Saints Row may be the worst game I’ve played this year and definitely the biggest disappointment I’ve played since Two worlds. There is no way to overshadow this game, there is no “brightside”. We can’t look at this game from a glass-half-full perspective. There is nothing redeemable about the Saints Row reboot and that’s not even the worst.
The worst part of Saints Row is that the game doesn’t even have the decency to be terrible. If the game was objectively terrible, it would at least be fun to laugh at. Instead, it’s just a mediocre piece of forgettable media, a failed attempt by Volition to revive the franchise they themselves ran aground. They had one chance to make this comeback and couldn’t even get it right.
Saints Row takes place in a new location, a Midwestern desert town called Santo Lleso, and follows an all-new cast of characters, millennials dripping with sarcasm and “humour”. Three of our four main characters, Kev, Neenah, and the main character start the game as roommates who are also members of one of the three major street gangs in town: The Idols, Los Panteros, and Marshall.
For some reason, each character is ostracized from their gang and they decide they’d rather try to create their own criminal empire rather than be foot soldiers for another. Thus begins our “crazy” and “fun” journey as we follow the lives of our favorite tweeting, selfie-taking, “Mugmosa” drinking gang of millennials…heroes(?) as they take the city and the saints in. bring existence.
Story
Look, I can’t turn around Saints Row’s story sucks. Every character is annoying that I couldn’t get attached to if I tried. Neenah and Elie are the best of the main characters, but that’s largely because Neenah barely speaks and Eli is just a nerd. But the worst two characters, bar none, are Kev and the main character. Neither character is silent for half a second, or they keep up a joke for far too long.
It doesn’t help that the main story is just as dull and boring as the desert environment. There is nothing exciting or exchangeable about this setup. Though I can remember every major plot point from Saints Row 2 Even though I haven’t played the game since 2009, I know I won’t remember a single moment of this game in a month.
The biggest problem with Saints RowThe story of the story is that all the dialogues feel like they were generated by a computer. The millennial characters try too hard to be recognizable, but come across as the most fake characters I’ve ever seen. It’s like someone made a show that took every baby boomer’s millennial joke and turned it into characters. Try to make a story out of it that is even slightly interesting.
Gameplay
The game of Saints Row has been a fierce battle and for good reason. There is no other way to say this, but the Saints Row gameplay is boring and terribly dated. It feels like I’m playing a 360 remaster rather than a full modern title. Inside the gunfight Saints Row feels almost identical to Saints Row 2. This wouldn’t be a problem if this one Saints Row 2 remaster sells for $30, but it’s not, it’s a full-priced experience.
Weapons also feel weak when firing at enemies. Even in the beginning, the enemies were bullet sponges that felt they existed to strip me of my ammunition and patience. Things are made worse by the fact that weapons all have terrible accuracy. When I fire the assault rifle at almost full range my bullets still go through people instead of killing them, and when they already have large health pools it makes for a not fun experience.
bugs
The game has side goals that you can do, and some of them return from older games, like insurance fraud, which I wish I could have enjoyed. I didn’t enjoy it because when I started the Insurance Fraud mission, the game crashed repeatedly and despawned every car on the road, and it wasn’t just for that one mission, it would continue for the next five missions.
Other side goals weren’t much better. Doing the heist missions where you shoot enemies that are chasing you makes you feel janky and not fun. While in the car you are forced to only use side arms like pistols or SMGS, but if you want to use long cannons or rocket launchers you have to climb on top of the car which leaves you feeling vulnerable to being vented.
Glitches are actually a big problem in the game in general. Bullets not hitting targets, enemies falling out or firing their guns, making objects and targets disappear, there’s nothing worse than getting hit by a brick wall which is a game breaking bug and having to start the mission all over again. During my time with Saints RowI’ve run into more problems in this game than in any other major AAA release in several years.
Redeeming Qualities
In fact, the only redeeming quality of Saints Row it’s driving. Driving in the Saints Row franchise has always been a little strange. They stuck to a more cartoonish, unrealistic formula, a conscious choice afterwards Grand Theft Auto IV towards a more realistic driving experience. It often divides people as to whether or not they hate it.
Now it feels like driving is the only thing worth doing in this game. You can turn a dime with the use of the satisfying drift mechanic. You can also sweep cars sideways off the road as they chase you. It’s not much, but at least I have something positive to say about this game.
Terrible Dialogue
When I hear the characters speak out loud, I feel like I’m being driven insane. Not a single conversation in this game felt organic or anywhere near reality. Again, it felt like an AI was randomly generated conversations. I’ve heard more persuasive conversations in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and that’s pretty bad.
Where the characters were before Saints Row titles were goofy, at least they had a charm that kept them connected to the world. Johnny Gat, at least in Saints Row and row of saints 2, was a likeable character because he was a terrible person with a sense of humor. The game never tried to make you think he was anything but a cold-blooded killer.
The same can’t be said about our cast in Saints Row. The game tries so hard to make you think they are good people, but in the end it just alienates the player. Kev isn’t a killer, he’s just a crazy, funny DJ/Chef! He’s so quirky, you’re going to love his random sense of humor!
No you won’t, you won’t like it when this absolutely insufferable bastard opens his mouth. The voice cast, no matter how well they try to do their job, cannot save this game. Emphasis on the word “try” by the way because while no one felt like they were a terrible voice actor, it didn’t feel like anyone in this cast of characters cared and just called in instead.
Again, to point out the major flaws in our main character: the dialogue the main character says will change depending on the voice you choose during character creation, which is a really nice attention to detail. The only problem is, whichever voice you choose, all the dialogues are annoying and make me want to punch them. I’ve never felt the desire to punch my own character, so Saints Row has broken new ground.
Images and achievements
The graphics are just as bad as the rest of the game. Sometimes I played a very nice game for a split second. The lighting, especially neon lighting, can look really good at night. But then I get out of my car and look around and it seems like I’m playing a game from the late Xbox 360 or early PlayStation 4. It doesn’t feel like I’m playing a modern game on a modern console.
Not only do the graphics look terribly dated, but the in-game performance is unstable and the framerate seems to bounce a lot. There’s no reason a game that looks so dated should perform so poorly, but somehow Saints Row knows exactly how to do that.
tExture pop-in is also quite noticeable in the desert, but at least less so in the city. The only fun about the games visually is that the character creator is very robust. It’s definitely one of the most in-depth character creators in a major AAA game.
I started my game as a fat, fat, balding sex offender with an obnoxious voice. But when I discovered that you can download other people’s characters and apply them to mine, I jumped in and instantly became Waluigi. So at least the character creator is right.
verdict
This game is a big disappointment in every way. When I saw the last trailer released by Volition prior to the game’s release, I saw what looked like it was going to be a good time. But what I got instead with the Saints Row reboot was the video game equivalent of a regular burnt toast.
The cast sucks, the setting sucks, the world sucks, and the gameplay sucks. Not to mention that even if the gameplay was fun, the game crashes with more glitches than I’ve seen from any AAA game release since Cyberpunk 2077.
Volition tried so hard to distance itself from its edgy past and make a “clever” game with “biting” social commentary and humor, but ended up creating a high school-level world doomed to fail. While I don’t feel that this game is soulless per se, I do feel that anyone who has worked on this game and has a soul should feel guilty about driving that last nail in the coffin of the Saints Row franchisee. The funniest joke about Saints Row is that Epic was actually willing to pay money to turn it into an Epic Game Store exclusive.
Saints Row was reviewed on Xbox Series X with a copy of Kinguin. You can find additional information on Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Saints Row is available now on Windows PC (via the Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
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