Saints Row

The Saints have come marching in once again and while Santo Ileso offers a fun playground for these reborn renegades, it’s somewhat marred by a wealth of graphical issues, some underwhelming gunplay and a predictable narrative. Having said all that, you can customise your character into an orange, hurl yourself into traffic to make money and throw a self-propelled football at enemies to send them into space. It’s Saints Row as you remember, for better or worse, with a new coat of paint and refurbished for modern times.

While much of this review may seem negative, there’s a lot to like about Saints Row. Its cast quickly grows on you, it has some entertaining set-pieces, and there’s explosive fun around every corner. Customisation is also a high-point: if you like creating zany characters, you’ll be in your element. But while in many ways this this the best Saints Row game to date, there are also multiple design decisions that pull it down. For a game all about building a crime syndicate, the fact that engaging in such activities feels so optional on the main path is a crime itself. It also won’t come as much surprise to Saints Row fans that this is just as scrappy as ever before. Still, it’s ridiculously enjoyable nonetheless.

Saints Row is everything you’d expect from a new entry into the franchise: It’s full of larger-than-life story beats, a LARPing subplot, oodles of customization, and outlandish Skills to take down your enemies with. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, your Boss and their three companions are where this reboot truly shines — and it’s a joy to experience Santo Ileso and all that it has to offer with them.

Saints Row left me wanting more. Even the radio stations you can listen to and the track selection felt small in comparison to how bombastic of a soundtrack its past games had. While its side missions checked the open-world box of giving you something to do to keep you busy during or after you finish the story, most of them felt repetitive and only some truly captured the fun the games are known for thanks to some clever writing and line delivery.

Saints Row is a largely successful reboot, even if it sometimes feels dangerously outdated in terms of open world design. Its story and characters can be hit and miss, but the experience is carried by fun gameplay and an endearingly dumb sense of humour. Despite the new faces, Saints Row is definitely still Saints Row — just bigger and probably better.

Saints Row offers a fantastic sandbox full of opportunity and some great new gameplay additions, but its story and characters feel underutilized and neglected, making for a rather unmemorable experience.

After so many facelifts, there were fears Saints Row would fail to recapture the unconventional beauty of the earlier games, but this reboot proves how adept Volition is when it comes to reinventing their flagship franchise. This latest outing is my favourite game in the series to date, so while basic combat and dips in visual quality are disappointing, they did little to keep me away from Santo Ileso. You'll struggle to find anything ground-breaking though this sandbox is bursting with entertaining things to do, ideal for sharing with a partner in crime.

Saints Row still doesn't understand that the video game industry has changed since its last installment and must remodel its structure from scratch. While the narrative and jokes are good and moderately coherent within the madness of the game, the mechanical basis of this does not help at all when it comes to creating a competent title and above all, remarkable or outstanding.

Saints Row raises mixed emotions: on the one hand it has its moments when it is fun and manages to engage you in its criminal empire building fantasy. But for each high you have at least one low, that turns the game into a technical mess and makes you feel like you are playing a not so pretty GTA clone. The new direction, both visually and gameplay wise show a lot of promise, but the execution is severely lacking. With the so necessary bug fixes and some quality-of-live improvements, the new Saints Row can be a nice experience that won't innovate upon the formula, but at least it will offer fun moments.

Even in the reboot, Saints Row offers wacky fun at times, but gets in its own way with grind and repetitive tasks.

Saints Row consist of both good and bad parts, but the bad parts leave more of an impression on the player. It's a shame that while there is some genuine fun to be had with the game, it still doesn't live up to even the worst of what the original series had to offer.

Saints Row had chance to be something much more, if only the team behind the game tried to take a more bold and careful approach.

It was always going to be a difficult task but Saints Row feels like a game that doesn't really need to be. Even if the technical issues weren't a factor, what remains is an okay but fairly forgettable criminal escapade. The new characters felt like a party I wasn't invited to and whatever confidence the old games had has been sanded away. It's not awful but there was a massive sense of disappointment I could never shake through my playthrough. I wish this was better.

Volition's name has always been tied with destructible environments, and Saints Row's reboot is no different. Unfortunately, that's not the only familiar thing as the level design, combat and gameplay mechanics are all mostly the same as almost 15 years ago.

Saints Row could have been the reboot of renewal or that of consecration, but it will ultimately be that of semi-disappointment. Open world too classic, band of anti-heroes without real charisma, questionable artistic direction and lot of glitches spoil the gaming experience.

The reboot of the series is not a bad game. In it's best moments it is goofy over the top fun. The problem is: These moments are extremely rare. Most of the time you're playing repetitive missions where you're shooting AI enemies who are incredibly stupid and the gunplay feels like straight from the year 2005. But the biggest flaw of the game is its' humour. It is funny at times, but never as hilarious as the old Saints Rows. It is a mediocre game with only flashes of what the series was beloved for ten years ago.

Saints Row arrives as a new starting point for the franchise, but the final version makes us miss what the saga once was. Its problems goes beyond an open world that did not evolve the structure of the genre a decade ago.

There’s a lot to like and a lot to laugh at in Saints Row as you raise hell around Santo Ileso with your unique boss. Collecting clothes and cars as you scale up your network of businesses is compelling as you accumulate wealth and solidify your spot at the top. But outside of the super set-piece main missions, it’s easy to bounce off the more repetitive elements of the open-world.

