Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2022
Saints Row 2022 is a reboot of the franchise, yet it lends itself to the foundation SR3 built, spiralling the series into massive fame. With some launch trouble and bugs out of the way, let’s take a look at the new Saints Row, a few patches down the line!
It kicks off in classic Saints Row fashion, at least since SR3, where you're thrown straight into a massive mission at the beginning. Here, your character, which you can customise yourself with an impressive number of options, is working as a soldier for Marshal Defense Industries. A massive corporation that’s hired in to take down a criminal called The Nahualli.
This first mission serves as a training ground for the player, getting a quick tour of how to play the game. It’s an excellent way of learning the ropes, while at the same time having tons of action scenes thrown at the player.
Although successful at your first mission, the company doesn’t allow your character a bonus and you must pull back to your worn down apartment, with four friends. Eli, Kevin and Neemah. Broke, but with ambition, the four friends decide to build a criminal empire together.
Although successful at your first mission, the company doesn’t allow your character a bonus and you must pull back to your worn down apartment, with four friends. Eli, Kevin and Neemah. Broke, but with ambition, the four friends decide to build a criminal empire together.
It's clear from the beginning that it's all about the jokes and unrealistic approach these friends build their criminal, Saints, empire on. None of the characters seem suited for the task, yet their friendship prevails, and they become successful as you progress through story missions.
As you progress, you're required to build the empire further by setting up business in the city, earning money and complete side missions for each business. Add in scattered items to find in the open world and it's all familiar ground for those who have played this type of genre before. I very much enjoyed the main missions, they tend to go wild with lots of action and comic reliefs, even throwing in movie references.
In a strange twist, there’s somewhat of a wild west vibe to the whole experience. Be it some of the obvious abandoned western towns you battle in, some of the main characters and the whole look of the fictional city, Santo Ileso. Offering large deserts, full of cactus, canyons and dust storms, industrial areas, worn down city outskirts, as well as a modern, high tech, city centre, all sporting a typical southwest American style.
The western vibe is further pronounced by a lot of orange tinted sunsets, while at the same time, it can go to a blue tinted, modern city vibe with neon signs and lit up skyscrapers at night. There’s less visual variety than other open world titles, depicting mostly the outback versus the city life, but it does a great job at contrasting the rural and city areas, as well as day and night.
Saints Row doesn’t have an overly massive open world, yet it’s large enough to cater for a proper off-road experience out in the desert, or sports car speeding in the city. Gameplay is close to how SR3 was, with a solid third person shooter feel. Far better than GTA ever has been, yet a little inaccurate with auto aim and precision for snipers and assault rifles at distances. The fast controls, manoeuvrability through climbing obstacles and jumping, with entertaining gun play keeps the game very enjoyable. As well as tons of objects, cars and people to blow up at any given time around you!
There’s a lot of upgrades available to improve guns too. Same goes for your character, not only is there a massive amount of clothing to dress up in, but there’s also perks to access once you’ve levelled up. I found the perks underutilised by myself though, as I coped fine with the easy and accessible gunplay. But there’s quite a few abilities you can use to your advantage when crowded by enemies if that’s your thing.
Cars and helicopters can also be upgraded, especially the cars have a solid number of customising options available. They're easy to drive and the dedicated drift button, first seen in SR3, is just as fun as how I remember it!
Upgrades are neat, but I found the money to do so sparse. Even though I carried out a lot of side missions. I never felt I had much money at hand, and the best upgrades have an overly steep price. A grindy feel sets in and I didn’t like the fact that the main missions were locked behind completing the fetch-based side missions either. It comes off as being a bad way to stretch out the lifespan.
While I enjoyed the main story missions and humour throughout, making a lot of current day lifestyle and social media jokes, I felt it was avoiding being too politically incorrect. SR3 was edgier as such, and thus the humour even better. They’re clearly avoiding the suggestive jokes of SR3 here. Plus, I never felt the main missions becoming quite as crazy or memorable as SR3 either.
There's a confusing amount of graphics options for a console game in Saints Row. Depending on your TV, I’d highly recommend sticking with the high framerate modes at either 1080p or 1440p. The high-quality modes bring the framerate down, even below my VVR TV thresholds, and the full native 4K option is just 30fps. Both high framerate modes work well, although I found 1440p was the best balance between graphical effects and picture sharpness.
It’s a good looking open world title, for sure, the highly customisable characters blend well into the world and cutscenes, making it your own personal adventure. The visual highlight is the incredible usage of HDR and beautiful lighting, sunsets make shadows and environment detail looks dramatic and pretty. It’s clearly a more modern looking title than the SR3 remaster, with a lot more geometry and natural environments showcasing the quality.
At the same time, it’s not the most breath-taking of titles either. It balances large areas, lots of onscreen vehicles and characters, against the minor detail in objects. I would have preferred less graphics options, focusing on making it more polished visually. But overall, I was impressed by how it looked, the lighting really makes it shine.
I was hoping for the highs of SR3, read my revisit to it's remaster here, but I didn’t quite get the same experience with SR2022. It just lacks something to make it stand out more. Sure, it’s looks nice, with a lot of entertaining touches and solid gunplay, but it never quite blew me away with anything out of the ordinary or very memorable.
Upgrades are neat, but I found the money to do so sparse. Even though I carried out a lot of side missions. I never felt I had much money at hand, and the best upgrades have an overly steep price. A grindy feel sets in and I didn’t like the fact that the main missions were locked behind completing the fetch-based side missions either. It comes off as being a bad way to stretch out the lifespan.
While I enjoyed the main story missions and humour throughout, making a lot of current day lifestyle and social media jokes, I felt it was avoiding being too politically incorrect. SR3 was edgier as such, and thus the humour even better. They’re clearly avoiding the suggestive jokes of SR3 here. Plus, I never felt the main missions becoming quite as crazy or memorable as SR3 either.
There's a confusing amount of graphics options for a console game in Saints Row. Depending on your TV, I’d highly recommend sticking with the high framerate modes at either 1080p or 1440p. The high-quality modes bring the framerate down, even below my VVR TV thresholds, and the full native 4K option is just 30fps. Both high framerate modes work well, although I found 1440p was the best balance between graphical effects and picture sharpness.
It’s a good looking open world title, for sure, the highly customisable characters blend well into the world and cutscenes, making it your own personal adventure. The visual highlight is the incredible usage of HDR and beautiful lighting, sunsets make shadows and environment detail looks dramatic and pretty. It’s clearly a more modern looking title than the SR3 remaster, with a lot more geometry and natural environments showcasing the quality.
At the same time, it’s not the most breath-taking of titles either. It balances large areas, lots of onscreen vehicles and characters, against the minor detail in objects. I would have preferred less graphics options, focusing on making it more polished visually. But overall, I was impressed by how it looked, the lighting really makes it shine.
I was hoping for the highs of SR3, read my revisit to it's remaster here, but I didn’t quite get the same experience with SR2022. It just lacks something to make it stand out more. Sure, it’s looks nice, with a lot of entertaining touches and solid gunplay, but it never quite blew me away with anything out of the ordinary or very memorable.
A solid purchase by all means, the early release problems fixed, but it's overall a more forgettable, by the numbers, release than Saints Row 3. My favourite thing about the game, was it's modern wild west styled appearance and story angle! If you're in the hunt for a new GTA experience, you can't go wrong with this one.
