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Saints Row Review (Xbox Series S)

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Our Saints Row Review welcomes us to Santo Ileso, a vibrant fictional city in the heart of the American Southwest. In a world rife with crime, where lawless factions fight for power, a group of young friends embark on their own criminal venture, as they rise to the top in their bid to become Self Made. Experience the biggest and best Saints Row playground ever created; the unique sprawling world of Santo Ileso is the backdrop for a wild, larger-than-life sandbox of thrilling side hustles, criminal ventures, and blockbuster missions, as you shoot, drive, and wingsuit your way to the top.

Saints Row Review Pros:

  • Decent graphics.
  • 59.8GB download size.
  • 1000 Gamerscore.
  • HDR support.
  • Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders along with rebinding buttons.
  • Co-op settings – open to all/invite/friends only, friendly fire, Co-op pranking, and HQ customisation.
  • Tutorial frequency can be set to off/low/default and high.
  • Accessibility options – vehicle speed limit slider, automatic QTE, no time limits, timed objective difficulty slider, customize controller dead zones on the sticks and set toggles, high contrast mode, motion blur, camera shake, takedown cameras, full caps, reticle settings, mini-map size slider, GPS arrow setup, enemy health bars, blood and gore, brutal takedown, Colourblind mode, and force underwear.
  • Five difficulties – Tourist, hustler, entrepreneur, sensei, and boss.
  • In-game cutscenes.
  • Character creator – choose from 8 Boss presets or go custom with body, skin, hair, head, face, tattoos, and personality options.
  • Wouldn’t be a Saints Row game without the ability to change chest size, dick size, and then if you want underwear or not. Oh and nipples, full nipple settings section.
  • Can skip the cutscenes.
  • The opening tutorial section will teach the basics of combat.
  • It runs at a fast pace.
  • Perform melee takedowns for health.
  • Pop up of kills and feats like headshots and double kills, drifting, driving in the wrong lane, and many more.
  • Shooting feels good with a powerful aim assist and button to auto-target explosive elements like barrels and fireworks.
  • Excellent voice work.
  • End of mission breakdown.
  • Full gun customisation from color to patterns, metallic effect sliders, gloss sliders, and surface options.
  • Unlock abilities/buffs on guns by doing set gun objectives.
  • Dumpsters act like loot chests giving rewards and loot when searched.
  • Enemies can drop cash.
  • A mobile phone is your gateway to skills, missions, camera mode, styling, and more.
  • Side hustles are optional side missions.
  • In vehicles, you can side swipe to knock cars or blow them up.
  • Over-the-top physics.
  • Michael Bay levels of over-the-top explosions.
  • Play how you want.
  • The map shows points of interest, side jobs, and everything in between.
  • Challenges through your phone can be done to open new opportunities and events.
  • The wanted app is a hitman-style set of missions where you have to take a target out.
  • The radio station wheel allows you to quickly change between the genres.
  • Weapon wheel.
  • Save and load when you want.
  • The garage is where you store your cars and set favorites.
  • Unlock new activities and services as you progress like picking up cargo in helicopters or leaning out car windows and shooting people.
  • Brilliant action movie-style set pieces.
  • A lot of Easter eggs and nods to other games and film franchises.
  • Jimrobs Garage is unlocked through the story and opens up chop shop (steal cars) activities and car customisation.
  • Every car type has a special upgrade to earn.
  • Such an awesome main character, sassy and channeling Ab Fab with attitude.
  • The whole lost your job skit was so relatable, funny, and well-paced.
  • The story is all about how you and your mates create a crew and take over the town from the rival gangs.
  • Friends can be called upon to help you and doing their unique missions can have them using different weapons and gear.
  • Buy new perk slots with in-game cash, you have minor, major, and elite level perks.
  • Unlock and use fast travel points.
  • Cool short intro animation when entering shops and activities.
  • Find and photograph Collectibles to decorate the home base. In the app, you get a clue on its location and a silhouette of the item.
  • The Empire table – this is where you build new criminal ventures within the town.
  • You generate money from your businesses.
  • When exiting a car you can opt to jump on the roof and shoot.
  • Threat activities are done to increase your venture/business earnings.

