Gi - Saints Row 4‘s announcement was not a surprise. There was no real question about the development and supposed existence of a follow-up to the brilliantly outlandish Saints the Third. Yet THQ declaring bankruptcy and selling off its popular franchises like it was a Raymond Carver short story, kind of threw a wrench in the future of many games in development. Despite the hiccup, Deep Sliver and Koch Media scooped up the Saints Row franchise and developer Volition in January. Two months later, Deep Silver announced that Saints Row 4 would be released on Aug 20 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. That is impressive. The game went from whispers about its existence to a nebulous grey area tied up in bankruptcy proceedings to having an announced release date with gorgeous gameplay footage to show.
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.
