Saints Row IV - Asking Your Sandbox 'Why So Serious?'

I can count on one hand the number of game series I've started in medias res, diving straight into a title with a number attached to it without having sampled its progenitors first. I can use that same hand and spare a couple of fingers for the number of series on that list where continuity has really mattered one lick and I've felt genuinely poorer for having not begun at the beginning. There's a slice of the gaming population out there who will regard this next statement as sacrilege, but prior to Saints Row IV had NEVER played another game in that series. Hell, that's probably offensive on more than one level. After all, for a gamer never to have experienced one of the most celebrated and beloved open-world action mash-up sagas is to call into question my sacred street cred, no? And for me to have the temerity to pass judgment on its FOURTH incarnation bereft of context, backstory or any frame of reference could be considered akin to evaluating Indiana Jones from nothing but Shia Labeouf and the Kingdom of the Crystal Monkeys.

But play SR4 for any length of time and one aspect about this game and its developers will emerge tantamount above all others:

Saints Row could give a shit about continuity.

Or context. Or backstory. In fact, in the spirit of this crazed, bizarre, utterly ludicrous acid trip-slash geek love letter of a game, I humbly submit that it is I, the Saints Row virgin, who is uniquely qualified to make a unbiased assessment. You won't find me trying to thread logic into this review because precious little of it exists in this game's sprawling world, and God love it, I think – I really do think – that's the point.

The sum total of my knowledge of the Saint's Row franchise going in was this: Grand Theft Auto meets the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup. Like GTA, that venerated epic of carnage and criminality, it was a free-roaming sandbox series that gave the player maximum freedom and minimum rules while knocking off a laundry list of laundry lists of side quests, challenges, mini-games, and some more difficult missions here and there that more or less resembled a story. I knew from glancing at the occasional headline and skimming some media that the 'hook' which made the series stand out from RockStar's line was a penchant for bright colors, absurd set pieces, wildly over-the-top action, and an unapologetic predisposition toward the absurd. It was a GTA that refused to take itself seriously, a series about carjackings and revenge killings that purposely dodged gallows humor in favor of shock, schtick and outright lunacy. I'm reminded of George Carlin's contrasting of a maniac and a crazy person: a maniac will beat nine people to death with a steel dildo; a crazy person will beat nine people to death with a steel dildo but he'll be wearing a Bugs Bunny costume at the time.

Saints Row sets out to be that crazy person to GTA's mere maniac, and it's Bugs Bunny costume is flamboyant shade of purple.

Saint's Row IV feels like the end result of a writer's room filled with spectacular ideas, too much coffee and no supervisors present to stifle the creative process, every base impulse and hilarious in-joke thrown into a blender set on 'puree'. There are a bevy of influences from pop culture, film, hardcore geekdom and scores of other games, all whipped into a schizoid froth and topped with what I now realize is trademark Saints Row abandon. It's a title that begs you to have fun. And hell, if you're already strapped into the ride you might as well put your hands up and enjoy the rush. Is it perfect? It is not. But we're talking about a game where even the flaws seem almost intentional; an experience not unlike the film Tropic Thunder (to cite just one contemporary example) where you're frequently left wondering just what components are wry, elbowing satire and which parts are just fun for the bloody hell of it.

The brief opening voice over constitutes just about the longest and most comprehensive sampling of true exposition you'll find throughout the gameplay. In a very efficient nutshell it describes the history of the Third Street Saints, first a gang purging their city of rival factions and ushering in their own brand of urban renewal, later a pop culture phenomenon whose exploits were followed across the globe. Flash forward a couple titles later to the present, when the Saints have ridden their wave of popularity into the White House – yes, that White House, and you Mr. And/Or Mrs. Gamer, are the Commander-in-Chief, holding court over a West Wing replete with poker, drinking games, Siberian tigers, pimped-out advisors, and scantily clad staffers. Basically Bill Clinton's favorite recurring dream. Until, that is, the aliens arrive.

PROTECT THE BABES!

