Zero Punctuation: Saints Row 4

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I've never played a Saints Row game, but I might be willing to give this one a try once it comes down in price.

Be warned, the game is a love letter to fans and the franchise as a whole. There is a lot of content referencing the first 3 games. I'd watch all the cutscenes of the first game on Youtube (or a LP if you have the time), play the second game, and watch a LP of the third on Youtube. Or jut watch LPs/the cutscenes of all the games. You do lose a bit from just the cutscenes, though.

 

[DataSnake]

You are referring to Captain Sunshine, who hovers over the player character in MHYTRMG and showers him with rose petals and friendship. At this point, Yahtzee and Volition teaming up for MHYTRMG is the only next logical step.

Captain Dynamite, actually. Mentioned in the Fallout 3 review.

 

[Evonisia]

Eh,I haven't played the games myself,but I have watched LPs of 3 and 4 (That's still going). And while I doubt I'd ever buy SR: The Third full price, I did mostly like the story to it. Or something close enough to it in this game. LOL jk There were also characters I liked in SR3; Oleg,Zimos, Angel (Angel-Mania! XD) to name a few.

For the most part, the characters of The Third were fine, I liked most of them (Kinsie's one of my favourite characters from the Series), of course even that had it's slip ups what with how they handled Johnny Gat. My problem was with the schizophrenic tone, mostly. I have a bunch of other complaints but it'd generally boil down to that.

 

[C117]

Ah, Saints Row IV. Been looking forward to this game for a long time. Time to force my opinion of it onto everyone else!

Spoiler

PROS:

The powers - Jumping over scyscrapers, running faster than the average vehicle, and (most importantly) being able to set people on fire in a way that triggers a chain-reaction, leaving you to just listen to that glorious sound of civilians exploding like popcorn. That is all good.
The music - The overall selection of music tracks in SRIV does not suit my tastes at all, as seems to always be the case with me and sandbox games. But how can I not love climbing up a speeding rocket while listening to "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing", or stripdancing to "Simply Irresistible", or singing a duet of "Opposites Attract" with Pierce, or embarking on the final stretch of the game with "The Touch" blaring in my ears? The one music track that made me laugh out loud, though, was when I realized that this game contains "Liberty Bell March", also known as "Monty Python Theme".
Zinyak - Though Zinyak is only one villian and not three, he manages to get a recommendation simply because of his demeanor, and his excellent reading of the first section of "Pride and Prejudice", as well as his reading of "Romeo and Juliet" together with that one radio announcer from SRIII that has no emotion whatsoever.
Side missions - The side missions all tie into the story and give you special rewards upon completion, thus giving more reason for completionist-maniacs like me to complete them.
Fun - This game is mindless fun, both in humor and in gameplay. At least I think so.

CONS:
No replays - I still miss the ability to play completed missions, like you could in SRII.
No russian female voice - I liked that voice, and its open attraction to Pierce...
Schizophrenic - As fun as it is, Yahtzee is right; this game often feels like it has no idea what it wants to do. Why would I ever use a car, when I can run faster than most of the vehicles available? The only vehicle I could find that was faster was the matrix bike, and that was because it bugged out and allowed me to customize it. And why give me all of these neat superpowers, when you are just going to concoct some new reason for why I can't use them on every other mission? Perhaps this could have been solved if the unlocking of the powers was more spaced out, giving you more time acting like a normal(?) gangster in the city, before the game gives you your first power and the game suddenly opens up.
The doodads - I am not talking about the fact that there are doodads in the game, that is fine. I just don't like the fact that after having collected them all and upgraded all of the available superpowers, I still had at least 70 doodads left. Call it a pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like it when a game gives me a finite amount of something, a finite amount of things to spend it on, and then give me too much of that same something, so I just sit around with a load of doodads I can do absolutely nothing with. Especially since I'm meticuosly collecting every last one of them as part of some sort of borderline compulsive disorder...
The ending - It just... I sort of expected more. With the entire game making references to past games and characters, making it feel like a love letter and farewell to the franchise, I guess I wanted a more definitive ending. Instead it's like "TIME-TRAVUL!" And then it just ends. Huh.

