Zero Punctuation: Saints Row 4

[templar1138a]

Well, THAT explains why it took so long for you to get this review up. I was starting to worry.

Points you raised in your Saints Row 2 review led to my buying that game. Points you raised about SR3 made me decide not to buy it. The points you've raised about SR4? Hm... well, between those and the fact that the transgendering options are back, I guess I'll buy it via Steam when it's down to about thirty bucks.

 

[Frezzato]

I enjoyed them all, though SR3 was a bit to over the top, though it had its moments. I enjoyed SR4. Was a lot of fun and its exactly what i thought it was. An very funny places, loved the singing scene in the car. They said this is the last Saints Row game. I would like another gang game, i did miss the whole starting from nothing and slowly taking over areas, buy houses and buildings etc

It might be a little late to suggest this with GTA V right around the corner, but have you ever played Saints Row 2? If not, I highly recommend it. That being said, I'm in total agreement with you.

As for Yahtzee, Saints Row 2 was no GTA knockoff. They had 3 more years of development time after San Andreas was released, and it shows. As far as I'm concerned, Saints Row 2 kicks the ass of every GTA game made up to today. That doesn't mean I don't love GTA San Andreas though. Or Saints Row the Third. Or Saints Row IV.

 

[MB202]

So I'm wondering, is Yahtzee going to review Rayman Legends? I can think of several criticisms that he'd make for the game, even though I loved it.

 

[teamcharlie]

For all the pretensions of 'quality' in Saints Row IV, this was absolutely the least fun I've had playing a game in the main series (never played SR 1, so take that with a grain of salt if you like).

The writing is decent, the missions are inventive, but when it gets right down to it there's just nothing spectacular about SRIV. Where's the moment when you realize the Boss is about to give Worf face cancer? When does the Hulk make you drive around in a convertible with a tiger riding shotgun? When am I going to meet and gain the trust of a new, absolutely ridiculous lieutenant like Zimos locked up in a sex dungeon?

In the end it just felt like an extended, official piece of fanfiction. Put all the old characters in an enclosed space, make the main character bone/explode/shoot/shockwave whoever you want, spank the monkey, repeat. I never felt an attachment to anybody in the game except for Pierce and Zinyak (I was surprised to realize I no longer cared what happened to Kinzie, but she's really changed from the 1337 haxxx0r who IRL hides under the table at a pancake house), and for all the talk of 'inclusivity' what that really seemed to mean was that nothing was particularly fleshed out and that none of your choices mattered. Maybe it would have been interesting if Gat was homophobic, or Pierce was totally gay or Kinzie wouldn't sleep with you unless you were part cyborg. In fact, I can't recall making any choices in the game after the white house mission, and never any with a lasting effect aside from when I want to buy X, Y or Z.

So, yeah. Disappointed.

 

[Strain42]

I played Saints Row 1 out of a deal with my best friend (we would each play a game the other one likes that we normally wouldn't play. I played Saints Row and he played Persona 3) and I thought it was pretty good. I liked the characters and story and all that good stuff.

Saints Row 2 came out and I freakin' loved it. One of my all time favorite games, easily in my top 10. Loved the mix of wackiness still fairly grounded in reality.

Saints Row the Third I thought took a huge leap towards crazy, with stuff like one of the enemy gang leaders being defeated through a freakin' video game and then just chased out of town rather than killed, but despite the story being a little bit TOO wacky for my tastes, I still had fun with the actual game.

Saints Row IV on the other hand...I haven't bought, and I'm not going to anytime soon. Not because I think it looks bad, not because I think it'll be even further away from what I loved about 2, but because I know sometime next year or so there's gonna be a Saints Row IV: Fudge off Aliens Edition or whatever it ends up being called that'll include all the super fun DLC stuff and will probably cost less than buying SR4 right now anyways.

Sooo...y'know...I'll get it later.

 

[Quiotu]

I enjoyed them all, though SR3 was a bit to over the top, though it had its moments. I enjoyed SR4. Was a lot of fun and its exactly what i thought it was. An very funny places, loved the singing scene in the car. They said this is the last Saints Row game. I would like another gang game, i did miss the whole starting from nothing and slowly taking over areas, buy houses and buildings etc

It might be a little late to suggest this with GTA V right around the corner, but have you ever played Saints Row 2? If not, I highly recommend it. That being said, I'm in total agreement with you.

As for Yahtzee, Saints Row 2 was no GTA knockoff. They had 3 more years of development time after San Andreas was released, and it shows. As far as I'm concerned, Saints Row 2 kicks the ass of every GTA game made up to today. That doesn't mean I don't love GTA San Andreas though. Or Saints Row the Third. Or Saints Row IV.