Yes, the morning press briefing is interrupted by a full-scale alien invasion courtesy of the Zin and their erudite leader, Zinyak, an imposing, autocratic dick who looks like someone took one of George Lucas's background creatures and put him on P90X. Mayhem ensues, and when the smoke clears you are Zinyak's captive, imprisoned in a virtual reality simulation that recreates to the finest detail the industrial metropolis of Steelport, which will be your playground for most of the rest of the game.

What follows is any number of tributes/homages/rip-offs/copyright infringements on The Matrix, but it seems abundantly clear from the outset that the parallels are both blatantly intentional and lovingly replicated. Like Neo you are merely a digital recreation of your real self, and like Neo you can, with practice and a little help from your friends, bend and break the rules of the simulation and manipulate physics as you see fit. Your ultimate goal is to screw with Zinyak's fake world to the point that the program will break down and collapse. At first your efforts constitute a simple fight for freedom as you struggle to break from shackles of the sim, but later it will serve as the last, best hope of retaliating against the aliens and exacting vengeance for crimes against humanity. That's the gist of it.

Here begineth the laundry list. In addition to the main missions, there are scads of extraneous chores and amusing distractions to keep you glued to the controller; it's difficult (but certainly not impossible) to get bored during even a protracted session thanks to the sheer variety of crap you can do, to say nothing of the simple joy of exploration. Every achievement, every vanquished foe, every item on a generous list of milestones both trivial and significant earns you cash (or 'cache' – get it?) and points you can allocate to an intimidating selection of upgrades and unlockables. Everything can be customized, starting with your character model, then on to your clothes, hair, shoes, bling, tats, and, of course, your ride. Like GTA and the other Saints Row titles, the world is yours to carjack: hot rods, mack trucks, crotch rockets, helicopters, and yes, even alien hover tanks and UFOs; if you can touch it, you can steal it. Abscond with a vehicle, or earn it with missions, and you can pimp that out to a fair thee well, too, including paint jobs, rims, engines...Hell, you can even decide how tinted you want the windshield to be. You even get to pick your character's voice actor, which for seasoned gamers is no choice at all, as one of the options is the industry's golden god, the spectacular Nolan North, aka Uncharted's Nathan Drake, who clearly had as much fun recording the dialogue as you'll have making him say stuff.

[SIDE NOTE ON THE VOICE WORK: Keith David, that masterful, granite-voiced legend of stage and screen plays himself : actor turned Third Street Saint turned VP of the USA, brandishing an alien ray gun and swearing up a storm. How can a geek not grin like it's free comic day?]

Of course Neo wasn't just Neo, was he? No, he was also The One, and owing to that the developers decided cars and guns are great, but superpowers are what makes a virtual city a playground worth putting in the extra hours. It isn't long before you're able to say goodbye to limits entirely and soup yourself up in the same manner as your transports: super speed, telekinesis, the ubiquitous fire from your fingertips, and leaping tall buildings – or entire suburbs – in a single bound. Think Infamous stuck in overdrive. This is where SR4's fun factor hits the nitro, giving you a potpourri of abilities that make combat a silly blast and bequeathing you with a freedom of movement rarely if ever seen in open-world games. Powers are upgradeable, too, and once you've experienced the thrill of using your start-up abilities you're likely to spend considerable time earning cheddar to reach new plateaus until you've achieved Superman status. Suddenly Steelport feels less like a city and more like a neon, 21^st century Bouncy-bounce, easily traversed from coast-to-coast in a few blurry seconds.

Cause havoc if you wish, but laying waste to the city will yield consequences in the form of an ever-escalating alien response; the more of a pain in the ass you are, the more resistance you can expect. And while you are powerful, and your assets are fortified with a generous compliment of exotic weapons (also game for enhancement), your abilities require cooldown and you can always run out of ammo. So your efforts against the Zin will still resemble guerrilla warfare: destroying enemy strongholds, assassinating rogue programs, scaling and claiming massive broadcast towers, and winning back your fake city one fake block at a time, gradually turing Steelport's sizable map into a field of Saint's-controlled purple. Succeeding in any of the many activities will win you territory, but the story missions are the most complex and challenging; the game really takes its time doling out the primary features – expect to do a dozen or more main quests before the full scope of your resources are made available to you.