Overall, Saints Row IV is not the best game out there and it is definitely not the smartest. But it doesn't try to be. What it tries to be, is fun. And that, it succeeds very well at. Highly recommended.

That is all.

 

[Mr. Q]

I think the devs of Saint's Row IV watched Yahtzee's previous reviews of the older SR games and saw it as a challenge to really outdo themselves on the wacky scale. They must have said "Sod it! GTA will be the serious and gritty character-driven crime game, and we'll go full pants-on-head crazy! We'll even outquirk Suda 51!"

Kinda surprised he didn't mention the option to use Nolan North as your character's voice. No, really. You can have Nolan North voice your character.

Perhaps its time for the makers of Saints Row to hang it up and try something new... Like teaming up with Yahtzee to finally make his dream game Mankind Has Yet To Recognize My Genius. If only for the main reason which is to see how he'd run with a sandbox crime game. Could be somewhere in the middle between insane parody and serious tone. Then again, he did describe one character having the face of Frank Zappa with nuclear missiles for legs and voiced by Liam Neeson.

You are referring to Captain Sunshine, who hovers over the player character in MHYTRMG and showers him with rose petals and friendship. At this point, Yahtzee and Volition teaming up for MHYTRMG is the only next logical step.

Actually, his name was Captain Dynamite. He's referenced in Yahtzee's Fallout 3 review when he expressed his concern of Bethesda's habit of using top actors like Liam Neeson and Patrick Steward only briefly in their games.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/420-Fallout-3

And, yes, Yahtzee and Volition should team up like yesterday. Even if they did this as a Kickstarter, they would be getting mad bank imo.

 

[Evil Smurf]

This is my GOTY, I laughed, cried with laughter and killed with dubstep. What's not to love?

Okay, here are the Wikiquote pages for Zero Punctuation. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Croshaw] The time is 12:14. Let's see how long this takes...

Someone has added it. So, if 12:14 is GMT (I highly doubt it), it took 5 hours 40 mins (or at least that is how long when I checked, again assuming GMT).

Also, if you're going to make me write a captcha, it helps if the captcha thingy doesn't crash on me.

It would be GMT +10

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I've never played a Saints Row game, but I might be willing to give this one a try once it comes down in price.

Be warned, the game is a love letter to fans and the franchise as a whole. There is a lot of content referencing the first 3 games. I'd watch all the cutscenes of the first game on Youtube (or a LP if you have the time), play the second game, and watch a LP of the third on Youtube. Or jut watch LPs/the cutscenes of all the games. You do lose a bit from just the cutscenes, though.

So I should play through at least one of the other games first then?

 

[norashepard]

I think the interesting thing about the Saints series is that it really hasn't ever been the same thing twice. Sure there were similarities, and the overall genre was the same, but it really hasn't ever been real keen on true sequels. This of course leads to the ridiculous rifts in the fanbase with the SR2 crowd being high and mighty and what not, but putting that aside, I think that's a fantastic thing.

Other games tend to just do the same thing but different, or in a different place. The Elder Scrolls, for example, is basically just the same game with upgraded graphics and streamlined systems as time goes on. Saints Row, though? It always feels like a new game. For good or for ill, that was always neat to me, and I'd like to see more games actually do something similar. Doesn't look too likely though, what with every IP and it's mother being treated like a TV show series these days. Literally the only other IP that seems to be doing something similar is Bioware's Dragon Age, but I'm pretty sure that's unintentional.

IDK it's just cool. I really love all four of the games for different reasons, but I can see how their wild deviations might put a ton of people off, especially when we're used to sequels being essentially the same thing plus some extra shit, instead of new takes on the old formulas.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Shame the series can't make up it's mind on what to name the sequel.
Original name
2
The Third
IV

I've no idea what they possibly do next.

5AINT5
ROW

Obviously.

 

[mjc0961]

...Did he just say he doesn't like Johnny Gat? You are dead to me Yahtzee.

Okay not really but what the hell man.

Anyway I would say that Saints Row 4 manages to be better than Saints Row The Third because it actually finds its own new identity as a Prototype clone with Saints Row gunplay instead of being Saints Row 2 but shit like Saints Row The Third was. Not that Saints Row The Third is shit as in its a bad game. It's still a good game, it just plain doesn't compete with Saints Row 2 at all.

