Saints Row IV

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Saints Row IV
Composer(s)
Malcolm Kirby, Jr.
SeriesSaints Row
Platform(s)
Release
August 20, 2013
  • Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
    • NA: August 20, 2013
    • EU: August 23, 2013
    • AU: September 12, 2013
    PlayStation 4, Xbox One
    • NA: January 20, 2015
    • EU: January 23, 2015
    Linux
    • WW: December 21, 2015
    Nintendo Switch
    • WW: March 27, 2020
    Stadia
    • WW: November 1, 2021
Genre(s)Action-adventure
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Saints Row IV is a 2013

ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Linux in 2015. A Nintendo Switch port was released on March 27, 2020, and a Google Stadia
port was released on November 1, 2021.

The game's

missions at their leisure. It incorporates science fiction elements, and continues the series' reputation for over-the-top parody. The single-player story follows the same player-created character from the previous games, who is elected President of the United States after thwarting a terrorist threat. Five years into their governance, they find themselves trapped in the Steelport simulation along with members of their gang, the 3rd Street Saints, after an alien empire known as the Zin attack the Earth and capture them. With help from some Saints who managed to escape and hacked the simulation to give them superpowers
, the player attempts to rescue their captured friends, escape the simulation, and defeat the Zin.

Saints Row IV was the first game developed by Volition following its acquisition by

Koch Media in early 2013. The supernatural and superpower concept for the game started in Enter the Dominatrix, a cancelled expansion planned for Saints Row: The Third, which the team expanded into Saints Row IV. Volition later released a "director's cut" of Enter the Dominatrix as downloadable content for Saints Row IV alongside another expansion, How the Saints Saved Christmas, as well as various weapons, costumes, and vehicle packs. A standalone expansion, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell
, was released in January 2015, serving as an epilogue to the base game.

The game received several limited and summative edition releases, and was briefly banned in Australia. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its humor and character customization options, but criticized its lack of challenge. It sold over one million units in its first week. The next game in the series, a reboot, titled Saints Row, was released in August 2022.

Gameplay

Similar to previous

skill tree[3] by using collectible "data clusters" scattered around town.[4] If the player becomes too rowdy, the alien race's police analogue will intervene.[4] As in previous games, the player-character's look and feel is entirely customizable via a robust character editor feature.[2]

The game is set in a nearly identical

levels.[2] Saints Row IV's story parodies science fiction video games, mostly Mass Effect 2, as well as films like The Matrix and Zero Dark Thirty, and other "nerd culture".[3] Some story missions are propelled by individual characters' existential crises,[3] as each Saint character is stuck in a personal simulation of their own hell, and must be rescued by the player.[4] Other elements borrowed from video game culture include BioWare-style character romances and a Metal Gear-style mission with an unhelpful partner.[4]

City districts are "liberated" from alien occupation as the player completes side missions in occupied districts.[4] Liberated districts increase the player's hourly income, which can be spent on weapons, skills, and perks. Side missions include Insurance Fraud (where the player jumps into traffic to collect insurance money),[4] demolition derby-style Mayhem, and superpowered foot races. Saints Row IV has a two-player cooperative mode.[2]

Plot

A few months after the events of

Laura Bailey, Diane Michelle, Sumalee Montano, or Nolan North) and their top lieutenants, Shaundi (Danielle Nicolet) and Pierce Washington (Arif S. Kinchen), breach Cyrus' base with Asha, killing him and preventing a nuclear missile from hitting Washington D.C. Five years later, the Boss has been elected President of the United States for their heroism, receiving actor Keith David (himself) as their Vice President, while assigning their Cabinet roles to their fellow Saints, Asha, Matt, and former Vice Kings leader Benjamin King (Terry Crews). Moments into a press conference, Earth is hit by an invasion from an alien empire known as the Zin, led by the ruthless Zinyak (JB Blanc), who destroy the White House
and abduct the Boss, Keith, and most of the Cabinet.

