Saints Row review: Shooter-centric strip sandbox feels aimless outside of super set-pieces

The company’s army is attacking my turf.

I have a nice little racket, I swooped in front of traffic, got shot at 50 feet in the air, and scooped up from multiple false insurance claims, I’d be damned stealing if I let them my innovative ideas.

So when I drive it to where they set it up in my pearly Rambo, I need to pick the perfect device to show them who’s boss. uzi will do well.

Before long, with the still-hot uzi holster in hand, it was back to launching itself under the nearest semi-truck – just needed another six runs until I could afford a tuxedo.

Saints Row has always been a dream game for 13-year-olds and 13-year-olds, but this one is a soft reboot of the sandbox series that started life as a more straight-forward GTA clone and gradually got dumber until it no longer boots With laces, only half a can of Silly String and the original pasta.

In Saints Row 4, things swell to a super-powerful level, a segment that doubles down on the notoriety that Saints Row earned in the late ’00s and early ’10s.

But while some of its storytelling and expansion have evolved with the times, some of its core ideas feel like relics from that very specific era of open-world gaming.

Saints Row is at his best during the show mission.

Here, it makes the most explosive use of its shiny surroundings, its solid, dynamic action most closely, and its goofy scripting most happily.

The Saints Row franchise has always had top-notch voice work under the hood — like in Saints Row 4, Keith David basically played the same role he played in Rick and Morty just a few years ago — and neither here what a difference. Everyone in the booth was clearly having a good time, which shows.

It’s also where you’ll get the best combat experience, as there’s more design, direction and context than the open world of Santo Ileso – the brand new city the Saints now call home.

From tighter camera angles to easy-to-trigger explosions – where you just press a button and your character can capture and shoot flammable barrels and more – everything seems to be designed to make shooting more intense and engaging as it is now is the main focus on your character that powers down.

Whether you’re rescuing your buddies, raiding cardboard castles in LARPs across the city, or firing explosives from cannons to stop a museum heist, there are plenty of memorable, more, and crazy shenanigans to get you lost in. There are a handful of fully voiced character personalities to choose from, which are all very personal to you.

This is also the acclaimed Boss Factory character creator, and it gives you some nice old-school sliders to give your character a unique look, from more generic hairstyles to more wacky metallic skins to choose from.

Other characters and factions feel more banal in design, though. It seems to be inspired by Ubisoft’s open-world games, with the company-mandated neon pink punk vibe that feels very familiar, like we’ve seen in Watch Dogs 2, Rage 2, Dying Light 2, and most games Same thing, Far Cry 6.

It’s nice to see different types of characters being represented as well, but it feels a bit superficial, especially next to the stereotype of the Latin American gang Los Panteros.

The pre-release, which many considered a more “solid” entry in the series, has gotten out of hand, but I feel like this Saints Row might be looser than Saints Row 4. You have a central ego in a simulation that gives you superpowers, but right now there’s no such thing as a peg to hold things together.

Yes, you’re building your criminal empire by building different shady businesses, but the main way you interact with them is still through the icons on the map, dotted around the city, teleporting you where you need to go.

This, combined with prompting the main quest via an in-game phone, can make you feel completely disconnected from your surroundings. So while the music and atmosphere in the missions are great, small events and moving around the open world can feel bland and obtrusive.

An example I can think of is a grocery store side quest where you steal a rare car and run it back to your garage to sell parts. After returning, like a GTA-style cop chase with varying degrees of hatred, you drive into a glowing circle outside your destination and everything stops.

It’s pretty low stakes and arcade games, which is fine if you like to tick the box and watch your revenue numbers go up – and I do – but it’s definitely not the solid, more believable one some might expect role play.

Another problem is that you feel like you are doing the same thing over and over again. While there are many different side hustles and activity types, there are so many instances of the same activity throughout the map that your business needs to repeat the same type of quest about 7 times to function at its best.

Again, since you’re interacting with them mostly as icons on the world map, and cities are so big, the discovery factor is very low, and it’s easy to just grind all one business type hard because there’s not a lot of push The power of different things.

Striking a balance between giving players freedom of choice and having a lot of options can be tough, but Saints Row gets a little rambling when you scan the map for your next transfer.

Still, in 4K on the PS5, once it’s running, the world looks good, with a huge sense of scale and decent density — even if the framerate might suffer when the run gets tough.

There’s a lot to love and a lot to laugh about in Saints Row as you haunt Saint Yleso with your unique boss. As you build wealth and cement your position at the top, it can be tempting to collect clothes and cars as you expand your business network. But outside of the main quest of super positioning, it’s easy to bounce back from the more repetitive elements of the open world.

Saints Row is coming to PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Google Stadia on August 23, 2022. Tested on PS5, code provided by publisher.