Saints Row IV

Saints Row IV is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. It is the fourth title in the Saints Row series. It was released on August 20, 2013 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

On January 20, 2015, it received a port for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, known as Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, which contains all DLCs, and was released alongside Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, a stand-alone expansion to Saints Row IV with Johnny Gat and Kinzie Kensington as the main protagonists. The Re-Elected version was also released on the Nintendo Switch on March 27, 2020.

Why It's Fun

 * 1) Despite being a rehash of the previous game (due to the fact that it used the same city with several landmarks (e.g. Three Count Casino, Safeword, etc.) being replaced with towers and hotspots), it managed to get more different with its new features, making the game stands on the top three podium of "Best Reskins" alongside Enthusia Professional Racing and Tourist Trophy.
 * 2) The graphics look really good and is a huge step up from the first three games.
 * 3) There's lots of funny pop-culture and video game references, including a mission inspired by Metal Gear Solid where you rescue Asha, rescuing Johnny has you playing a Streets of Rage level, and there are several call-backs to previous Saints Row games.
 * 4) Great voice acting, especially the Boss' voices, in which it had its casts returning.
 * 5) Lots of funny moments.
 * 6) Since the game takes place in a simulation, you now have super powers. There are a total of 8: Blast, Telekinesis, Stomp, Buff, Super Jump, Super Sprint, Death From Above, and Force Field.
 * 7) Lots of customization. Not as good as the first two game's customization but much better.
 * 8) DLC adds even more stuff to the game and is a lot better than the DLC that was in Saints Row The Third.
 * 9) *The Re-Elected version of the game just gives you all of the DLCs for free. Yes, you heard that right, for free.
 * 10) Decent story, despite being too over-the-top.
 * 11) *Adding to that, activities are no longer a part of the main story, unlike in the previous game. They were integrated into side quests in which it can help you take over the simulation easier.
 * 12) Johnny Gat makes a return after being absent in the previous game!
 * 13) Lots of new fun activities and diversions. There are even ones for Co-op.
 * 14) Emperor Zinyak is a pretty entertaining antagonist, and he hosts Klassic 102.4, where in addition to playing classical music, he also reads classic literature.
 * 15) The DLC mission packs, How the Saints Save Christmas and Enter the Dominatrix are really fun.
 * 16) Special Homies can be upgraded to Super Homies by completing their Loyalty missions. You can also call up Super Saint backup after completing most of the challenges in the game.
 * 17) Most of the new activities and diversions are really fun (Super Powered Fight Club, Speed Rift, Mech Suit Mayhem, etc.)
 * 18) There are two different endings. Both are dependent on the Loyalty Missions.
 * 19) *If you failed to complete any Loyalty Mission prior to starting Grand Finale, at the end of the game there will be an additional cutscene in which the leader of the Saints proposes taking over a new planet to rebuild the human civilization.
 * 20) *If you completed all Loyalty Missions, you will be given another ending in which Zinjai, Zinyak's former assistant informs the Saints that the Zins had invented time travel. As you may be guessing, the Saints decide to travel back in time and stop Zinyak from destroying planet Earth.
 * 21) Features unique and crazy weapons such as the Inflato-Ray which inflates pedestrians and explodes in a gory mess, the Disintegrator which kills enemies in one shot! (lengthy charging times may occur) and the Dubstep Gun in which certain music based on the skins plays whenever player fires with that gun.

Gat Out of Hell

 * 1) Completing City Takeover after killing Satan unlocks an ending where Gat's alliance takes down insurgents opposing them, they all get happy endings, and they begin regular conferences with Heaven where they play Volleyball.
 * 2) At the end of the game, Johnny is confronted by God Himself, who wants to reward Johnny for preventing Satan's forces from invading Heaven under the Boss's guidance. The player is then given a choice of one of five endings:
 * 3) * Johnny asks to be reunited with Aisha in Heaven.
 * 4) * Johnny becomes the new king of Hell.
 * 5) * The Saints colonize a new planet to rebuild humanity on.
 * 6) * Earth is restored via retcon, and Johnny, Matt and Kinzie still wind up meeting as police officers. This ending leads into Agents of Mayhem.

