Saints Row started life as one of many Grand Theft Auto clones more than 15 years ago, but thanks to the team at Volition doubling down on its more wacky tendencies and over-the-top cartoon nature, it quickly grew into a beloved franchise.
Now, almost a decade since the series' last outing, Volition is back with a new vision for the franchise – offering up a complete reboot for the next generation. While fans weren't exactly calling for a new set of characters or new vision per se, this year's reboot was a chance to bring back the series in a big way and offer something fresh in a gaming space now flooded with AAA experiences.
Sadly, the newest entry misses the mark, retreading old ground and proving certain gaming trends really don't stand the test of time.
While there's some fun to be had in Saints Row, it's ultimately a fairly boring and at times tedious slog, bringing nothing new to the table and even failing to do some of the most basic things right that other games pulled off over a decade ago. It's also marred by bugs and offers a short story that wraps up almost suddenly.
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As you'd expect being a reboot, none of the original characters return, replaced by a cast of young characters looking to pay off their student debts by any means necessary.
There's the DJ with a thing for waffles, the business nerd who enjoys motivational podcasts, and the hard-as-nails one who loves fast cars. Tired of being skint, they join you, 'The Boss', as you create your own criminal empire.
While we've got nothing against the characters, the style and jokes they're going for feel like something we've seen before in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs 2, only on a more shallow and poorly-executed level, and it was a struggle to care for any of the cast.
Gameplay-wise, there's nothing special to talk about here – for better or worse it's a very arcade-like experience.
Driving is light and fast, with a slam mechanic allowing you to deal with enemies that catch up with you. There's a lot to unlock and collect as you go, with an array of cars which you can customise to your heart's content and special abilities such as ejector seats that let you immediately go from driving to using your wing suit.
Similar can be said of your guns and character abilities, with special moves such as 'Pineapple Express' – where you grab an enemy, throw a grenade down their pants and lob them into oncoming enemies – or 'Transfusion', allowing you to gain health by dealing damage.
The problem is, these don't offer much more than short thrills and don't distract from the surprisingly hollow gunplay, which misses any real crunch and with awkward aiming on a controller.
And however the mission starts, you'll always end up somewhere shooting waves of enemies until the game decides you've done enough to advance – which gets boring, quickly.
To be fair, there are some fun moments to be had, such as one character's quest to become king of The Dustmoot in a city-wide LARPing event.
As you clash with rival houses in this tale taking inspiration from the likes of Dune and Game of Thrones, enemies fall to your foam darts, pretending to die in the most over-dramatic ways possible. There are some neat twists during this quest and it's an entertaining distraction, but we wish there were more missions like this.
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Aside from the story missions which tell the story of The Saints growing in infamy, the rest of your time is spent actually building your empire – installing businesses on plots of land and doing missions to maximise their earning potential. You can take on dumping toxic waste at clean-up sites, or dispose of cars from crime scenes.
'Insurance Fraud' makes a comeback as one of your viable business, letting you launch yourself into traffic and ragdoll around to earn as much cash as possible. Despite being one of the game's funnier highlights, it is let down by bugs as we often found ourselves standing in the road with traffic simply refusing to load in, with the timer running down.
Bugs like this aren't uncommon. Some can be funny to experience, but many of the ones we found simply broke the mission you were on. We had instances where key vehicles or characters failed to show and enemies loading in so far away, you couldn't walk to them without failing the mission for leaving the area. We were even forced to restart the game altogether after one glitch had us falling through the floor.
Saints Row is ultimately an underwhelming missed opportunity. It's a shame, as this was a chance to do something big, bold and different – showing us where the franchise could be heading in the years to come.
But instead, the end product is a basic and fairly tedious experience that is stuck in an era of gaming long past. There are a handful of fun moments, but these are fleeting and it's difficult to suggest anyone picking the game up.
Platform reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Saints Row is out now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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