‘Saints Row IV’ Preview: A Bigger Scope Leads To A (Kinda) Different Game

Oculus Rift For Your Entire Life

Saints Row has always worn its influences on its sleeve and IV is no different. What was once an homage to Grand Theft Auto and Boys N The Hood now finds refuge in games like Crackdown and Infamous as well as hefty lifting from The Matrix. When the diner’s patrons begin to pixelate and glitch out before your eyes, it’s time to draw arms. After an intense battle with local authorities, you’re now divorced from the sun-shine-y illusion that the Zinn had created and dumped into the perpetually dark and wet world of Need for Speed: Carbon. Your press secretary Kinzie serves as your eye in the sky as you navigate this familiar Steelport, but it’s not long before things get very different. Unlike previous games where you have a posse to begin with and set out to build yet another gangster empire, most of my time was alone, tearfully alone.

It’s obvious that in growing exponentially more grandiose with each new game, there has to be some cutoff; a point before it feels like you’re an invincible Superman able to accomplish anything at any time. This is what happened in previous games after completing many of the side quests: you become that Superman roughly halfway through the game. Saints Row IV flips this notion on its head as it gives you mega powers from the start. Well, almost.

*A Triumphant Score Rises With Our Hero*

Your first powers are jumping and running which seem a little silly initially. Your new super jump leads to some awkward 3D platforming sections and your jump is so limited that you may be more interested in taking a car most places. It’s not long before you’re running up walls, leaping and gliding to whatever your destination may require, skills that are leveled up by collecting data clusters, an equivalent of Crackdown‘s Agility Orbs. This preview was probably only intended for an hour and a half or two of playtime, but I easily dumped in four hours dashing across the rooftops of Steelport collecting these swirly blue power-ups. It almost feels a little tacked on at points as unlike Crackdown and Infamous, you don’t work your way up buildings by leaping from window sill to ledge before you can blow past the buildings entirely. On the other hand, these new abilities allow you to skip in and out of fights and get to and fro without needing to consult the garage.

Speaking of which, as a result of this new-found glory as the universe’s most amazing pedestrian, you’ll find little reason to jack or maintain a library of cars. Hell, you don’t even need to garage a stolen car to re-summon it, you just hit down on the D-pad and it’s instantly saved. Vehicles in this world are disposable and once I got my powers up just slightly, I found myself never needing to use one again. On top of your new task of collecting data clusters, you’ll need to cut through re-badged territorial challenges from previous games, including Insurance Fraud, Mayhems and Crackdowns. To tweak things ever slightly, many of your foes will be decked out in polygonal, TRON-like neon, inherited from the “Deckers.Die” segments of the previous game. Your mileage will vary depending on how much more of those similar challenges you can handle in a similar environment, but these, more or less, were some of my favorite parts of those games.

That’s not quite all, though.