SAINTS ROW IV

Contrary to my latest blog post about To The Moon, Saints Row IV is a game that's just 100% damn good fun to play. Hands down, SRIV is easily the most fun I've had with a game in a long time. For those unaware, Saints Row is an open world sandbox game, similar to that of Grand Theft Auto. This game was available for free play for the weekend. In two days, I put in enough time to beat it. I played 18 hours in two days. The last time, I played for 8 hours straight. Now, I play a lot of video games, but I can't for the life of me point to the last game I played for 8 hours straight. It would probably be Rock Band 2 when I did the endless setlist and that was what, 2008?  2009? I dunno. Maybe I played a Call of Duty for that long sometime between now and then, but the fact that I could do this and enjoy it the whole time throughout and even now WANT to play more of it? That's pretty telling. This game is glorious. I'm genuinely upset it got overshadowed by GTA V.

So what's this game about? What's the premise? Intro sequence is a mission with you killing terrorists. They're planning on launching a nuke. And they actually succeed in it. And how do you stop it? You jump ONTO THE MISSILE. And then this song comes on. Your squad mates say a bit about how heroic you are while you're ripping parts of this missile out. You pull enough bits out, then jump off and it explodes midair while you're freefalling. The title card appears, then you land at your desk in the oval office, perfectly fine, because that's the kind of game this is. You are the president. Then the earth is abducted by aliens, mainly one named Zinyak. He trap everyone in their own personal hell, one which you initially escape from, then appear in a simulated version of Steelport where you have SUPERPOWERS.

Surprisingly enough, the dubstep gun was one of my favorites for overall

effectiveness as well as BADASS VALUE.

A great video game critic once said something like, "A sandbox game is only as good as the means one has of traversing it." A mission or two after you enter the simulation, less than an hour in. You're given super speed and super jump. Instantly this makes crossing the city (something you'll do A LOT) fast and, most importantly, fun. Clusters are also introduced, little blue floating collectibles. There are a thousand of em. 1255. Throughout the game, I got about 1150. They're fun to get and you they function as upgrading your superpowers. Partway in the game, you also get an ability that shows the clusters on the minimap helping out greatly. They never become an annoyance except maybe when you want to quit because it's 5 in the morning and you're tired but you keep seeing one in the horizon. It managed to reintroduce the fun collecting of Crackdown without being the tripe of Crackdown 2.

The bulk of the game is doing the random sidequests while the game tells you that it's useful to fucking with Zinyak or something. It's a bullshit reason, but they're fun to do, so who am I to complain? There are the sprinting races inside the simulation which are really fun, as well as ones in a simulation which are less fun. There are towers to climb, there are collectibles to collect, there are things to do, and that's the important thing to note. There are a lot of things that one can do and most of them are fun to do. Sure, they have fuckall to do with the actual plot, environment, and are just sidequests for cash and xp, but they're there, and the fun ones are really fun. And the other ones? Well, they're there if you want to play em.

The progression of the game is what you'd expect, given the premise. Get your crew back bit by bit, then kill Zinyak. You save each member from their own personal hell and each one remains entertaining and vastly different from each other. They're all memorable and perfectly fit the tone of the game. And the tone is fun. Cause this game is fun.

Just one of the crew member saving missions.

Another one is a replication of Final Fight.

Ultimately, I'm just a bit upset that this was so overshadowed by GTA V. GTA V, while yeah, it was a technical marvel, it certainly didn't grab me quite like SRIV did. I have no real reason to go back and play the single player in GTA V. I don't really connect to the characters, the plot is... I dunno, crime/gang stuff. The best part about GTA is the environment is pretty cool. That gets instantly rocked by traversing buildings Prototype-style. Yeah, super powers nullify the purpose of cars, but that doesn't bother me for a second. Superpowers > cars any day of the week. What are the benefits of driving a car, you get to listen to the radio? Shiiit, there isn't a single song in GTA that I like to listen to often enough to listen to outside of the game. There's not a song I miss from that game, nor a song I have that I'm glad is in the game. That soundtrack suuuucks. SRIV on the other hand, while it has a significantly less number of songs, they are significantly better. Not only can you listen to the radio outside of a vehicle; it's always on, you can make a playlist AND there are enough songs that I'd use on a playlist! Macklemore, Kendrick Lamar, FIDLAR, EMF, Haddaway, ah, so good.

At the very bottom line, this game accomplishes what it set out to do. It took it's silly premise and ran at a dead sprint. Superspeed. This game doesn't ask to be taken seriously, which works absolutely towards its favor. It works excellently and it's been a long time since I've had quite this much fun with a game and easily top 2 games I played from 2013. It's genuinely difficult for me to decide my GOTY with this in the mix. 100% recommend.

9.5/10