Review: Saints Row (2022)

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• Review: Saints Row (2022)

Game Details

Summary

Saints Row (2022) is the final release in the Saints Row franchise and the last video game developed by Volition. Saints Row has goofy story players will recognize from previous games in the franchise. The writing had some hit or miss comedy. The story was enjoyable, but felt rushed towards the end. The side missions were overall fun, but some of the game’s mechanics really held back some of the enjoyment at times. We encountered some bugs during playing, but not all of them were serious; however, with Volition being closed the odds of these bugs being fixed are very low.

End Of An Era

After 30 years of development, Volition was shut down in September 2023. It is sad to see a long-time development studio close after so long, but their last 3 games had rocky starts. Over the course of their operation, they developed 17 games for the following franchises/IPs:

• Freespace
• Descent
• Red Faction
• Summoner
• Saints Row
• The Punisher
• Agents of Mayhem (Saints Row spin-off)

Story Overview

In Saints Row, you are a young adult working for the private military company Marshall operating out of the fictional city of Santo Illeso. While it’s not explicitly stated, the location seems to be somewhere in the American Southwest (presumably Texas). Your first day on the job is a suicide mission to capture a notorious criminal and ends in an over-the-top fight on the back of VTOL. Following a second mission, you get “promoted” to a security role at the local museum. During a high-profile showcase event at the museum, the artifact is stolen by a local anarchist gang, The Idols, and you, as the head of security, are fired on the spot from Marshall.

Following being fired, the player-character has a depressive episode where things just can’t go their way. The comedy in this bit was you just wanted to eat some freezer waffles, but only one was left and the toaster was broken. When the toaster did finally work, it shot the waffle out and it lands on the floor. Depressed, you join your roommate Neenah, a member of another local gang called Los Panteros, on the couch and then binge watch some TV shopping shows. You end up buying about 100 knives from the show. During this you learn that Los Panteros is going to hit an Idols party that your other two roommates, Kev and Eli, are attending. Kev is a DJ that is a member of the Idols, and Eli is an unemployed, entrepreneurial-type of guy. (Together these characters are the replacements for Shaundi, Johnny Gat, and Pierce in the original series of games.)

After saving your roommates, you all collectively decide that it’s time to work for yourselves and create your own gang utilizing everyone’s talents. Your first act: rob a local loan office. Following that, you all decide that it’s time to find a base of operations that isn’t your apartment. In this, Neenah mentions there’s a condemned church on the waterfront off 3rd Street. Upon arrival, you all decide on the logo (the “famous” fleur) and after looking at a mural in the church decide that the gang’s name should be: The Saints. Unfortunately, as a new gang there was no recognition and the police refer to you as the “Purple Shirt Mafia”.

As the leader of the Saints, you build up a criminal empire of illicit business ventures and work to become the dominant gang in Santo Illeso. Los Panteros is the first gang you take down followed by the Idols. You also break the notorious criminal out of prison you helped capture in the first mission to help with your conquest. After your success of taking out the other two gangs, Marshall sends an attorney to inform you of the non-compete agreement you signed when working for them and that they now own the Saints as a subsidiary. To get out of this contract, you conspire with a member of the board of executives for Marshall to have the current CEO voted out and put her in charge. To do this, you tank the stock price for Marshall and force the board to vote on a new CEO. As the boss of the newly acquired subsidiary, you are a deciding vote. Afterwards, ownership of the Saints is returned to you and you are free to go after a warning about messing with Marshall again.

At the party celebrating your successes, you are betrayed by the criminal (kind of unsurprisingly) and he attempts to bury you and abduct your friends. After you fight your way back from death, you hunt down the criminal and then kill him as the game’s final boss fight. The game ends with you and your friends sitting on the rooftop watching the sunset drinking “mugmosas” (mimosas served in a coffee mug) as a throwback to your broke beginnings.

Gameplay Review

Combat

The combat in Saints Row was both good and bad. Some aspects, like weapon handling and aiming, were great. Others, like vehicle combat, felt like they weren’t balanced very well. There may be some bias here as when I played the game it was on the highest difficulty level.

The health system was pretty similar to what they used in Saints Row 4. For those that are unfamiliar, your health bar is broken up into segments and in-combat health regen only occurs for the block your health is currently in. To add some spice to the game, though, there are no health pickups. The only way to regenerate health while in combat is to perform “glory kills” a la Doom. I had mixed feelings on the the stylized melee kills for health regen in this game as it felt a little out of place. While it helped build the character as some sort of badass, it also became boring watching the same short cutscenes where you’re invulnerable every time I needed to heal. The animations were not varied up based on the type of enemy or gang you were fighting. At least in game’s like Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, the melee kill animations had some variety based on the demon. The LARPing melee kills were funny though.

Vehicle combat was not very fun, and was more stressful if anything. There was a bit of realism added to it, though, where to use two-handed guns and special weapons (RPGs) you had to be on the roof of the vehicle. The new ramming vehicle combat mechanic made missions involving driving a vehicle very annoying. This ramming mechanic was fairly simple: while driving at speed you can ram into the side of vehicles dealing massive amounts of damage to the other vehicle while yours is more or less unharmed. However, in a few of the missions where I needed to deliver a vehicle the game will swarm you with enemies constantly trying to ram the vehicle. If the vehicle explodes you fail the mission and have to restart. What I disliked about the vehicle ramming mechanic more is how the game felt like I needed to use it. Getting chased by cops? Ram them to force them to crash or launch them off a bridge into the water. Getting chased by a rival gang? Ram them to force them to crash or launch them off a bridge into the water. It wouldn’t be that bad if the vehicles weren’t so weak against being rammed. You get rammed roughly 5 times in a regular vehicle and it’s toast.

World Quality

The world in Saints Row (2022) was visually appealing. Though, the map is about half desert so it’s also a little boring. The world was designed well enough that I believed I was in an American Southwest town.

Final Thoughts

It’s sad that Volition is no more as the Saints Row franchise was generally fun to play though later games were less over the top and tamer. This final chapter in the Saints Row franchise is no different. It has all of the elements that independently make a good game, but final product felt a little off. I could be biased a bit because I really came to like Johnny Gat, Pierce and Shaundi. There was a certain chemistry there that just worked. The new major cast felt like a modern rehashing of those same characters. Johnny Gat is now an EDM DJ that is allergic to cats and won’t wear shirts, for example. I cannot help but wonder that if the franchise was allowed to continue on if it find a footing. Unfortunately, we may never know now. In summary, Saints Row (2022) is worth playing if you enjoyed playing the newer Saints Row games. For everyone else, I would recommend Saints Row 2 or Saints Row The Third over this entry in the franchise.