And on that note I will never understand the people who claim 1 and 2 were just GTA clones but 3 did something different. Did they play the games? 3 didn't do a goddamn thing different except for stripping out tons of content and trying to sell some of it back as DLC. And it had a giant dildo you can beat people with which was awesome (like I said, it's overall not a bad game) but doesn't actually change that they're the exact same kind of game.

 

[Evonisia]

...Did he just say he doesn't like Johnny Gat? You are dead to me Yahtzee.

Okay not really but what the hell man.

I haven't really saw much of SR4 but from what I've heard Johnny is just a thing that likes to kiss the boss' arse. In SR2 he had a lot of respect for him. In The Third he's chucked away in the first five seconds so I guess it comes as no surprise to hear a negative comment about him at this point.

Shame the series can't make up it's mind on what to name the sequel.
Original name
2
The Third
IV

I've no idea what they possibly do next.

5AINT5
ROW

Obviously.

Yeah, totally.

 

[lacktheknack]

Okay, here are the Wikiquote pages for Zero Punctuation. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Croshaw] The time is 12:14. Let's see how long this takes...

Well, they approached it with an admirable lack of self-awareness. Well done, Wikiquotes.

OT: Seeing how I much preferred Saints Row 3 over Saints Row 2, I can only assume this is my GOTY.

Now, if only I had money...

 

[Samantha Burt]

Shame the series can't make up it's mind on what to name the sequel.
Original name
2
The Third
IV

I've no idea what they possibly do next.

5AINT5
ROW

Obviously.

And then assumedly Saints Row F? I actually really enjoyed playing this, but I probably won't pick it up again, especially not till they patch the "Where's my cape?" achievement glitch.

 

[IrisNetwork]

HOLY SPACEBALLS!
I thought he was gonna hate on SR4. His complaints of clothing customization and lack of cutscenes before minigames from SR3 went nowhere.
But I guess if you take SR4 for what it is and not what I wanted it to be, it really is a mess. A really fun mess. A bunch of toys parodying and referencing things you know but they do it pretty well.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

But it didn't just immitate, it mocked a lot.
"Hey baby, this Snake is 100% Solid~".
And most importantly, the gameplay didn't suck complete ass, quite the opposite in fact, which made it ok to me.
There have been too many "comedy" games that had gameplay as an afterthought, and while SR4 wasn't really original in any way, it copied enough of the good bits to justify mocking other bits.

Personally, I had a lot of fun with it, even though it was my first entry in the series and I had to puzzle the characters together myself.

Oh God, that's the worst possible entry into a series somebody could have, SR4 is barely a SR game, SR4 and SR+SR2 have barely anything in common.
-
I get the feeling that all the fans of SR2 have just accepted that it's never coming back and this is the new Saint's Row...

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm glad Saints Row 4 exists as a game. It proved that fun does not make a game good and that people want more than stupid, mindless killy-stompy-bang-bang game.

Proved that to who?

You?

I could counter that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs proved that people want more than a good story in their games, and that would prove exactly as much (possibly more, because people are actually QUITE upset about the new Amnesia, while less than half are upset about the new Saints Row).

 

[TheHomelessHero]

I'm glad Saints Row 4 exists as a game. It proved that fun does not make a game good and that people want more than stupid, mindless killy-stompy-bang-bang game.

I disagree, if anything, games like Saints Row 4 prove that we need more games that don't take themselves too seriously. After playing Bioshock: Infinite, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, then Far Cry 3 all in succession, I needed a game like Saints Row 4. Gaming today tries waaaaaay too hard to be serious, dark, and/or gritty, and while none of that is necessarily bad, having the occasional "mindless killy-stompy-bang-bang" game to keep some variety in this saturated industry is needed.

 

[Farther than stars]

I have a feeling the Boss would have more problems with getting elected than just a cockney accent.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

So this game is just one big mess, but somehow Volition has managed to make it work? That's pretty impressive.

 

[Keith Fraser]

Once again Yahtzee supplies us with an excellent name for a hip indie band, in this case Happy Hour At The Redneck Sex Dungeon.