In 2006, developer Volition and publisher THQ launched Saints Row for the Xbox 360, a game clearly inspired by Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series. The original Saints Row was a critical and commercial hit, spawning a franchise of its own. It didn't take long for the Saints Row sequels to lose sight of what made the original game special, leaning harder into absurdity and abandoning the gang warfare framework in favor of ridiculous storylines involving superpowers, the US presidency, and Hell. The new Saints Row tries to take the series back to its roots and even though it once again features a gang warfare storyline, it still fails to live up to the original.
The new Saints Row starts off by letting players customize the player character, The Boss. The Saints Row franchise's character customization options have always been impressive, and it's no different in the new game. Saints Row character customization lets players tweak nearly every aspect of their character, giving them complete freedom when it comes to making their own version of The Boss. After settling on the player character's appearance, they can select from a variety of hilarious emotes, including one that's a reference to FromSoftware's Dark Souls series and another that lets them walk like a penguin. When players have finished making their Boss, they are thrust into the game's first mission, and that's where its bigger problems immediately come to light.
Right off the bat it's obvious that Saints Row is a janky, ugly game, and the first mission makes that fact readily apparent. The pop-in issues are frequent and distracting, with objects and vehicles seemingly appearing out of nowhere. To make matters worse, Saints Row uses a mostly brown color scheme, and in general the game often looks like it's lagging a generation behind other modern titles.
Saints Row's shooting also feels completely off. Players can be standing right next to an enemy, clearly shooting at them, but the game seems to arbitrarily decide that some bullets won't hit. It's unclear why this is or what causes it. It's possible that Saints Row's cursor is inaccurate, rolling is giving enemies brief windows of invulnerability, the enemy's health bars aren't providing correct info, or there is something else going on that makes it seem like the bullets aren't always hitting their targets. Whatever the case may be, shooting in Saints Row doesn't feel right.
The good news is that this isn't nearly as big of a deal as it would be in other games, and that's because the enemy AI is so dumb that even when players are missing shots that should clearly be connecting, it doesn't mean much. As long as players keep shooting, the enemies will eventually die, and it's unlikely that the player will ever be in any real danger. The enemies in Saints Row tend to stand in place and shoot, occasionally making a vain effort to roll out of the line of fire. They sometimes bull rush the player, but that only makes them easier to kill.
The wonky shooting and the ugly graphics are Saints Row's biggest problems, but they aren't the only drawbacks. Humor is subjective, but it seems safe to say that many are going to find Saints Row's juvenile humor to be as dated as the visuals. The dialogue is cringey, with the obnoxious main character doing a bad Ryan Reynolds impression throughout the entire game. There are a handful of funny moments in Saints Row's story, but they are few and far between.
Saints Row's story will give players tonal whiplash. For the most part, the game is treated like a straight comedy. Most missions portray the characters as cartoons, casually committing mass murder with absurd motivations, with none of it meant to be taken seriously. Then, out of nowhere, someone will bring up something serious like their loved one having cancer, and it's meant to elicit some kind of emotional reaction, but it comes across as a cheap way to try to make players care about their fellow gang members without actually earning it through meaningful character development.
As The Boss, Saints Row players have to build up the Saints gang from the ground up, and they do so with their friends Eli, Kevin, and Neenah. Saints Row has loyalty missions that players can complete to learn more about the characters and unlock new weapons for them to use in battle, but the missions do little to make players actually care about their friends. But while the loyalty missions fail to really develop anyone's characters, they are at least fun to play.
Saints Row's missions are fun, even with the janky shooting and underwhelming story. Every mission has players going somewhere new or doing something that they haven't before, with plenty of variety from start to finish. The developers wasted none of Saints Row's open world when designing the missions, and it's exciting to see where each mission takes players next. One mission may have players participating in a city-wide LARP event, while another will have them battling an opposing gang in a slapstick bar fight.
Saints Row keeps players plenty busy across its main story, loyalty missions, and criminal ventures. Criminal ventures in Saints Row offer an extra batch of missions to complete outside the main story, with players able to use their in-game cash to construct buildings and unlock new missions. This includes things like illegally dumping trucks full of toxic waste and the fan favorite insurance fraud, where players throw themselves in front of traffic to get their insurance claims as high as possible.
The criminal ventures lack the variety of the main story missions, but they are fun enough and expanding the Saints' criminal empire is rewarding. Players are given freedom to pick and choose where on Saints Row's open world map they want their criminal ventures built, and while this doesn't seem to have an impact on how anything plays out, it still makes players feel like they're making important decisions as a criminal mastermind.
Saints Row players will amass a sizable criminal empire before too long - flush with cash, weapons, and all kinds of unique vehicles. They are free to use this hard-earned equipment to wreak havoc on the open world, hunt down all the game's collectibles, take out targets through the "Wanted" app, and mess around in co-op. Saints Row co-op lets players play through pretty much the entire game with a friend, and it works flawlessly from our testing.
Messing around in Saints Row's open world can be a blast, especially in co-op, with players pulling off ridiculous wingsuit feats, shooting cars into the air with the abnormally powerful water pressure from broken fire hydrants, and otherwise causing chaos. The missions aren't balanced with co-op in mind, so they become even easier when playing with a friend, but otherwise co-op in Saints Row works great and elevates the experience.
There is certainly fun to be had with Saints Row, both in co-op and single-player, but the entire experience is dragged down by some unfortunate technical hiccups. Players can count on running into a variety of glitches, ranging from the slightly inconvenient to the kind that will force them to reload their save. One glitch saw the camera get stuck at foot-level with The Boss, and another made the player character completely immobile after starting a cut-scene. The game also suffers from strange audio issues where NPCs talk very quietly during missions, to the point where players will be straining to hear anything they have to say. Messing with the game's audio options didn't fix the problem, though everyone can be heard loud and clear during cut-scenes.
Even if one doesn't experience these technical issues, though, Saints Row is still a disappointment. The mission variety, co-op, and criminal ventures are great, but the game feels like it's at least a console generation behind in every other category. It's not the worst Saints Row game, but it's also far from the best games in the series, and will likely leave most fans of the franchise unimpressed.
Saints Row launches August 23 for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Game Rant was provided with an Xbox Series X code for this review.