After the Boss escapes from a computer simulation based on a 1950s sitcom environment with the help of the Saints' hacker specialist Kinzie Kensington (Natalie Lander), they find themselves brought into a virtual recreation of Steelport. Working to manipulate the environment with special powers, they eventually reunite with Kinzie and Keith in a stolen Zin ship. When the group try to contact other Saints for help, Zinyak stops them by destroying the Earth. Enraged, the Boss re-enters the Steelport simulation to find the others that the Zin abducted, rescuing each from simulations based on their personal nightmares. Zinyak responds by having the Steelport simulation flooded with copies of gang members the Boss faced in the past, which causes Kinzie to suspect he is drawing them from the memories of someone else who has fought them. The Boss quickly deduces that the Zin abducted Johnny Gat (Daniel Dae Kim), the only Saint who has been with the gang longer than them, and who was supposedly killed years ago. After rescuing Gat from his own simulation, he explains that Zinyak captured him years ahead of Earth's invasion because he was the only one who could have thwarted it, and officially rejoins the Saints.

The Saints soon rally inside the simulation to confront Zinyak, only for Kinzie to be captured in the real world by Zin forces. Discovering that Keith betrayed them, the Boss confronts him and learns he did so in exchange for the Zin restoring Earth. After pursuing him through his own personal nightmare, the Boss reveals to Keith that he was tricked, and convinces him to rejoin the Saints. Learning where Kinzie was taken, the Boss rescues her from her personal nightmare. With the group back in operations, Kinzie formulates a plan to board Zinyak's ship by overloading the Steelport simulation to create an opening. Upon the Saints achieving this, the Boss boards Zinyak's ship, steals

power armor
that emulates their powers from the simulation, and uses it to kill Zinyak in front of the Zin, seizing control of their empire.

The game's ending depends on the number of optional "Loyalty" missions completed. If any of them were omitted, the Boss plans for the Saints to conquer a new homeworld, starting the "Saints Empire." Otherwise, the Saints learn they can restore the Earth using

time-travel, after discovering that Zinyak has captured several historical figures and placed them in suspended animation. The Boss decides to awaken one of them from stasis, namely 19th-century writer Jane Austen (Eden Riegel
), whom they are a fan of, and who reveals herself as the game's narrator once she awakens.

Development

After the release of Saints Row: The Third, preliminary work on a game called Saints Row: Part Four began. The game would take place after the events of The Third in a new city and feature gameplay similar to The Third.

Koch Media in early 2013 when its parent company, THQ, filed for bankruptcy. It became Koch's first internal video game studio. The studio officially announced Saints Row IV two months later, which was published by Koch Media brand Deep Silver. Acquired without rights to their Red Faction series, Volition's new goals were to make connected, open world games where "the player is an agent of mayhem". The entire company worked on the one game.[8]

Each of the Saints Row series games had a core intent, and while the first three games built on the first's "outlandishness and irreverence", the fourth focused on "the supernatural and superpowers".[10] Senior producer Jim Boone recalled reviewers that asked whether the company could be "more over-the-top" than Saints Row: The Third, which they took as a challenge.[8] The team focused more on making the game "fun" than "for the sake of being over the top", and felt that superpowers helped the game's basic navigation and combat.[8] They also chose to remove the previous game's in-game mobile phone-based navigation, which hindered its narration, and replaced it with a "quest log structure".[8] The team chose not to devote as much time improving the game's graphics, considering the impending release of next generation platforms. The game spent less time in development than prior series games.[8]

In August 2014, Volition announced that they would be releasing a

Steam Workshop
integration was added in November 2016.

The in-game radio has seven pre-programmed radio stations and 109 licensed tracks. The game's original soundtrack is composed by Malcolm Kirby Jr.,[13] who also composed the previous game's soundtrack.[14]

Release

Saints Row IV was released for

refused ratings classification and effectively banned in Australia[18] but was later accepted when modified to remove the offending content.[19] The country's PlayStation 4 release was later recalled due to a classification error.[20]

Saints Row IV was released in several summative editions.

voice commands.[12] A Linux port was presented in December 2015. Re-Elected was released for the Nintendo Switch on March 27, 2020.[24]

