Quite easily the most successful game in the series - for lots of reasons, but most importantly the feel. They finally pinned down a more open, parodic tone and dialed back the cringe, at least a bit. It honestly feels kind of like an apology for THE THIRD.
The superhero stuff is, frankly, great. 90% of it works just how you want it to, and once again the devs aren't worried in the least about breaking the game, or the balance, or whatever. You can essentially just fly and run up the sides of buildings infinitely within an hour of starting, and that's wonderful. The monstrously dull city from the last game is recast here as a big jungle gym, essentially, which is kind of a funny fate for any open-world game. Storywise, the game takes place in a computer simulation of the previous entry's town, so even in a narrative sense you're encouraged to not give a crap about the buildings, the people, the cars, etc, which is, of course, amusingly reflected in the total shift in gameplay for the series.
There's still gun stuff, which still works well. Less of a focus on side-activities, but that's fine, as this really isn't any kind of GTA-clone anymore, and it's replaced with lots more story content. It's more successful there, as well, presenting itself as a kind of THEY LIVE/THE MATRIX/MASS EFFECT mash-up with an especially funny bunch of riffs on the latter, including being able to arbitrarily "romance" every single one of your "loyalty mission"-giving crew members while running around the irritatingly maze-like hub ship you all live on in the "real" world.
It's not perfect. There's the usual jank and bugs and le epic humor (although if we're gonna do random starfucking, getting Keith David to play an egotistical version of himself (as well as his character from the original SAINTS ROW!) and then later having him run into "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is a hell of a step up from making a confused Burt Reynolds talk about zombies for fifteen total seconds), but it's good to see the series go out on a higher note.
P.S.: In another funny and welcome touch, the six create-a-character voice options from the last game are joined by a seventh here - Nolan North, listed next to "Male 1", "Female 1", etc. as just "Nolan North", lol. And wow, what a difference he makes. Go to YouTube and compare his line reads against the others, especially (shudder) Troy Baker's to get a real useful look at how good he actually is. His delivery of all this goofy shit alone probably bumped this a half-star.
The superhero stuff is, frankly, great. 90% of it works just how you want it to, and once again the devs aren't worried in the least about breaking the game, or the balance, or whatever. You can essentially just fly and run up the sides of buildings infinitely within an hour of starting, and that's wonderful. The monstrously dull city from the last game is recast here as a big jungle gym, essentially, which is kind of a funny fate for any open-world game. Storywise, the game takes place in a computer simulation of the previous entry's town, so even in a narrative sense you're encouraged to not give a crap about the buildings, the people, the cars, etc, which is, of course, amusingly reflected in the total shift in gameplay for the series.
There's still gun stuff, which still works well. Less of a focus on side-activities, but that's fine, as this really isn't any kind of GTA-clone anymore, and it's replaced with lots more story content. It's more successful there, as well, presenting itself as a kind of THEY LIVE/THE MATRIX/MASS EFFECT mash-up with an especially funny bunch of riffs on the latter, including being able to arbitrarily "romance" every single one of your "loyalty mission"-giving crew members while running around the irritatingly maze-like hub ship you all live on in the "real" world.
It's not perfect. There's the usual jank and bugs and le epic humor (although if we're gonna do random starfucking, getting Keith David to play an egotistical version of himself (as well as his character from the original SAINTS ROW!) and then later having him run into "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is a hell of a step up from making a confused Burt Reynolds talk about zombies for fifteen total seconds), but it's good to see the series go out on a higher note.
P.S.: In another funny and welcome touch, the six create-a-character voice options from the last game are joined by a seventh here - Nolan North, listed next to "Male 1", "Female 1", etc. as just "Nolan North", lol. And wow, what a difference he makes. Go to YouTube and compare his line reads against the others, especially (shudder) Troy Baker's to get a real useful look at how good he actually is. His delivery of all this goofy shit alone probably bumped this a half-star.
Lemonov
1 year ago
>Quite easily the most successful game in the series - for lots of reasons, but most importantly the feel. They finally pinned down a more open, parodic tone and dialed back the cringe, at least a bit. It honestly feels kind of like an apology for THE THIRD.