![]() ![]() ![]() Picking up a truck full of hazardous waste and driving carefully to a dump site isn’t really much fun, but having to do it more than 10 times is a whole new level of hell. At a few points, the game gates off the next main mission until you’ve built and completed a certain number of Ventures, which means you’re often either saving up cash to build them-frequently a matter of just being patient, since your existing businesses bring in revenue while you play-or finishing off Venture side mission chains that are usually the exact same thing over and over in a different location. But the only actual impact it has, apart from the location of a few buildings, is that on some of the side missions you’ll be finishing at a slightly different location.īesides, whatever value the Criminal Ventures system adds to the game is undone by the way it’s implemented into story progression. At first this sounds like a neat idea, that you can reshape the city as you progress through the game. The only things that Saints Row really adds to the mix to stand apart are a wingsuit, which isn’t actually that novel anymore and proves only situationally useful, and the ability to construct your “Criminal Ventures” at one of a few preselected lots on the open world map. There’s a city to explore, cars to hijack, stores to shop at, and a mix of story missions, side content, and collectibles. I don’t know how much time I actually need to spend explaining the basics of gameplay, because if you’ve played any open-world crime game in the past decade and a half, you probably already get it. But all these positive elements exist in service of open-world game design that feels quite dated and a story you’ll have a hard time investing in. And the game’s open world, the Southwestern city of Santo Ileso and the surrounding desert, is handily the best in the series-brimming with fun little details and personality. To give credit where it’s due, Volition has done a fine job of giving some modern polish to much of the core gameplay-namely shooting guns, driving cars, and, uh, shooting guns from the top of moving cars, I guess. I haven’t touched any of them since they originally launched, so I can’t speak to how they’ve aged, but I know I enjoyed them enough at the time they were released, in the context of where open-world games were at that moment. To be clear, I’m not saying those earlier Saints Row games would be better to play today. The difference is, whereas the ’06 Saints Row cribbed heavily from 3D-era Grand Theft Auto, the ’22 Saints Row feels like a pale imitation of the original Saints Row games. Like the first Saints Row, this reboot feels like an obvious riff on another series of games, with some minor improvements to gameplay but very little in the way of original ideas or personality. As it turns out, the game that the 2022 Saints Row most reminds me of is the 2006 original. Well, after spending a week with the game, I have my own surprising answer to that question. Would it shoot for the relatively grounded take of Saints Row 2? The balls-to-the-wall silliness of Saints Row IV? The middle ground between the two that was Saints Row: The Third? ![]() Ever since Volition announced it would be rebooting Saints Row, the big open question among fans has been which game in the series this new version would most closely resemble.
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