Downloadable content

See also: Enter the Dominatrix and Saints Row: Gat out of Hell

The game received multiple

computer-controlled support characters ("homies").[30] The second and final mission pack, How the Saints Save Christmas, features new weapons and vehicles, and a three-mission storyline about the Saints rescuing Santa Claus from the Steelport simulation. It was released in December 2013.[32] Non-mission downloadable content packs include new costumes, vehicles, and weapons (e.g., face masks of United States Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama).[33]

Re-Elected Edition

On December 8, 2022, a free update to all existing Windows versions of the game on Steam and GOG brought it to a new "Re-Elected Edition" which includes all DLC released for the title; this was alongside a free giveaway offer for the game on the Epic Games Store. The Re-Elected Edition supports cross-play between the Steam, GOG and Epic editions of the game. Previous versions of Saints Row IV were subsequently removed from sale, but existing saves and achievements carried over into the new version.[34]

Reception

The game received generally positive reviews on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Xbox 360 according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.[35][36][37][44] On Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, it received mixed reviews.[45][46] Reviewers praised its over-the-top humor and character customization options,[2][3] and criticized its lack of challenge.[2][4] Several also commented on its "even-handed treatment" of gender, particularly female characters,[3][4] and spotlighted hacker and former FBI agent Kinzie Kensington's character performance.[2][4] Saints Row IV sold over one million copies in its first week,[33] and as of 2013, Volition has not released total sales figures.[47]

Polygon's Danielle Riendeau described Saints Row IV as "big, goofy, and self-referential fun" and thought that the game accomplished what it set out to be: "an outrageous exercise in player power fantasy".[3] She also praised the game's degree of freedom around character identity, its "dumb and lovable" narrative, and its transitions between varied sequences. Riendeau wrote that Volition "trimmed the fat" from previous games, and that their addition of superpowers "blew the constraints off a genre already known for player freedom".[3] She considered the story funny and "as obvious as can be", but found its characters "well-realized".[3] Riendeau particularly praised the game's "treatment of gender"—bold female characters who could pursue same-sex relationships or even switch their gender mid-game, and were not treated differently for being female—but found the game's continued association between women and sex workers "problematic" and a "vestige from the series' roots as a juvenile crime drama".[3]

Reflecting on the series' progression,

Prototype series, and added that the game's silliness fulfilled a specific niche in gaming. Schilling wrote that the need to restock at ammo shops was a "jarring holdover" from the previous games, but appreciated the recurrence of elements such as the GPS navigation system, side mission gameplay, and city district liberation.[4] He regarded the game overall as artful but "gloriously dumb", like "the Sistine Chapel ceiling of stupidity".[4] Schilling also commented on how he felt an urge to simply forgo the story to search for collectibles, though despite these options, the game became "wearying" over long play sessions.[4]

Similarly, Dan Stapleton of

power-ups dropped by enemies, and that the otherwise praiseworthy features from Saints Row: The Third felt "vestigial" when outmoded by superpowers.[2] Stapleton said the player received the powers too early, which let the player play without caring about the city, and thus removed the "sense of place and character it had in the previous game".[2] He considered the game's large number of collectibles an acknowledgement of this hole, which while originally rewarding, quickly becomes a "chore".[2] Stapleton praised the Red Faction-style Disintegrator and Abductor guns, though considered the dubstep gun an "ineffective disappointment".[2] As a symbol, though, Polygon described the dubstep gun as "iconic" of Saints Row IV.[48]

Reboot

Main article: Saints Row (2022 video game)

In August 2019, a new Saints Row game was hinted to be "deep in development" by Volition.

Xbox Series X/S, and Windows on August 23, 2022.[51]

Notes

  1. ^ High Voltage Software developed the PS4 and Xbox One versions. Fishlabs developed the Nintendo Switch version.

References

  1. ^ Savage, Phil (July 8, 2013). "Saints Row 4 considered "end of that saga," future games to go in different direction". PC Gamer.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Stapleton, Dan (August 14, 2013). "Saints Row IV Review: Nerf the Saints". IGN. Archived from the original on March 12, 2015. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Riendeau, Danielle (August 14, 2013). "Saints Row 4 Review: Suit and Tie". Polygon. Archived from the original on March 19, 2015. Retrieved March 14, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Schilling, Chris (August 14, 2013). "Saints Row 4 review". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on March 19, 2015. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
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Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saints Row IV.

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