I thought I might as well round out the last of the Saints Row games I haven't played considering I've owned it for so long and that it's fairly short compared to the other ones. It's actually quite well crafted for a budget game, and brings some very welcome improvements from Saints Row 4, the game with which it shares most similarities on an engine-level.
For a budget game, this actually has a LOT of what SR4 should've had in the brand new city it brings to the table. Steelport was never designed to be traversed with super jumps and super speed. It feels very out of place in SR4, and SR4 changed far too much of the pacing and game design without abandoning many of the old trappings of the non-super powered games. In GOoH, we finally see the long awaited abandonment of those old trappings. Any nonsense to do with cars is finally gone. There aren't any car jacking missions or a garage to maintian, because the game knows that cars are for plebs who don't have flight and super speed. The city of New Hades, located in the middle of a horrible abyss of lava, actually makes for a fantastic world-location for one that is best traveled in GOoH's ways.
In this game, you don't quite have the super jump and super glide of SR4, but instead you have angelic wings, which allow you to act like kind of a glider after you do your super jump. This glide/flying feels oodles of fun, and it's super responsive and intuitive to use. I actually went for most of the collectibles, something I never do in these games, just because gliding around the crazy arcane city was so fun. The power-up nodes that are scattered everywhere were actually fairly fun to glide through after I got my flight al ittle powered up, because it was like the whole game was a flight-trial. New Hades isn't nearly as big as somewhere like Steelport or Stilwater, more like maybe half the size or less, but it feels much larger than it is because of how well its space is used.
Only a handful of challenges and missions, but the ones that are there are fun. The usual insurance fraud is now "torment fraud," as you take control of a husk of a sinner from a previous Saints game (from 1 or 2) and try and rack up punishment to speed up their purgatory (or some other). There are a lot of little callbacks to older Saints games, and Johnny and Kinsey both have charming quips between them about the city and everything in it. Quips are actually a kind of collectible, as some specific ones will activate when you stand in certain marked places and stare at certain things. There aren't many actual cutscenes, as most of them are replaces with a kind of literal story book flipped through and narrated by their version of Jane Austin, but it works. It really trims the fat of what could've taken away a lot of resources from what's otherwise a fun world to play around in.
The world itself is just oozing with charm with the usual great Saints writing. Joined by a cabal of some of history's greatest sinners: Dean Vogel (the head of Ultor from the 2nd SR game), Blackbeard, The Winterhead Twins (from SR3), Vlad the Impaler, and Shakespeare (he sold his soul for fame and fortune), you work to take control of Hell away from Satan to rescue the Boss of the Saints (i.e. the usual main character of the series). This goes on the trope(?) of Hell being run more like a business or a bureaucracy, so it works within a pretty good suspension of disbelief. It's cool seeing so many previously dead faces of the series and getting so much more Johnny Gat time (something was so sadly lacking in SR3 and 4), not to mention Kinsey in a combat role! One of the several silly endings you can pick even canonically leads into Agents of Mayhem, so I guess you could call that a kind of spiritual successor to the series (and god did it need it because I have no idea where it'd go from here). My favorite specific touch had to be the weapons based on the 7 deadly sins. The Sloth weapons is literally an armchair you ride around in with Gatling guns mounted inside each arm and a series of rocket launchers under the recliner. I got a LOT of use out of that glorious nonsense :lol:
Verdict: Recommended. Even if you didn't like SR4, this is a much better polished bite-sized version of SR4 that takes all the best ideas from that game and puts them in a weekend-sized package. It starts off a little weird and slow, but give it an hour and you'll be flying and blasting away stuff in no time :)
For a budget game, this actually has a LOT of what SR4 should've had in the brand new city it brings to the table. Steelport was never designed to be traversed with super jumps and super speed. It feels very out of place in SR4, and SR4 changed far too much of the pacing and game design without abandoning many of the old trappings of the non-super powered games. In GOoH, we finally see the long awaited abandonment of those old trappings. Any nonsense to do with cars is finally gone. There aren't any car jacking missions or a garage to maintian, because the game knows that cars are for plebs who don't have flight and super speed. The city of New Hades, located in the middle of a horrible abyss of lava, actually makes for a fantastic world-location for one that is best traveled in GOoH's ways.
In this game, you don't quite have the super jump and super glide of SR4, but instead you have angelic wings, which allow you to act like kind of a glider after you do your super jump. This glide/flying feels oodles of fun, and it's super responsive and intuitive to use. I actually went for most of the collectibles, something I never do in these games, just because gliding around the crazy arcane city was so fun. The power-up nodes that are scattered everywhere were actually fairly fun to glide through after I got my flight al ittle powered up, because it was like the whole game was a flight-trial. New Hades isn't nearly as big as somewhere like Steelport or Stilwater, more like maybe half the size or less, but it feels much larger than it is because of how well its space is used.
Only a handful of challenges and missions, but the ones that are there are fun. The usual insurance fraud is now "torment fraud," as you take control of a husk of a sinner from a previous Saints game (from 1 or 2) and try and rack up punishment to speed up their purgatory (or some other). There are a lot of little callbacks to older Saints games, and Johnny and Kinsey both have charming quips between them about the city and everything in it. Quips are actually a kind of collectible, as some specific ones will activate when you stand in certain marked places and stare at certain things. There aren't many actual cutscenes, as most of them are replaces with a kind of literal story book flipped through and narrated by their version of Jane Austin, but it works. It really trims the fat of what could've taken away a lot of resources from what's otherwise a fun world to play around in.
The world itself is just oozing with charm with the usual great Saints writing. Joined by a cabal of some of history's greatest sinners: Dean Vogel (the head of Ultor from the 2nd SR game), Blackbeard, The Winterhead Twins (from SR3), Vlad the Impaler, and Shakespeare (he sold his soul for fame and fortune), you work to take control of Hell away from Satan to rescue the Boss of the Saints (i.e. the usual main character of the series). This goes on the trope(?) of Hell being run more like a business or a bureaucracy, so it works within a pretty good suspension of disbelief. It's cool seeing so many previously dead faces of the series and getting so much more Johnny Gat time (something was so sadly lacking in SR3 and 4), not to mention Kinsey in a combat role! One of the several silly endings you can pick even canonically leads into Agents of Mayhem, so I guess you could call that a kind of spiritual successor to the series (and god did it need it because I have no idea where it'd go from here). My favorite specific touch had to be the weapons based on the 7 deadly sins. The Sloth weapons is literally an armchair you ride around in with Gatling guns mounted inside each arm and a series of rocket launchers under the recliner. I got a LOT of use out of that glorious nonsense :lol:
Verdict: Recommended. Even if you didn't like SR4, this is a much better polished bite-sized version of SR4 that takes all the best ideas from that game and puts them in a weekend-sized package. It starts off a little weird and slow, but give it an hour and you'll be flying and blasting away stuff in no time :)