Saints Row IV

Saints Row IV First Impressions

Heh.

Alright, so, this is one of the best examples of, “More of that, but better,” I’ve seen. I only dipped a toe in but SR4 is doing smarter things as soon as the intro voice over starts. Don’t like shooting up your fellow humans? That’s fine, your enemies are now extraterrestrials and virtual reality constructs. Don’t like running around on foot looking for garages? No problem, just materialize cars automatically. Want to get around faster? Have some superpowers, you get them within the first ten minutes of gameplay.

SR4 rides the line between not taking oneself seriously and still delivering a somewhat compelling narrative with style. I mean, yeah, aliens abducted my cabinet, which is silly, but I actually am kinda pissed about it. Seriously, fuck those aliens. 

Also, I got to punch a US Senator in the face. Who hasn’t wanted to punch a US Senator in the face?

As usual, the CC is a delight, and out of the box I appear to have access to more clothes than the previous game. My only real complaint at this stage is the voice I used for my previous boss is no longer available. There is a Southern Belle voice that I suspected would get on my nerves, so I ended up going with a French accent.

I wanted to see the bouncy boob physics for myself, so I made a large-chested boss and. Yeah. Pretty jiggly! While I have a complicated personal relationship with that particular part of the human anatomy, I certainly don’t mind breasts on other people, and I don’t mind these. It’s weirdly hypnotic. Although I have to ask: is there junk jiggle? Because I think we need to be fair about this.

Let’s President

I’ve been meaning to return to Saints Row IV for a while and a friend has now spurred me to action. I remade the same boss as before, only this time I gave her the Southern accent instead of the French accent.

This fucking game, man.

It makes perfect sense that my boss would have beaten Trump in his re-election campaign, so that is my new headcanon. It’s a good thing too, because Trump is ill-equipped to deal with these types of domestic issues. I bet he’s never even fired a rocket launcher before.

A Trip Down Shaundi Lane

In Saints Row IV when you rescue Shaundi you are introduced (or reintroduced, as the case may be) to Saints Row 2 “Fun” Shaundi, the original incarnation of a character who is much more serious and angry in later games. Predictably, the two don’t get along. In Shaundi’s loyalty mission there’s a meta bit where the two Shaundis acquire superpowers and compete/roughhouse before deciding to put aside their differences and team up to kill their ex. 

The quest requires tracking down and killing drug dealers to steal a superpower-inducing drug. Somewhere between alien invasions, plunger rifles, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and stripper poles in the White House* I’d almost forgotten the Saints were once a notorious and violent street gang. Volition’s pivot from gritty du jour to absurdist meta-game President simulator is really something.

Shaundi’s missions feel a little too gritty. I greatly preferred the next mission: rescuing Pierce from a Godzilla-esque Saints Flow by shooting it in the face with a rocket launcher. Now that’sthe content I signed up for. 

* This may have been discussed before, but there’s a conversation between Kinzie and the Boss regarding stripper poles in which the Boss says she uses them to keep fit. 1) Nah. 2) Little doubt the male Boss version of this conversation is completely different, but I thought about how gratifying it would be if a male Boss casually admitted to daily stripper pole aerobics to keep his butt firm.