When you start out as a spoof of a popular intellectual property, its best to know when to let it go. Take a look at the Scary Movie films for instance. They stopped being funny after (and even during) the first.
Its pretty clear to any man, woman and child that Saints Row started life as a parody of infamous Rockstar franchise, Grand Theft Auto. But with each instalment something incredible happened. The game started to take on a life on its own.
Saints Row 4 is outrageous and audacious, but also extremely good fun. From the ridiculous, laugh-out-loud antics of the first mission which puts the President of the United States on the front-line of a terrorist invasion (funnier than it sounds!), to the crazy, moment to moment exploits that see you whizzing through space at light speed, Saints Row 4 manages to top its predecessors for insanity but does so in a more structured, stabilised way.
And inadvertently, Volition may have even created the solution to the Superman game we now absolutely have to have!
It’s no longer fair or logical to compare Saints Row to Grand Theft Auto. The very notion is ill-informed. Firing off alien SMGs with photon energy and driving around on Tron-esque motorcycles just wouldn’t work for Nico Bellic. CJ will never be the President of the United States, smacking Senators in the face and being forced to choose between a permanent cure for cancer or ending world starvation. The idea here is go in, switch-off and have some dynamic, uniquely placed sandbox fun.
And the alien-abilities make that feel so remarkably refreshing. Sprinting around the map outpacing traffic feels so liberating, as does leaping from the tops of buildings in a single bound, and climbing to the tops of towers only then to glide off towards your next mission objective.
Coming into Saints Row 4, I was expecting slapstick shenanigans. As if a Court Jester had been placed in front of me during a large banquet as an evening’s entertainment. What I didn’t expect, however, is how much quality that act had to offer. There are some seriously sound, game-changing elements in Saints Row 4.
To compliment that, the digs at pop culture almost always hit the mark. In particular, the Mass Effect references had me in stitches, as did ‘that’ Armageddon moment.
We know you’re waiting for Rockstar’s A-List Franchise next month. Who isn’t? But disregard Volition’s apex predator at your peril. This is perhaps the most entertaining sandbox fun since Just Cause 2. The laughs don’t feel forced and the gameplay feels current and relevant. Saints Row 4 is a sincere swan-song for this generation and does the job as well as anything else we’ve seen this year.