Overall

 * 1) Due to the game wanted to be released before Grand Theft Auto V, the game suffered in a 9 month rushed development, leading to bugs and glitches that may occur.
 * 2) Difficulty Spike: Act 3 of the game introduces the Marauder, a ball-shaped enemy that unfolds to form an explosive-shooting tripod robot. It hits like a tank (literally, its explosive weapon is identical in damage to that of a tank) and it will only take damage if shot from behind while unfolded. They are the most dangerous enemy the Zin can throw at you, and after they're introduced Marauders start showing up at a mere level 3 notoriety. To put that in perspective, you earn level 3 notoriety for killing a single person in a store.
 * 3) Missed Opportunities:
 * 4) * Saints Row IV
 * 5) ** The Boss becoming President could have easily been the plot of a game of its own. This game covers it and pretty much disposes of it in the space of two missions. Especially frustrating with how you are teased early on with a political decision system, making it seem like you have full reign to decide your own approach to administration and policy.
 * 6) *** The Simulation is a fascinating virtual mind-space which the protagonists can hack to reshape the rules of to their whim, resulting in fancy things like superpowers and energy weapons. This hacking process for the most part takes the shape of the series' gameplay tradition of conquering neighborhoods to strengthen your gang and expand your criminal empire. However, because it is also a prison complex, the protagonists nonchalantly destroy it near the end of the story, making all the expansion you did seem like a "Shaggy Dog" Story. It would have been great had all the work instead resulted in such high-level hacking capacities that the Simulation could have been rewritten entirely into something more useful and beneficial for the Saints. For instance, it could have become a complete virtual recreation of the destroyed Earth and its inhabitants if you didn't get the best ending.
 * 7) ** Cyrus Temple and Killbane. The ex-STAG commander turned terrorist and the former leader of the Luchadores would be great main antagonists if they joined forces and the game focused on The Boss being the US President, opening the possibility of satisfying final confrontation with both of them, since both walked off free in the canon ending of the previous game. But, instead, Cyrus is offed right at the prologue and Killbane is blowed up with the rest of the earth and only has a brief appearance in the simulation.
 * 8) *** Many of the homies from the previous game, such as Oleg and Viola, considering how they get killed near the beginning. They weren't fully fleshed out yet in their debut title and this game's concept of loyalty missions would have been a great opportunity to remedy that.
 * 9) * Gat Out of Hell
 * 10) ** While it can probably be excused due to the fact the game is an expansion pack, after you completely take over Downtown, a storybook page shows that many previous Saints Row antagonists, such as Kazuo, Shogo, William Sharp, and Killbane, have teamed up. You never once get to fight any of them, and the conflict is resolved with barely any note after 100% takeover.
 * 11) *** An ever bigger anti-climax goes through the series as a whole: many old-school fans of Saints Row felt like the Dex Revenge diversion is definitely not how you end a feud which started in Saints Row 2 and then was left uncovered for two games straight. The fact that completing the diversion seven times nets you an (honestly) awesome gun doesn't help. The fact that the unreleased Saints Row: Money Shot had more convincing circumstances of Dex being murdered doesn't help either.
 * 12) *** Given that Gat and Boss are more or less equally badass/dangerous, it wouldn't have taken much rewriting to have Gat being kidnapped with the boss being playable. This way the customization element of the previous games could have been kept. Doesn't help that the whole customization thing from appearance to outfit are in game but removed.
 * 13) *** Due to how well-liked the parodic musical number was, some are disappointed that the entire story didn't have more than one song.
 * 14) *** Generally the whole "the Saints in Hell" plotline would have felt more fitting than the base games "aliens trap the Saints in a simulation" Along with the above mentioned "switching Gat to be Satan's prisoner" which would have avoided the retcon of IV saying Zinyak kidnapped Gat.
 * 15) This game shares a lot of the same problems that Saints Row: The Third had.
 * 16) *The game's story is still way too over-the-top for Saints Row. This time they go to space and seek revenge on an alien race for destroying Earth by taking over their systems via a simulation of Steelport, similar to The Matrix.
