Seven years since the franchise’s initial release on Xbox 360, Saints Row has gone through, in a sense, a spiritual trek to find out what it really is. To begin with, the franchise was an oddly shaped counterpart to the semi-serious, semi-gangbanging GTAV: San Andreas. Once GTA lost its gangbang and became super serious, Saints row 2 stepped in to fill the silly void that Grand Theft Auto 4 left. People responded to the hilarity of the third street saints and Saints Row The Third was born.
Without a peer to contend with, Saints Row 3 was spectacular. It perfectly hit in almost every way. The perfect amount of hilarity, with a fantastic open world and the ability to nut punch or suplex at almost moment. You had to sit and think to yourself, what the hell do Volition do next. Well they made a 4th.
Remember this year's Saints Row(opens in new tab)? Volition would probably prefer that you didn't, which might go some way to explaining why the studio recently decided to upgrade everyone's copy of Saints Row 4(opens in new tab) to its full-fat Re-elected Edition, containing all the game's story and cosmetic DLC and even introducing cross-play between Steam, Epic, and GOG versions of the game.
Unfortunately, that upgrade seems to have backfired, and players now report a myriad of bugs with their new version of SR4. Both the Saints Row Steam forums(opens in new tab) and subreddit(opens in new tab) are filled with players complaining of broken saves, crashes, and mods failing to function. It's also received a few hundred negative Steam reviews(opens in new tab) since the update. If it's succeeded in washing the taste of Saints Row (2022) out of players' mouths, it's only because it tastes even worse.
I wonder if Volition's getting reorged under Gearbox impacted the quality of their release.
When it comes ranking the Saints Row games, there are a couple of weird ones you have to consider, though this is Saints Row after all.
Juan at SwitchWatchTV got his hands on Saints Row 4 Re-elected for Nintendo Switch. Check out his review here and see what he thinks.
"Without a peer to contend with, Saints Row 3 was spectacular. It perfectly hit in almost every way. The perfect amount of hilarity, with a fantastic open world and the ability to nut punch or suplex at almost moment."
This is how you know the article is already a load of bs.
The game had perfect NOTHING, featured an open world that was practically empty with no reason to explore, humor that kids barely in their teens would find funny, with a rubbish story that did not relate with the previous games AT ALL.