After the closing of THQ earlier this year, and the firesale of THQ properties that followed, one of the THQ published franchises whose tenuous fate concerned fans the most was the Saints Row series. Generally acknowledged as a more lewd and drunken cousin to the GTA games (yeah… even MORE lewd and drunken), the Saints Row titles are generally praised for offering a “screw everything, let’s just @%$* everything up” alternative to Rockstar Games’ main franchise. This louder and more anarchic approach is a breath of fresh air for Saints Row fans, and the closing of THQ left many of them concerned with the fate of the long planned Saints Row IV (due out on August 20th here in the U.S.). Original developer Volition continued development of the title, but publication moved from THQ to Dead Island publisher Deep Silver, ensuring that fans will ultimately have their insane, anarchic fill. But forget the history… How does that game actually play?
Well, after spending a short time playing the game in Deep Silver’s E3 Oval Office set up, I’m happy to announce that the game is both fun and insane. Is it ultimately satisfying to the extent that we expect from a full console release? Sadly, I think the jury is still out.
The ‘Saints Row IV’ President’s Seal
The demo that I played came in two parts, a narrative portion early in the game in which the White House (under your presidency) is attacked by aliens intent on enslaving the human race and a free play, completely unlocked God mode portion set up by the developers to show off the free roam gameplay and the character’s completely insane souped up powers towards the end of the game.
I can’t hold a grudge against any game that features both Keith David’s voice talents and Stan Bush music, and in my time with the title I experienced both. Your character from Saints Row 3 is now dirtbag President of the United States, with a cabinet made up of kiss-asses, traitors and former porn stars ,and your approval rating sits at 20%. As you make your way to a televised press conference, you manage to hilariously cure cancer (or solve world hunger… you can’t do both), kick the ass of a political rival and endorse (or not) a loser hanger-on. And as you approach the podium to address the nation, the walls are blown in and the alien overlords attack. You have to make your way to the Oval Office, retrieve your high-powered munitions and kick some alien ass as the bad guys abduct most of your cabinet up into their space ship.
Me, sitting in ‘Saints Row IV’s AMAZING Oval Office
It’s a pretty ridiculous and impressive sequence of events, ending in the President manning a giant surface-to-air cannon on the White House lawn against incoming spaceships, but I couldn’t help but think that the character animations were a bit choppy, and that the gameplay felt slow. I wanted to blast a lot more aliens and explore the White House a bit more and it felt as though the big set pieces and jokes came at the expense of a faster, looser experience. It is fun to blow aliens away with a high powered machine gun, but the scripted encounter events occurred so close to each other that it didn’t leave time for exploring. This really felt like a tutorial level (and am pretty sure that it is, with the game’s release about two months away). Probably not fair to think that it’s representative of the entire game, as even though the gameplay and animations weren’t satisfying, the humor and ridiculousness were EXACTLY what I’ve come to expect from a Saints Row title.
Luckily, the gameplay picked up a lot with the free roam portion of the demo. In this open world sequence, your character is completely powered up, with superpowers involving super-speed, limited flight, freezing, fire powers, and telekinesis. And he also has every weapon in the game and is allowed to unleash them all on both the pedestrians and alien scum inhabiting the massive area. This portion reminded me a lot less of GTA and a lot more of the first Crackdown game, a title I was addicted to years ago. Here, I found myself superjumping around the city, collecting rooftop orbs, and blowing stuff up. It’s actually a LOT like the first Crackdown and even features places on the map where you can activate mini missions and co-op play. But of course, there’s a major difference: the powers and weapons are insane… and Stan Bush is playing on one of the radio stations!
The Dubstep gun may be one of the most hilarious weapons ever.
In my time blowing things up and pretty much destroying everything, I used freezing powers to freeze alien gunships out of the sky and send them crashing into buildings, fire abilities to light bad guys on fire during melee encounters, and telekinesis to pick up bystanders or vehicles (or corpses) and send them hurtling into pretty much anything and everything. And the guns were fantastic. One of the most creative is the Dubstep Gun, in which holding down the right trigger and aiming it at an enemy bludgeons them with dubstep music until they die. Pretty hilarious. My favorite (and most destructive) was the Singularity Cannon, a weapon that fires a mini-black hole at a target that immediately sucks up everything in the nearby vicinity. Cars, pedestrians, aliens, streetlamps, fences, trucks… I had a blast seeing the bad guys scrape and try and drag themselves free of the little black holes, only to ultimately get stretched and sucked inside. It was immediately one of my favorite weapons of any game ever, and it’s a blast just speed running or soaring around the environment shooting the weapon at everything in sight (including getting yourself accidentally sucked in on a few occasions). It was Crackdown… on crack. And I had a blast.
And just as I was warming up and really putting it to the alien scum, the demo was over and I was ushered out of the room by the Deep Silver folks (but not before I got a picture sitting at the Presidential desk!). Yes, the jury is still out on whether or not my time demoing the game is indicative of the full console release, but the personality on display in Saints Row IV and the rampant fun of the open world carnage were definitely enough for me to give the game another chance upon release. I can’t wait to power up, load up and cut an even bigger swath of destruction August 20th.
http://youtu.be/bQTt6bUZrSU