 * 17) *There is nothing else to do after the story is over.
 * 18) *Replayable missions are again not in the game (except for DLC missions), you have to replay the game from the very beginning to replay your favorite missions.
 * 19) Steelport is exactly the same as it was in the previous game, but just with some new towers and hotspots replacing some of the locations, like Safeword and Angel's gym.
 * 20) The game has a lot of balancing issues mainly with the weapons and powers.
 * 21) *Saints Row IV
 * 22) ** Because of the fact that the player can do lots of side missions and collects clusters early, they can get lots of upgrades and gain a lot of XP before even leaving the simulation for the first time, completely mitigating the challenge of the game.
 * 23) *** In a meta sense, the player is breaking the game to make it easier. Super jumps and super sprint are only the first such game breakers, making cars all but obsolete to get around.
 * 24) ** The Dubstep Gun. Not only does it fires wubs instead of bullets, if fully upgraded, it can kill everything it stands in its path, with the power of exploding wubs, making it into a continuous stream of explosions. Throw in Unlimited Ammo, and you can stroll through entire areas of the game with it. To give you an idea of its power, one or two good barrages can end a Warden, once you've used your powers to take down its shield.
 * 25) ** The second Telekinesis element drains enemies of their health, meaning health can almost always be replenished fully in moments.
 * 26) ** The Destructor tank can be added to your garage very early, can be summoned at any time, is nigh-invulnerable, and shoots both rockets and lasers, making it ideal for both crowd control and precision-shooting. It is essentially the answer to any sort of ground-level combat, short of a warden fight.
 * 27) ** The Explosive Deaths upgrade combined with the fire element for the blast power. With it, when any enemy who's on fire dies, they let out an explosion, setting everyone around them on fire. The explosive effect can chain, so one blast can clear a large group of enemies if they're close together and even delete a flashpoint faster than a sports car's 0-62 mph time.
 * 28) *** On a similar note, the Explosive element from one of the DLCs, which pretty much make any fight with vehicles around a joke, as the Blast and Stomp will automatically explode vehicles when hit and the telekinesis power makes practically anything grabbed a grenade. Added with the above upgrade and entire waves of enemies can die with a single power.
 * 29) ** Freeze Buff. Any enemy who gets too close is frozen and takes double damage. Even Wardens are rendered helpless against this buff and you can simply get in close (which normally would result in the Warden punching you across the block) and bash his head in with a melee weapon.
 * 30) ** Bling Buff. Anyone nearby is frozen into a gold statue for quite a while. Killing them in this form drops tons of cache, and cache is vacuumed towards you while the buff is active. It only takes a few enemies to rack up 100 000 cache, and it works just as well on pedestrians.
 * 31) ** The Loud Locust (Tiny Pistol), despite its name, is an extremely powerful weapon that can cause a large explosion at whatever it's pointed to, and can be used multiple times before it has to recharge. The only downsides are that recharging takes forever and its blasts cause the Boss to ragdoll as well, the later of which can be rectified by a high level upgrade. It can also be found early in the game if you know where to look. By shooting open a door in Let's Pretend, and going down to a room where it's waiting on a chair.
 * 32) ** 'Merica, particularly once you unlock unlimited ammo. A dozen guns firing at once and either a flamethrower or a repeating rocket launcher. The closest thing to a downside is its recoil; hold down the trigger, and the only thing you need to worry about is blowing yourself up if you aim at the ground. Combine it with Buff, and you can take down a Warden in seconds.
 * 33) * Gat Out of Hell
 * 34) ** The Diamond Sting when fully upgraded. If you feel like breaking the game even further, just bring this bling boy to a few survival missions. The battlefield will be absolutely covered in money by the time the fight is over.
 * 35) ** You can make collecting that money even easier by upgrading the Vacuum Stomp power to also collect Wages and Health pickups and getting the Stomp Area upgrades as well!
 * 36) ** The summoning power, particularly when fully upgraded. Its ultimate level gives the player a hulking demon that can easily take on boss level enemies at full health and cause massive damage even after it has taken some hits. Even better, it's completely unaffected by anti-power grenades if it's already out before the grenade goes off, giving the player a near unstoppable ally at all times. Oh, and its recharge rate? After about 3 seconds you can get a fresh one with completely full health. Used correctly you can effortlessly walk through the entire game without firing a single bullet.