I think better than any other games I've seen, GTA3 and Saints Row 2 both do a very good job of portraying you as the soulless bad guy. You're not even an anti-hero, you're a legitimate monster, and you have to be the BEST monster and defeat all the other monsters to win. Saints Row 2 I think is a step better because there's an actual story behind it all rather than go here, get instructions, and kill things like GTA3.

Which is why I think the stark contrast between SR2 and 3 really disappointed me. Truthfully I think Yahtzee had the bars between 2 and 4 too close together. SR2 was gangsta... SR3 was gangsta in clownshoes... SR4 is just clownshoes. I see the blatant change in design being like Squeenix and their sudden priority on graphics starting with FF7. Those like myself who played FF4-6 saw it extremely disappointing while it gathered a larger new audience that had no idea how good the games were before.

There will be people like me who may never return to SR because we remember when it switched from gangsta parody to a panda suit. Fun or not, it's a complete departure from what it was. It's a definite success, but I think it lost a good portion of its original fanbase while catering to a completely different one.

 

[Frezzato]

I think better than any other games I've seen, GTA3 and Saints Row 2 both do a very good job of portraying you as the soulless bad guy. You're not even an anti-hero, you're a legitimate monster, and you have to be the BEST monster and defeat all the other monsters to win. Saints Row 2 I think is a step better because there's an actual story behind it all rather than go here, get instructions, and kill things like GTA3.

Which is why I think the stark contrast between SR2 and 3 really disappointed me. Truthfully I think Yahtzee had the bars between 2 and 4 too close together. SR2 was gangsta... SR3 was gangsta in clownshoes... SR4 is just clownshoes. I see the blatant change in design being like Squeenix and their sudden priority on graphics starting with FF7. Those like myself who played FF4-6 saw it extremely disappointing while it gathered a larger new audience that had no idea how good the games were before.

There will be people like me who may never return to SR because we remember when it switched from gangsta parody to a panda suit. Fun or not, it's a complete departure from what it was. It's a definite success, but I think it lost a good portion of its original fanbase while catering to a completely different one.

It was really a blessing for me since I played Saints Row the Third first, then #4, and finally, Saints 2. I got to see exactly what was lost in the transition after 2, but at the same time I see why Volition did it. They added tons more Friendly Fire locations, added the ability to customize cars from cribs, and made cribs into safe locations. Also, after Saints 2 it became much easier to make your character attractive. It seemed that in Saints 2 every character but you had a high poly count.

At the same time though, I agree, they sacrificed game play for the sake of better graphics. I think the real problem is that Saints Row 2 is so massive, so well written, and so jam packed with insane activities that the only place for Saints Row to go was down. I don't mean down in a negative way, I mean that I really believe Saints Row 2 is Volition's magnum opus. Also, I prefer your analogy over Yahtzee's complaints about SR3 by the way. It was his critique of Saints Row the Third that actually kept me from playing Saints 2 for a long time. It sounded more like he was whining, and all I could hear was him complaining about what was gone, rather than what The Third had to offer.

 

[duchaked]

the way I see it is that the Saints Row series has indeed stopped being just a copy cat of GTA, and while some people still want it to do that...well they're probably better off hitting their own niche than trying to compete with GTA 5. if I want the traditional car jacking free roam gritty story...I already have that elsewhere.

it's called Sleeping Dogs.

lol oh and maybe GTA too I guess...

 

[Solo-Wing]

But it didn't just immitate, it mocked a lot.
"Hey baby, this Snake is 100% Solid~".
And most importantly, the gameplay didn't suck complete ass, quite the opposite in fact, which made it ok to me.
There have been too many "comedy" games that had gameplay as an afterthought, and while SR4 wasn't really original in any way, it copied enough of the good bits to justify mocking other bits.

Personally, I had a lot of fun with it, even though it was my first entry in the series and I had to puzzle the characters together myself.

Exactly, I loved that the cardboard boxes had little exclamation points on them too. And it had the exclamation sound effect when you were spotted. And the guards you were killing off whilst in the cardboard box made constant reference to how stupid they were for patrolling in such a manner and hoped nobody would sneak up on them while their backs were turned. Oh, and using vents for no reason. And splinter cell referencing about being invisible in the shadows. That was probably my favorite their-own-hell mission, though Pierce's was freaking hilarious too.

[HEADING=2]HERE COMES PAUL![/HEADING]

OT: I think this game is more off the walls then SR3 because it makes fun of a lot more things then Yahtzee said. Hell the biggest parody is of Mass Effect. You spend a good portion on a space ship where you can "Romance" (Aka: Fuck) all your crewmates.