I can understand Volition wanting to reboot the Saints Row series given the original launched all the way back in 2006. But the latest entry feels like a backwards step for the developer, with this release misses out on the over-the-top satirical humour that made the series so beloved. As a result, Saints Row now feels like a mediocre open-world action game, becoming just like all of the games at which the series used to poke fun. Mission objectives are bland and repetitive, while the story is boring and lacks cohesion. Worst of all, the slapstick jokes rarely land and are arguably more cringeworthy than they are funny. You can still have fun if you simply want mindless chaotic action, but I’d argue you’d have a better time with the likes of CyberPunk 2077 or even Saints Row The Third Remastered.

Saints Row 2022 is a time capsule of a game and era many have moved past. Instead of building on the legacy of Saints Row, it feels like a tired retread of a game we already have.

Technical issues notwithstanding, Saints Row is not without its shortcomings, but it succeeds more often than it doesn’t. Even with the release date pushed back it still doesn’t feel finalized. The tech issues can hopefully be ironed out in a patch or two, but the characters could have also benefitted from further development and being more fleshed out. Santa Ileso is a great open sandbox to explore, but it seems like a greater emphasis was placed on repetitive criminal venture activities and less on the more exciting story missions. Still, what Saints Row does well is it does very well with memorable missions after the Saints have started to establish themselves. The banter between characters is generally entertaining and a lot of the humor is derived from this series never taking itself too seriously. There’s a lot of potential with this reboot and new cast of characters, but it doesn’t seem like it was fully realized in this title, making it a game that’s fun for Saints Row fans, but isn’t the spectacular reboot we were hoping for.

Ultimately, Saints Row may not be the grand return to the franchise that fans were hoping for, but that doesn't mean it's not worth giving a look. Despite a poorly-paced story with average characters, it still has a ton of content and a sandbox that is ripe for hours of co-op fun. Even if you're playing solo, building a criminal empire is empowering and elevates Saints Row beyond being yet another open-world crime game. If it didn't take some steps back or feel buggy and dated, this game would get a more glowing recommendation, but unfortunately, it doesn't hit all of its marks.

My Saints Row experience was enjoyable and more than occasionally frustrating: at times it feels like Volition is on the cusp of a breakthrough in both social commentary and open-world game mechanics, while at other times it feels like it's upholding the status quo. I love the new cast of characters and what they represent to marginalized community members who will play this game, and the story is compelling enough that I persevered in the face of some irritating bugs. There's a solid game here, and plenty of fun to be had with the new Saints Row, but I find myself wishing the team had taken the concept and ran with it to the bank - before robbing said bank, of course.

The Saints Row reboot attempts to reimagine the Saints' origins by transplanting them to a new, beautiful city. The problem is that the characters are uninteresting, the gameplay lacks originality or polish and technically the game sometimes shows debilitating bugs.

You could consider Saints Row a love letter to a time when games worried less over quality and more about fun, but that doesn't excuse its faults.

It’s been nine years since Saints Row 4, and this new entry feels like a back-to-basics reboot. But technical issues, bugs, and many more little frustrations conspire to make this a middling experience at launch. It’s unfortunate because when Saints Row fires on all cylinders, it’s an absolute blast with some truly lofty high points.

Saints Row’s dynamic mission design and chaotic vehicular gameplay do wonders for an otherwise mundane open world experience, one that is sorely missing the iconic characters who brought the previous games to life.

Saints Row is ready and willing to leap back into the mainstream, though it's unfortunately weighed down by a few odd design decisions and a handful of technical issues.

As is, it’s hard to recommend spending $80 on this quirky but erratic crime saga. There’s fun to be had, but best wait for Saints Row to make its way to your subscription service — and maybe receive a few much needed patches in the process.

The feisty, distinct series was transformed into another run-of-the-mill sandbox game. New Saints Row is painfully unremarkable. The gameplay is pretty fun but repetitive and formulaic. The city – large but bland. The chaos – still present but kept on a short leash. As to the new characters, Volition must have recruited this grotesque, random gang in front of a Starbucks. What’s more, the AI is terrible and the whole game desperately needs patches.

The new Saints Row brings you... well, more Saints Row action just a little toned down this time, which makes the inferiority to the GTA series more clearer than ever. Still, if you've been missing games of this type, it can be fun at least in short bursts.

Saints Row rebooted itself and lost much more of its charm than it’d care to admit. The new heroes aren’t likeable, they aren’t funny, and the whole game feels stuck in the previous decade. And it’s full of technical problems, too.

Saints Row could be something special. It really could, but Volition still doesn't know how to treat this franchise, placing it somewhere between Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause, never managing to leave its own fingerprints on the open worlds it creates. The Saints Row reboot is so similar to the original franchise in tone, gameplay and content that it leaves you wondering why it was even necessary to hit the reset button. There is fun to be had, but it's hidden behind bugs, repetitive missions and a detached story that doesn't know whether it wants to be a caricature of other plots or a candid tale about a group of friends involved in the criminal world.

Saints Row had a unique opportunity to come back and be a good summer game. Most of the time, its fun, especially in co-op, thanks to his arcade feel and humour But there are too many flaws and way too many bugs to enjoy the title completely. Maybe some updates could fix things but not entirely.