Saints Row

"Saints row 2022 is for GAAAAAAYYYS" - gay fagg0t 2022

A Saints Row reboot was always going to be a tough pill to swallow considering how the series eventually made a name for itself as being larger than life, especially as the budget ballooned, and you can tell the budget for this one was more scant than usual. No celebrity cameos, few big setpieces, no pop station with classic 80s bangers, and even though we're two generations ahead of the last entry, it doesn't look or perform a whole lot better. Combine that with performance and stability problems that make Cyberpunk look like a well-oiled machine, and it all makes a poor first impression for a follow-up.

But there are things I love, or at least respect, about the reboot. I love the TexMex aesthetic, not seen in open-world games since Total Overdose, I appreciate the ways they morphed personal stat progression and upgrades to be less bland, and this is probably the first SR game in a while to make the clambering for a criminal empire feel like a proper climb with something to show for it by the end. Even the writing is fine, a decent enough update of the series' madcap humour with its accidental diversity being deliberately tapped into here, and a notable but not overbearing nod to contemporary problems like the gig economy, late-stage capitalism and so on. It's a darkly hilarious joke when an apartment of four, including someone working in private military, still struggles with rent. It does also tap into playing with how much of the action on screen is real and tangible, similarly to South Park FBW but definitely not as successfully. There's just enough edge and surprises to be entertaining, though much like other games in the series, it lacks a general sense of decent framing or pacing, with characters dropping in and out and the ending feeling hollow as it rushes towards a climax.

And sadly outside of that, the game has little to offer that we haven't seen before, and sees Volition struggling to keep up with their contemporaries. Saints Row combat has never been known to be incredible, but with very few deviations from it in the main game (even driving, which is still pretty awesome), it falls apart as the focus of the game. Even with all the options available to you, shooting feels undercooked, imprecise and just not very fun. Even a basic cover system might have made action feel more dynamic or snappy; as is, it just feels sloppy. And outside of that, the framework of the game is just another GTA clone. The side missions, while generally fun, only exist for you to fill in checklists rather than engage with new perspectives or see Santo Ileso in a way beyond what the game just gives you. It's just disappointing very little of the presentation of the game can keep up with its assumed style; the radio stations are very mediocre this time around, the map design is probably too segmented and has no interesting landmarks in the most atmospheric areas, and the performance really is a dog's breakfast. Hard to take comedy about the game's scenarios being fake seriously when the game feels like jank as is.

Because it still genuinely captures the fun free-wheeling spirit of Saints Row, and because it feels like the only sandbox game of the last few years with any sense of fun, SR22 still comes out okay, but it is just too dated on impact to recommend to anyone but die-hard Saints fans.

Go Woke, Go Broke, not even the gameplay can save this. I consider myself a very critical reviewer, and this is one of the WORST video games of all time, I genuinely mean that, nothing of value to this game at all.