Here's the most telling thing you need to know about Saints Row IV: I it contains a dubstep gun. A gun that shoots raw dubstep at your enemies A gun that makes everyone around the player character dance uncontrollably when it is fired. A gun that disintegrates cars. A gun that shoots pure videogame cliché, one year too late. Saints Row IVis a spoiled child oft game. It is clearly not used to hearing the word 'no'. It somehow makes the almost uncomfortably outrageous Saints Row: The Third look mundane, which is an achievement considering that game's signature item was a five-foot weaponised rubber phallus, and it involved a mission where you must transport an unrestrained tiger in an open-topped sports car while being rammed off the road by animal rights protestors.
Published by Deep Silver after the untimely demise of THQ, it follows the same shallow but ultimately satisfying ethos of the previous title: fun trumps all. For example, one of the weapons is a head-inflation ray that causes the bodies and heads and eyes of targets to swell up and burst in a hilarious fashion, because someone thought that would be a good idea. Here is the plot: you, the main character, are the President of the United States. The previous President was captured by aliens and you must rescue them. We are not making this up. The engine is unchanged and the Ul remains functionally identical to its prequel; the developers have made a conscious effort to fill the game with a series of ridiculous toys rather than focus on upping the technological value of the game. A further example: the protagonist drives, as standard, a cross between a pimpmobile and a monster truck, which presumably must have been originally used for transporting unusually tall prostitutes.
The first we see of the Zin — the President-napping extra-terrestrials — is the bodies of police officers transforming into their unnatural alien forms during a gunfight. They've also built giant floating strongholds throughout the sky, and employed powerful alien monsters to beat you up if you get cocky Unlike the previous titles where the city has been under the influence of three gangs that you can tackle in any order you wish, Saints Row IV is a presidential battle against the wide variety of aliens under the banners of the Zin.
Sometimes, if you squint, you can remember that this used to be a series about the dangerous world of organised crime. Somewhere the creative leads looked at the project and thought that the gritty storyline was jarring a little with the missions where you shoot poo on people's houses, so they cut the storyline and doubled the poo. Much of the game takes place in a virtual version of Steelport, because that cuts any strings connected to reality that remain clinging to the novelty helium balloon that is Saints RoWs logic. The virtual world allows the main character to earn superpowers — things like super-speed, flight, super-strength, telekinesis, ice blasts, punchable shockwaves, hyper-wrestling — because, you know, why not? Why the hell not?You spent the entire previous game playing what amounted to a supervillain, after all.
In the five-minute demonstration we're shown ten minutes' worth of features, spat out at a tremendous rate, and it's impossible to write down one without missing another while you do it. You can customise your rocket Launcher to resemble a guitar case. All of your punches are replaced with extravagant wrestling moves. You can dress up like Uncle Sam. There is a flying mech suit you can take out on rampages, and if you destroy enough property and kill enough human beings with the mounted machine guns, it does a little dance for you. All the switches are turned on; all the dials are turned to full. Restraint is long forgotten. This is a mad, sugar rush of a thing. Saints Row /Vis drunk and should go home before it embarrasses itself any further.
