Originally, the Saints Row series was just a knock-off of it’s vastly more popular predecessor Grand Theft Auto.  Now on the fourth iteration, it has taken what made it unique and completely went insane.  From outrageous super powers to ridiculous weapons, the game rarely takes itself seriously and goes for a much more humorous tone.  But is the game successful with it’s comedy, and is it a fun game itself?

In Saints Row IV, you play as leader of the gang, the Saints, gone leader of the free world after stopping a terrorist plot to save the world.  As soon as you start playing as the President of the United States of America, America is invaded by aliens led by their leader, Zinyak.  Zinyak kidnaps you and all of your friends and puts them all into simulations based off of their own personal hells.  Thankfully, your friend Kinzie was able to break out, so she manages to hack your simulation to give you superpowers, allowing you to fight back against your kidnappers and save your friends.  One of the strongest parts of the narrative in Saints Row IV is the dialogue.  Although you are able to change the appearance and voice of your character, the character has his own unique personality and has witty and funny dialogue with the NPC’s in the game.  The game also has some cool and hilarious set pieces while saving your friends from the simulations and defeating Zinyak.  Highlights include the world’s greatest opening scene to stop the terrorist plot, where you jump onto a launched missile rocketing towards Washington, climbing up it, dodging debris, listening to (mostly) heartfelt messages from your friends, all while “Armageddon” by Aerosmith is playing in the background, perfectly foreshadowing the over-the-top and silly nature of the entire plot to the game.

The humor from the plot perfectly translates into the gameplay.  The game’s strongest points gameplay-wise come from the main story missions, which throw you into outrageous scenarios with unique gameplay separate from the rest of the game.  Outside of main missions, you are play in the open-world simulated town of Steeleport, where you are given super powers and weaponry to wreak havoc and do side activities.  Although the side activities are very copy-paste from Saints Row: The Third, aside from some new additions, the open-world gameplay is at it’s best when you are just wreaking havoc in the city with you superpowers and guns.  Superpowers given are fairly standard, including fireballs, super sprint, super jump, ground pound, telekinesis, and a few others, and give the player a real advantage when it comes to battles.  Where the game really gets creative in it’s open-world gameplay is it’s guns. Aside from your standard pistols, SMG’s, rocket launchers, etc., Saints Row IV boasts one of the most interesting arsenals in all of video games.  Some of my favorites include the Dubstep gun, which shoots purified beats to cause explosions and mayhem, the Abduction gun, which targets enemies and makes them fly up into the sky, the Black Hole gun, which shoots black holes that suck up everything near it, and many, many more.  My only real gripe with the gameplay is how boring and grinding the side activities and extra pointless challenges can get.  For anybody who is not going for 100% completion, I recommend skipping these.

I played the recent Saints Row IV: Re-elected version of the game that had just come out on the PS4 and Xbox One, which ran smoothly throughout my experience for the most part.  For a port of a game that came out awhile ago, I figured most of the game’s bugs would have been ironed out by now, but I was wrong.  The game crashed a few times while I was playing it, and thanks to the frequent auto-saves, I hadn’t lost too much data whenever it did (except for having to do one of the missions twice essentially thanks to a crash.)  Graphically, the game didn’t look much better than it’s last-gen release, if it even looked better at all.  The game still looked like it did in Saints Row: The Third, which, for a re-release, I find a little frustrating.  All in all, the game isn’t as pretty as I believe a current-gen game should be.  The graphics or glitches never greatly detracted from the overall gameplay experience, so everything visually was at least functional.

Saints Row IV, at the end of the day, is a fun game.  It’s not emotionally taxing like some modern games try to be, and it’s not one of the greatest gameplay experiences you’ll ever have, but it definitely is a joy to play.  Saints Row IV: Re-elected also comes with the recent stand-alone DLC for $60, essentially giving you two games for the price of one, so it definitely is worth the price.  The dialogue and writing is witty most of the time and if it doesn’t make you chuckle a few times, the scenarios the game makes in the story missions and you make in the open-world certainly will.