Saints Row Review Cons:

  • For all the accessibility settings there is no way to turn off any of the swearings.
  • Few instances of robotic-looking animations especially in cutscenes.
  • The drifting model is insane.
  • Using the phone gets a bit fiddly with so many menus.
  • Not always clear where to go to do things.
  • It does feel like they chucked everything Saints Row related into it and saw what stuck especially with the side missions and collectibles.
  • The Ai can bug out and go crazy, running you over or somehow jumping into you.
  • Brutal takedowns have to be charged up which is quite annoying.
  • Physics goes absolutely mental at times especially when towing cargo.
  • Fast travel points are far and few between.
  • A lot of swearing.
  • Everything ends up in just a series of gunfights and maybe a bit of driving to the next gun fight.

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Saints Row Review

Saints Row:

Official website.

Developer: Volition

Publisher: Deep Silver

Store Links –

Xbox

  • 8/10
    Graphics - 8/10
  • 8/10
    Sound - 8/10
  • 8/10
    Accessibility - 8/10
  • 8/10
    Length - 8/10
  • 8/10
    Fun Factor - 8/10
8/10

Summary

Saints Row is back and it’s the same game but with a different approach to the characters. What I mean is the main character is actually a joy to listen to! The quips, the sass, and the quintessential British approach to problems are a real treat. I loved how she could carry a whole mission on her own because the rest of the team is a bit generic. Talking of your team, you live with a group of mates and each is parts of different gangs and affiliations but one day it all goes awry and when forced to choose their allegiance they pick each other and go on the run to eventually form their own crew, that crew becomes the name used in every Saint Row game… The Saints. We get to witness the beginning of the infamous crew, from humble beginnings to the bright lights of underworld domination, funny thing is it is much the same path as every Saints Row game I have played. What I instantly noticed, however, was the performance of the game, it actually runs smooth or smoother I should say because even the third remaster had issues keeping it together so it’s good to see it’s a bit better here. The game world you are in is a series of towns in the middle of nowhere and whilst it sounds and looks fun I did find that the world had no life to it, yeah you can watch people drive into each other and fight and swear but it just felt staged, the world felt empty and you could go for a drive and just see no one, it’s like the population slider was all the way down in single digits. The Collectibles are big piles of coke and again no one around, no real context around them just random piles of coke. The thing about Saints Row is everything outside of the story missions is bland and lacking. Side missions are fine but once you’ve done one of them you’ve seen them all as they don’t mix it up, no the content when you have to make your own entertainment is sorely lacking and not fun to do. The story though, the actual words of the story are one you’ve heard before as a group builds a clan and attempts to climb the ladder but ko the actual set pieces of the story missions are some of the best the series has to offer, it just gets the assignment and follows through, you can, of course, accuse it of just being a shootout every five minutes but its greatness is in the delivery more than the content. I would skip over side objectives constantly to get the story done, that was a mission in itself as after a few hours your phone is loaded with missions, objectives, and Collectibles so it’s a game in itself to find the story missions! I didn’t get to try out the Co-op, safe to say it’s probably something I wouldn’t really care for anyway. I came away from Saints Row loving the main character and liking the story but it is definitely just another Saints Row, trying to inject toilet humor, swearing and other shit into a b rate movie. I can’t love it or hate it, it’s just Saints Row, and if you’ve ever played one you know what I mean. It’s fun and mental but it’s also bland and empty in others. I enjoyed the story but I stayed for the characters, Hands down one of the best groups of people in a Saints Row game in a long time.

Jim Smale

Gaming since the Atari 2600, I enjoy the weirdness in games counting Densha De Go and RC De Go as my favourite titles of all time. I prefer gaming of old where buying games from a shop was a thing, Being social in person was a thing. Join me as I attempt to adapt to this new digital age!