 

[Jburton9]

Thanks for the post as always Yahtzee : )

I mostly enjoyed SR IV, also the poking fun at Metal Gear was lots of fun and indeed made the whole point of that game mockingly silly : )

I found SR IV to be a bit too crash prone, thankfully the game saves constantly so I did not lose too much progress. I had a buddy of mine also suffered the same/similar crash issues as well on his PS3.

Yes once you get the super powers it is pretty pointless to drive a vehicle. They even allow the "car radio" to play while you are running around in super powered mode. Zipping back in and out of the matrix thing got tiring though. "Here do this mission and then come back because I need to talk to you..." Wow really? I mean, you are talking to me now so why not just say it uh now? lol

Also the other bummer is the game focused too much around the already existing activity modes. Sometimes it would break out of that mold but it did not last very long. hrm.

Given the ending I figure they will pull a hyper dimensional rabbit or a reboot of the series. Honestly I am leery of reboots as they are difficult to do and prone to failure but at this point it feels like to me that is the best direction.


Lastly, I could not escape that nagging feeling that it felt like a plump DLC vs a whole new game. This feeling maybe due to the heavy recycling of existing game assets.

Overall SR IV was still a fun romp and it was great to see what they were going to make fun of next. I do hope to see SR V released in the near future : )

 

[AJey]

I'm glad Saints Row 4 exists as a game. It proved that fun does not make a game good and that people want more than stupid, mindless killy-stompy-bang-bang game.

 

[yundex]

Challenging enough to make you not feel overpowered? I disagree entirely, i'm playing on normal and the game has been a complete cakewalk. And I somehow get the feeling that it was intended.

All in all the game feels like a DLC that has been stretched out.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I've never played a Saints Row game, but I might be willing to give this one a try once it comes down in price.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I think the devs of Saint's Row IV watched Yahtzee's previous reviews of the older SR games and saw it as a challenge to really outdo themselves on the wacky scale. They must have said "Sod it! GTA will be the serious and gritty character-driven crime game, and we'll go full pants-on-head crazy! We'll even outquirk Suda 51!"

Kinda surprised he didn't mention the option to use Nolan North as your character's voice. No, really. You can have Nolan North voice your character.

Perhaps its time for the makers of Saints Row to hang it up and try something new... Like teaming up with Yahtzee to finally make his dream game Mankind Has Yet To Recognize My Genius. If only for the main reason which is to see how he'd run with a sandbox crime game. Could be somewhere in the middle between insane parody and serious tone. Then again, he did describe one character having the face of Frank Zappa with nuclear missiles for legs and voiced by Liam Neeson.

You are referring to Captain Sunshine, who hovers over the player character in MHYTRMG and showers him with rose petals and friendship. At this point, Yahtzee and Volition teaming up for MHYTRMG is the only next logical step.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I've never played a Saints Row game, but I might be willing to give this one a try once it comes down in price.

Be warned, the game is a love letter to fans and the franchise as a whole. There is a lot of content referencing the first 3 games. I'd watch all the cutscenes of the first game on Youtube (or a LP if you have the time), play the second game, and watch a LP of the third on Youtube. Or jut watch LPs/the cutscenes of all the games. You do lose a bit from just the cutscenes, though.

 

[DataSnake]

You are referring to Captain Sunshine, who hovers over the player character in MHYTRMG and showers him with rose petals and friendship. At this point, Yahtzee and Volition teaming up for MHYTRMG is the only next logical step.

Captain Dynamite, actually. Mentioned in the Fallout 3 review.

 

[Evonisia]

Eh,I haven't played the games myself,but I have watched LPs of 3 and 4 (That's still going). And while I doubt I'd ever buy SR: The Third full price, I did mostly like the story to it. Or something close enough to it in this game. LOL jk There were also characters I liked in SR3; Oleg,Zimos, Angel (Angel-Mania! XD) to name a few.

For the most part, the characters of The Third were fine, I liked most of them (Kinsie's one of my favourite characters from the Series), of course even that had it's slip ups what with how they handled Johnny Gat. My problem was with the schizophrenic tone, mostly. I have a bunch of other complaints but it'd generally boil down to that.

 

[C117]

Ah, Saints Row IV. Been looking forward to this game for a long time. Time to force my opinion of it onto everyone else!

