Saints Row review: An excellent reboot fueled by Gen Z rage

saints row is a series based on one existential question.

What is your worst job? Fire your RPG into the old office and become a crime lord. Jerkwad ex wouldn’t leave your friend alone? Jump off a nearby building, put on a wingsuit on the patio and confront him from 60 feet above. Suburban nouveau riche snobs who use priceless pieces of contemporary art as clotheslines? Get in his Lava Golf Cart, hit the bad guy with the tow cable, and drive home through the rush hour traffic.

These problems probably have rational human solutions, but the Saints Row reboot is a game that tells you to fuck rationally. solve in a straight line. There you are, there’s a goal, and most of the time, what’s between those two points is only a trail of smoke and blood. , or radioactive green glowing debris.

In terms of scale, this new incarnation of the series is not very As pretentious as its immediate predecessor — after all, in the first few hours Saints Row 4they blow up the earthRather, it exists at the midpoint of a somewhat straight race. Saints Row 2 And left fielder slapstick turn Saints row: The thirdSo while there’s nothing wilder than a weaponized dubstep firing gun, you can skin the grenade launcher to fire beer cans instead (that’s one of the tamer options).

At its core, it would be fair to call it new saints row Evolution beyond reboot. The setting and characters are new, but the core gameplay elements remain the same. You slowly take over the city from the existing power structures, mostly by killing lots of people and performing. jackass Episodic sabotage activity. (Have you ever left a Yelp review so harsh that a gang of murder-hungry anarchist hipsters rushed in with shotguns to retaliate?) Anarchist hipsters, idols, echoes Saints row: The thirdFor example, Deckers, an emo hacker from , but updated for 2022.

None are particularly problematic.The series’ familiar trappings really needed an update in the nine years since Saints Row 4 happened (we are not talking Got Out Of Hell in this household). Our world has changed since then. The old and new bosses have some basic things in common, like their casual disrespect for the lives of strangers, their inhuman toughness, and their extreme prowess at murder, but their The context is very different.

the boss of SR3 When Four Was a crime boss who rose from very humble beginnings saints rowThis new version of Boss is a frustrated Millennial/Gen Z hybrid paying off student loans and living with three roommates in an overpriced, undersized apartment. In the game’s opening hours, they lose their jobs in the cartoonishly evil Marshall defense industry for not keeping their lines like well-paid slaves (well, valuable money in a gang shootout leveling the museum). You lose artifacts, but whatever), and the resulting game is actually a result that the boss and his roommates can’t give. Does the system keep you in debt and under its thumb?Your potential is dirt for someone whose ability is half yours but whose annual income is four times his Feeling wasted on scooping?

The resulting entrepreneurial spirit (“Be your own Boss” is the game’s somewhat meta motto) adds flavor to the core gameplay. Once the Saints are in full swing, Santo will take control of the city by building “criminal ventures” in various glades of Ileso. Each of these law-breaking money machines comes with a series of activities that grow your business. Completing each set of activities secures Saints control over the neighborhood in which the venture is located.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver

Some of these are typical saints row Fare: The Shady Oaks Clinic is the front line for insurance fraud, where you can literally run into traffic and make money by shoving bosses out of oncoming traffic. He blows shit up brilliantly and demonstrates the product. Others are new, such as a toxic waste dump that requires careful driving of a truck full of radioactive material across the city, and a designer handing over a dream diary to show her what the city will look like. Directing to shoot Vaporwave in her haute couture atelier and more. saw. There are also “side jobs” that allow you to earn extra money to reinvest in your criminal empire, but they don’t necessarily contribute to your overall progress.

As your empire grows, the main story follows the Saints as they encounter increasingly bizarre setpieces.that is environment However, these murders are different. Sometimes it’s the expected action movie situation (train robbery, rescuing a kidnapped friend), sometimes it’s not at all. Some of them are memorable and wacky in the best possible way. For one, he one of the local gang force steals popular kids meal toys from his franchise of local fast food and chases you around the city to get them back. Another is his larp, ​​post-apocalyptic across the city, where weapons are replaced with foam guns and takedowns become someone’s heart-ripping pantomime.

Like Stillwater and Steelport before it, the city of Santo Ileso is a character of its own. While previous game settings had a Midwest Rust Belt aesthetic, San Toiso is an amalgamation of media depictions of the US Southwest. It’s like Antonio, rural Arizona, Reno, and even Southern California mixed together. The east side of the city is a working-class industrial area, thriving with a sophisticated arts district, while the west side is a high-rise corporate midtown, slowly transitioning into a strip of casinos and red-light district-style shops. Unlike the Saints Row games in , the city itself is surrounded by vast scrubland wilderness, with abandoned mining towns and roadside attractions (Santo Ireso is on Route 66) surrounded by rocky cliff sides, canyons, and more. , ponds and dirt roads.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver via Polygon

As much as I love Santo Ileso with all the quirks and details that really define the best cities you’ll find in games like Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto, I’m a white man from the Northeast and a South I am very aware that I have never lived in…more than Southern Ohio. Many of the touches that sold Santo Ileso specifically as a city in the American Southwest were myself — Includes two Spanish-language radio stations with intermittent in-game news broadcasts with Spanish readings — May read very differently than natives of the region, and other readings once the game is over Look for. Saints Row — specifically Saints row: The third — (note the skeptical quotes) has a troubling history with race as it evokes fictionalized visions of “gang culture.” I think Volition is aware of this and is steadily working on improvements, but the new SR Not always on target. Los Panteros is a macho-driven savage gang led by a convincing misogynist. A little It’s especially bad from a racial politics standpoint, especially since the rival idol gangs are rich white labor kids from nice parts of town.

I generally enjoyed my time on Santo Ileso, but the game definitely has its frustrations. Much of it is carried over from previous entries. many, many Activities include vehicles, especially the objective “Travel from X to Y across the city without blowing it up”, but the default difficulty can make the vehicles feel a bit flimsy. Similarly, while many combat-oriented activities are “horde mode” situations, the bosses feel a little fragile to the baseball-bat-wielding weirdo trying to rape you. , often resulting in a series of retry deaths from checkpoints that nerfed pretty quickly.

On the contrary, however, Volition now offers a strong set of difficulty options. The selectable difficulty levels are not specific categories, but rather presets with a certain number of different sliders. Feel free to tweak these sliders yourself to change individual bits of the experience to your liking. For example, it increases the base durability of allied vehicles.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver via Polygon

“Should I buy this game?” Part of this review is easy: If you enjoyed the previous saints row If you’ve never played the game before, this is a good onboarding point.if you are a fan of Saints Row 2 However, the later entries in the series are a bit that too Bonker positively, you should give a new one saints row try it. It still has the edge of a comedy series, but it doesn’t break the knobs.

However, while the game annoyed me at times, and the core gameplay loop wasn’t particularly new or innovative, it’s worth noting. saints row It’s the first game I’ve reviewed in years and I finished it, wrote a review, went back and started playing it just for myself. There were so many coincidences that made me laugh and laugh that I couldn’t explain here. The NPC I overheard was yelling “Speak!” To! a! representative! ” Doppler came back to me as I passed by. I have a folder of numerous screenshots that I can’t wait to tweet when the embargo is lifted. I’m mad or really I kept finding things I wanted to share with others, and I don’t think I have a better recommendation when it comes to recommending games.

saints row Launching August 23 on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Google Stadia. This game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Deep Silver. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.