 * 37) Despite the game introducing a lot of amazing activities, it has also introduced some bad activities too, like TK Rift and Prof. Genki's Mind Over Murder.
 * 38) There are only two diversions for Co-op.
 * 39) There are far too many collectibles. This game has a whopping amount of 1255 clusters, 36 Zinyak statues, 39 audio logs, eight text adventures, nine Christmas text adventure logs and nine letters to Santa (the latter of two are only exclusive in How The Saints Save The Christmas DLC) making it a huge total of whopping 1356 collectibles (1338 collectibles if not counting the DLC collectibles).
 * 40) Cribs have been completely cut; the only things that resemble as cribs are the Gateways and the Ship which is a hub and can't be customized.
 * 41) The PS3 version suffered from a severe freezing case.
 * 42) When the time finally comes to fight Zinyak, you'll find that he's a major pain in the ass. Throughout the entire fight, he pilots a mecha. In the first half of the fight, he flies about the arena, and is incredibly aggressive, leaving you little time to attack before having to dodge his attacks. When down to about 50% of his health, he hides behind a forcefield in the center of the arena, and the only way to damage him is to use telekinesis to throw explosive CIDs at him. When down to only a sliver of his HP, you're tasked with disabling the shield generators, all while Murderbots try to kill you. Even when your homies show up with Xor hoverbikes to provide a diversion, the Murderbots will still try to kill you. All the while, enemies won't drop health items, since you're in the real world, and your health takes a long time to start regenerating.
 * 43) A number of achievements are tedious and require hardcore grinding.
 * 44) * Saints Row IV
 * 45) ** Fourth and Forty is achieved after playing for 40 hours. One playthrough will get you maybe 20. Not bad if you're planning to play it more than once, but otherwise prepare to grind if you want it.
 * 46) ** The Challenge King. The player has to complete pretty much every side mission and activity (including the woeful ones like Mind Over Murder and TK Rift) to perfection.
 * 47) ** Get that Kid to a Psychologist, Dear Santa, and A World Without Christmas, from the "How The Saints Save Christmas" DLC. They're all obtained by completing their respective side quest. What makes them annoying is that there's no indication of how many items are in each mission area, and you can only look for them when you're on the missions, and in the case of this mission they don't even show up on the mini-map, so it becomes tedious quickly.
 * 48) ** "Pounding the Pavement" and "I Am Become Death" are also very grindy. The former requires you to kill 150 aliens with the Stomp ability, while the latter requires you to kill 1000 aliens with superpowers. Much harder and more tedious than it sounds, because Stomp doesn't do a lot of damage even when fully upgraded and only "Alien Kills" count, not "Explosive Kills", which can be a problem after you upgrade your powers.
 * 49) * Gat Out of Hell
 * 50) ** "Top Gunner" requires you to use a Blast to Shoot the Bullet of a Spire's missile. Hope you have good timing!
 * 51) ** "Let's Bounce" and "Gnarly Wave" are quite annoying as well, as the former requires you to touch five vehicles in a row without touching the ground in the Torment Fraud activity, and for the latter you must car surf on a Comet before it explodes, which can be frustrating due to the AI's behavior.
 * 52) Censorship: The uncensored version was banned in Australia due to "the use of drugs to enhance gameplay". As a result, the "Psychosomatic" mission was removed from the Australian version of the game, and players who own the uncensored version cannot play in co-op with owners of the Australian version, or vice versa.

Gat Out of Hell

 * 1) The game is incredibly short, clocking in at five hours.
 * 2) Some of the Seven Deadly Weapons don't have their acquisition methods clearly laid out.
 * 3) The game can get incredibly repetitive as there isn't much to do in it.

Reception
Saints Row IV received positive reviews from critics and fans of the previous Saints Row games, although some of the fans of the old games didn't like it.

Trivia

 * As BQ#8 stated, this is the first open world game with the most amount of collectibles featured. Although not as much as Donkey Kong 64, in which it featured 3,821 collectibles.
 * This is the longest page related to the Saints Row series on the Awesome Games Wiki.

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