Spoiler

PROS:

The powers - Jumping over scyscrapers, running faster than the average vehicle, and (most importantly) being able to set people on fire in a way that triggers a chain-reaction, leaving you to just listen to that glorious sound of civilians exploding like popcorn. That is all good.
The music - The overall selection of music tracks in SRIV does not suit my tastes at all, as seems to always be the case with me and sandbox games. But how can I not love climbing up a speeding rocket while listening to "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing", or stripdancing to "Simply Irresistible", or singing a duet of "Opposites Attract" with Pierce, or embarking on the final stretch of the game with "The Touch" blaring in my ears? The one music track that made me laugh out loud, though, was when I realized that this game contains "Liberty Bell March", also known as "Monty Python Theme".
Zinyak - Though Zinyak is only one villian and not three, he manages to get a recommendation simply because of his demeanor, and his excellent reading of the first section of "Pride and Prejudice", as well as his reading of "Romeo and Juliet" together with that one radio announcer from SRIII that has no emotion whatsoever.
Side missions - The side missions all tie into the story and give you special rewards upon completion, thus giving more reason for completionist-maniacs like me to complete them.
Fun - This game is mindless fun, both in humor and in gameplay. At least I think so.

CONS:
No replays - I still miss the ability to play completed missions, like you could in SRII.
No russian female voice - I liked that voice, and its open attraction to Pierce...
Schizophrenic - As fun as it is, Yahtzee is right; this game often feels like it has no idea what it wants to do. Why would I ever use a car, when I can run faster than most of the vehicles available? The only vehicle I could find that was faster was the matrix bike, and that was because it bugged out and allowed me to customize it. And why give me all of these neat superpowers, when you are just going to concoct some new reason for why I can't use them on every other mission? Perhaps this could have been solved if the unlocking of the powers was more spaced out, giving you more time acting like a normal(?) gangster in the city, before the game gives you your first power and the game suddenly opens up.
The doodads - I am not talking about the fact that there are doodads in the game, that is fine. I just don't like the fact that after having collected them all and upgraded all of the available superpowers, I still had at least 70 doodads left. Call it a pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like it when a game gives me a finite amount of something, a finite amount of things to spend it on, and then give me too much of that same something, so I just sit around with a load of doodads I can do absolutely nothing with. Especially since I'm meticuosly collecting every last one of them as part of some sort of borderline compulsive disorder...
The ending - It just... I sort of expected more. With the entire game making references to past games and characters, making it feel like a love letter and farewell to the franchise, I guess I wanted a more definitive ending. Instead it's like "TIME-TRAVUL!" And then it just ends. Huh.

Overall, Saints Row IV is not the best game out there and it is definitely not the smartest. But it doesn't try to be. What it tries to be, is fun. And that, it succeeds very well at. Highly recommended.

That is all.

 

[Mr. Q]

I think the devs of Saint's Row IV watched Yahtzee's previous reviews of the older SR games and saw it as a challenge to really outdo themselves on the wacky scale. They must have said "Sod it! GTA will be the serious and gritty character-driven crime game, and we'll go full pants-on-head crazy! We'll even outquirk Suda 51!"

Kinda surprised he didn't mention the option to use Nolan North as your character's voice. No, really. You can have Nolan North voice your character.

Perhaps its time for the makers of Saints Row to hang it up and try something new... Like teaming up with Yahtzee to finally make his dream game Mankind Has Yet To Recognize My Genius. If only for the main reason which is to see how he'd run with a sandbox crime game. Could be somewhere in the middle between insane parody and serious tone. Then again, he did describe one character having the face of Frank Zappa with nuclear missiles for legs and voiced by Liam Neeson.

You are referring to Captain Sunshine, who hovers over the player character in MHYTRMG and showers him with rose petals and friendship. At this point, Yahtzee and Volition teaming up for MHYTRMG is the only next logical step.

Actually, his name was Captain Dynamite. He's referenced in Yahtzee's Fallout 3 review when he expressed his concern of Bethesda's habit of using top actors like Liam Neeson and Patrick Steward only briefly in their games.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/420-Fallout-3

And, yes, Yahtzee and Volition should team up like yesterday. Even if they did this as a Kickstarter, they would be getting mad bank imo.

 

[Evil Smurf]

This is my GOTY, I laughed, cried with laughter and killed with dubstep. What's not to love?

Okay, here are the Wikiquote pages for Zero Punctuation. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Croshaw] The time is 12:14. Let's see how long this takes...

Someone has added it. So, if 12:14 is GMT (I highly doubt it), it took 5 hours 40 mins (or at least that is how long when I checked, again assuming GMT).

Also, if you're going to make me write a captcha, it helps if the captcha thingy doesn't crash on me.

It would be GMT +10