The 'Saints Row' reboot features plenty of unusual vehicles including a hoverboard, a jet bike and a food truck. — Koch Media/TNS
Although the Saints Row reboot moves the series to a fresh city, introduces a new crew and updates the general structure of the open-world crime game, the humour remains intact. That’s what sets it apart from the Grand Theft Autos and the Far Crys of the world.
Fans know they’re playing a Saints Row game when they say, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” It’s a refrain I found myself saying as I hauled toxic waste around the city streets or while I was engaging in an intense live-action role-playing battle, in which I nonlethally dispatched my enemies.
The campaign asks players to do plenty of odd things, but it never seems too absurd. That’s the knife’s edge that the developers at Volition are constantly walking with this reboot. With a blank canvas, the team could reset everything about the series after its absurdity escalated to the point where the heroes battled aliens.
New places and new faces
Saints Row is more grounded as players explore a new city called Santo Ileso. Inspired by Texas, Las Vegas and a little bit of Albuquerque, players create their own version of the Boss, who happens to be a grunt for Marshall, a private military corporation. The protagonist lives with three roommates: Kev and Neenah both have ties to the city’s respective gangs, the Idols and Panteros. Meanwhile, Eli, the brains of the operation, is constantly looking for ways to make money using his tech skills.
The smaller cast offers more room to create better-defined characters as players get to know about the down-and-out group. They want to live a relatively straight and narrow life, but they’re driven to build their own criminal organisation because career opportunities are closed off to them.
Because players begin on the ground floor, they’ll have the opportunity to craft their burgeoning empire. Through intimidation, the Saints gain ownership of an abandoned church and several city properties. Players will have to put businesses on each site and these ventures generate money.
They also happen to unlock side missions that are strewn around the world, and by finishing these jobs, players can help their businesses generate more capital. They can also eliminate rival gangs and the police presence to raise more funds.
Money is power
Cash is important in Saints Row because it rules everything around the protagonist. New threads cost money. Weapons and subsequent upgrades call for more cash. Even after they steal vehicles, players will still need to pay modders to equip them with nitrous boosts, a towing cable and an off-road kit. Even the Boss’s perk slots, which give players varying minor abilities such as fire resistance or a boost to collected ammo, require a pretty penny.
Money even plays a role in the campaign’s progression because players must spend money to unlock more ventures, and they’ll need to complete each business’s quest line to satisfy the requirements to move the plot along. This Saints Row is different because players don’t really take over the map from rival gangs, but instead, businesses are used to establish dominance in a neighbourhood.
It’s a decent change of pace for the franchise that ends up feeling a bit grindy and relies heavily on the quality of the venture’s side quests. Some, such as the Laundromat where players dispose of bodies by driving them to a designated location, are fun. Others, such as KAKTS Radio Station, are a buggy mess because it’s hard to know if players are making progress. That mission is more onerous than it’s worth.
Bugs and glitches
Making matters worse, glitches create a frustrating experience and can make missions nearly impossible at times. Players will spend some time resetting the game whenever they run into an annoying bug, like the one that screws up the perspective of helicopters. They’re frustrating to deal with, but thankfully, I didn’t run across any that were game-breaking.
Still, it’s a shame because most of Saints Row is fun. Again the grind to build up money to progress through the campaign is irksome, but that’s balanced out by the humour, which ultimately saved the experience. The campaign has a vibe that feels like it was written from popular posts on Reddit.
Whenever I was on a driving mission, motorists tended to drive like people in the IdiotsInCars subreddit. Walking through Santo Ileso, I could have sworn I’d seen similar moments in PublicFreakout. For the WallStreetBets fans, there’s even a mission where the Saints engage in a little stock manipulation.
That’s part of the reason the Saints Row reboot humour feels more layered, smarter and more relatable even amid the wilder moments. During a repo mission to tow a tank, I told myself, “I can’t believe I’m doing this” after dragging the heavy armour across the map on an SUV with a blown-out tire. But during the whole fiasco, I couldn’t help but think of Ukrainian farmers who essentially did the exact same thing to Russian tanks and giggled at the thought of how art can often imitate life.
Saints Row
3 stars out of 4
Platform: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One
Rating: Mature – Bay Area News Group/Tribune News Service
