead”. 
 

If it comes to Gamepass/PS Plus, I guess it’d be worth a try. But only if your expectations are spectacularly low. 

 

The point of any sequel, is to improve on what came before. When even the first Saints row back on the original Xbox was way, way better, what the fuck were they thinking with this? 
 

It pained me to hate this game, as I loved the previous ones. 3 and 4 are hilarious, stupid fun. This was just a bloody chore. 
 

I can only hope they listen to the vast amounts of feedback saying “This game suuuuucked” and learn from it. Because if not? Fuck off and die, Saints Row. 

[shinymcshine]

Aside from the weird vehicle glitch, I can't recall any technical issues (PS4) noting it was patched to v1.11 just the other week (to include Chinese New Year themed stuff too) plus additional fixes.

[shinymcshine]

And that's a wrap, with the post credits mission completed too.

Spoiler

Best Friends Forever - requires you to max out a few of your ventures/areas and gather $8m to build the Saints Tower, so takes a few more hours to gather that much cash.

 

It was sort of worth it though :- as you get the team doing a karaoke version of Love Shack, with clips from the game interwoven - nice !

 

It remains as an open world to wrap up anything to 100% if you really want to, but for me it's a good time to move on.