Well through some industry friends that I still have, I was able to get a "review copy" of Saints Row, and holy fuck do I wish I hadn't. At least I got this game for free, which is about all you need to know about this game but hell I guess I'll review it anyway.
The first thing you'll notice when starting a new Saints Row playthrough is that the game immediately looks like it's using the same assets, same engine, same graphics, as Saints Row The 3rd. You know that really really good game from 2011. So first impressions are bad right out of the gate. I don't mind the slightly cartoony art style of the Saints Row games, but you'd think they could update the quality a little bit but nope. The game opens on a party at the Saint's Row Headquarters where a limo pulls up and this limo has the flatest blandest most unfinished looking textures I have ever seen. A man gets out of the limo goes up to the headquarters and asks to see the boss, flashing a briefcase full of Saint's money, okay he get's let in and we basically get a walkthrough of a party where all the characters from the game are having a blast. Throughout this intro, characters are using the same animations as in SR3, many of them have terrible clipping issues as they reach THROUGH each other, and even the subtitles can't go right as many of them skip ahead while the dialog is still playing the previous subtitle's worth of dialog.
And that's the way the game performs for the whole game (at least as far as I played in 8 hours). The game feels like a beta. So chalk this up to another rushed and unfinished open world pile of shit.
The thing is....it gets worse imo. You see graphics and shit can be cleaned up and patched, but you can't fix bad characters, bad story, cringy humor, and weak gameplay. Yes Saints Row is outright bad in all things. And by far the biggest problem I have with the game is the story and the characters. Firstly I feel like the game is trying to play things too safe, trying to have edgy humor but at the same time bending over backwards to make sure not to offend anyone. So every character is andorgenious and unsexual as possible, hell they even took out the dildo bat and the blow-up doll collectibles. Apparently it's okay to sell and smuggle drugs, but you can't show any titties or dick-like objects that's over the line.
With dialog lines about "fuck the capitalists" And waging a war because a guy got too good at the "capitalism". The games dialog reads like a Tumblr post made by a high school drop out who can't get a job and is really mad that other people are richer than they are. It like all the bite, and social commentary of these games have been neutered in order to be as inoffensive and mundane as possible, which means nothing in the game works. There are no stakes, and I can't really tell who the major bad guys are other than "rival gang" because they've not done anything to put these 20-something hipster characters through any real hardships. You have no motivation for wanting to become king gangster anymore because there isn't much interaction. It's all just kind of there like the crew has nothing better to do so might as well become the most powerful gang in the area for reasons. And even then the gangster hardcore killer thuglife doesn't fit these characters, they act and sound like they should be working at a Starbucks and even when they try to be "hard" it just comes across as your 12-year-old sibling trying to be badass. It's cringy and doesn't work.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, it's a lot like Agents of Mayhem in that it's just generic and also really buggy so it doesn't quite work most of the time. Animations stop playing, enemy health bars change types at a whim which can fuck you up, finishing moves just stop working randomly, piloting vechicles can cause wacky and unplayable camera angles. It's very much an unfinished game, in the sense that it needed several months more of bug testing and polishing before release.
HOWEVER, admittedly when the game is working the missions can be a lot of fun still. The core of working fun gameplay is here, but sadly the cringy dialog written by people who get their news from Twitter, and the bugs bring this game down to one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. I don't know how Saint's Row 1-4, and the lessons learned from AoM, haven't allowed this studio to bring back the design and writing that they used to be so great at. And frankly this toned down, socially safe, cringe humor makes me worried about GTA 6. Playing it safe has never worked for these games and only makes the games generic and lifeless.
Fuck it. Don't play it. Don't rent it. Don't waste any time thinking about this game than you already spent reading my bullshit about it.
The first thing you'll notice when starting a new Saints Row playthrough is that the game immediately looks like it's using the same assets, same engine, same graphics, as Saints Row The 3rd. You know that really really good game from 2011. So first impressions are bad right out of the gate. I don't mind the slightly cartoony art style of the Saints Row games, but you'd think they could update the quality a little bit but nope. The game opens on a party at the Saint's Row Headquarters where a limo pulls up and this limo has the flatest blandest most unfinished looking textures I have ever seen. A man gets out of the limo goes up to the headquarters and asks to see the boss, flashing a briefcase full of Saint's money, okay he get's let in and we basically get a walkthrough of a party where all the characters from the game are having a blast. Throughout this intro, characters are using the same animations as in SR3, many of them have terrible clipping issues as they reach THROUGH each other, and even the subtitles can't go right as many of them skip ahead while the dialog is still playing the previous subtitle's worth of dialog.
And that's the way the game performs for the whole game (at least as far as I played in 8 hours). The game feels like a beta. So chalk this up to another rushed and unfinished open world pile of shit.
The thing is....it gets worse imo. You see graphics and shit can be cleaned up and patched, but you can't fix bad characters, bad story, cringy humor, and weak gameplay. Yes Saints Row is outright bad in all things. And by far the biggest problem I have with the game is the story and the characters. Firstly I feel like the game is trying to play things too safe, trying to have edgy humor but at the same time bending over backwards to make sure not to offend anyone. So every character is andorgenious and unsexual as possible, hell they even took out the dildo bat and the blow-up doll collectibles. Apparently it's okay to sell and smuggle drugs, but you can't show any titties or dick-like objects that's over the line.
With dialog lines about "fuck the capitalists" And waging a war because a guy got too good at the "capitalism". The games dialog reads like a Tumblr post made by a high school drop out who can't get a job and is really mad that other people are richer than they are. It like all the bite, and social commentary of these games have been neutered in order to be as inoffensive and mundane as possible, which means nothing in the game works. There are no stakes, and I can't really tell who the major bad guys are other than "rival gang" because they've not done anything to put these 20-something hipster characters through any real hardships. You have no motivation for wanting to become king gangster anymore because there isn't much interaction. It's all just kind of there like the crew has nothing better to do so might as well become the most powerful gang in the area for reasons. And even then the gangster hardcore killer thuglife doesn't fit these characters, they act and sound like they should be working at a Starbucks and even when they try to be "hard" it just comes across as your 12-year-old sibling trying to be badass. It's cringy and doesn't work.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, it's a lot like Agents of Mayhem in that it's just generic and also really buggy so it doesn't quite work most of the time. Animations stop playing, enemy health bars change types at a whim which can fuck you up, finishing moves just stop working randomly, piloting vechicles can cause wacky and unplayable camera angles. It's very much an unfinished game, in the sense that it needed several months more of bug testing and polishing before release.
HOWEVER, admittedly when the game is working the missions can be a lot of fun still. The core of working fun gameplay is here, but sadly the cringy dialog written by people who get their news from Twitter, and the bugs bring this game down to one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. I don't know how Saint's Row 1-4, and the lessons learned from AoM, haven't allowed this studio to bring back the design and writing that they used to be so great at. And frankly this toned down, socially safe, cringe humor makes me worried about GTA 6. Playing it safe has never worked for these games and only makes the games generic and lifeless.
Fuck it. Don't play it. Don't rent it. Don't waste any time thinking about this game than you already spent reading my bullshit about it.