Having set the stage and costumed their cast, developer Volition then takes it upon itself to screw with as many video game conventions as possible. Thinking you're in a straight-up sandbox is to invite any number of baffling moments and WTF departures from conventional gameplay that will have you alternately scratching your head and bawling with laughter. I won't reveal all in the interest of spoilerlessness (whoa, new word), but here's an example: during a rescue mission you are quite spontaneously plunged into not one but two freaky spells of gameplay that just seem to piss all over the fourth wall: first a tank battle/motorcycle race in a laser kaleidoscope environ straight out of the old Macintosh Spectre 3D then, minutes later, in a simulated 8-pixel RPG setup recalling the text-only adventures made famous by DOS and Apple II. That you're forced to swallow all this strange wine inside of ten minutes is one thing, but you'll do yourself a disservice unless you can also spare enough attention to chase down the barrage of references from 80's films like Wargames and the mother of all inside jokes for fans of the Mass Effect series. And did I mention Steelport's main drag is lined with statues of the three-breasted hooker from Total Recall? I didn't? Seems like the kind of thing I would mention before now. Like I said, the developers must have loved coming to work for this one.

The veneer does peel after a while, though that shouldn't come as a wallet-closer of a reveal. Like all open-world, what-you-will realms, eventually the streets of the virtual city become well-trod and familiar. Action becomes a bit like day-old bread, too, especially as you upgrade to the point of being over-powered; sooner or later you learn every enemy's weakness and dispatching even a small army of foes becomes a simple matter of applying the correct foil to the appropriate target. This is where the variety of tricks and weapons becomes somewhat redundant , bordering on useless: there is a smorgasbord of bizarre guns, but many of them are gimmicky and inefficient, more impressive for dazzling gawkers at E3 than for in-game use. Why employ the Abduct-O-Ray when a pump shotgun works better? To be fair, the variety encourages swapping your strategies, as you might prefer to blast Zin from a distance with massive area-of-effect weapons rather than tackle them one at a time at point-blank range. But the outcome of a fight is rarely in doubt. And while completionists will delight in the literally thousands of collectibles, medals and activities, the tasks will gradually morph from Herculean to plebeian.

Crap...did I remember to lock the front door?

Likewise your superpowers enhance your mobility to the point where the vehicle component is functionally obsolete. Why steal a Fiat and drive it across town when you can burn pavement like The Flash or glide across the cityscape like a base jumper? This more than anything will likely stick in the craw of some GTA purists (and woe unto our aging, graying gamer community, now crossing the Rubicon of calling Grand Theft Auto players pure of anything): the thrill of the steal, the street race, the chopshop and the getaway – while present in SR4 – is simply peripheral. The danger isn't there; the desperation: that sweaty, slip-trip headlong flight from overwhelming odds dodging gunfire and vaulting drainage ditches while scrambling for a dirt bike, a Chevy Nova, a moving van –anything to get away – simply CAN'T be there when you know you can lunge into the next county courtesy of there being No Spoon. Naturally players are perfectly welcome to go at it like the past titles and felonize to their heart's content; the game will still be there with oodles of support and some tight driving physics to boot. Plus there will always be that strange sort of pride that comes with tailoring your ill-gotten booty to your desires, so if nothing else cars and bikes are great fodder for the fine-tuners of us who like to put their personal stamp on everything.

Those observations shouldn't discourage the player who wants to spend some endorphin-pumping good times tickling the reward center of his or her brain. SR4 is clearly meant as more of a journey than a destination, a collage of playful and harebrained with a concentrated dose of self-deprecating sentience, primal scream therapy tacked haphazardly to a master class in subversion. You don't have to have been a Saint to enjoy it, but you better hope you look good in purple.