Saints Row IV Re-Elected - Review

It’s been long enough that I can safely say that I miss the Saints Row series. The last time I played one it was the original Saints Row IV and I had mixed feelings. After getting the third game, the Switch finally has the fourth game to follow it up with all the DLC included. Has absence made the heart grow fonder? More importantly, how does it run on the Switch after the poor initial release of the third game. 

Playing once again as the Boss of the 3rd Street Saints, after an assault on a terrorist compound and becoming President of the USA the Saints couldn’t climb any higher. The presidency isn’t long lived when aliens invade the earth and trap you in a simulator. Only they haven’t broken the Saint’s yet and in the simulation you can gain super powers along with the wacky weapons. The aliens have no idea how much of a jerk the Boss can be. The simulation takes the form of Steelport City (from Saints Row 3), only it’s always night and there’s a lot of Matrix/Tron visual effects around the world. The big addition to this Saints Row are the superpowers. No longer are vehicles necessary when you can run faster than them, when you can jump over buildings and glide great distances. It’s fun to be a super powered jerk ruining the aliens' plans as you get more and more powerful, although it does make the cars throughout the world entirely useless almost immediately. 

For the unfamiliar to Saints Row series, Re-elected is an open world sandbox game. You can go where you want when you want (most of the time). While the third game was an over-the-top Grand Theft Auto, Re-elected is more of a mix of GTA and Crackdown. As you’re completing missions to help save your crew and the whole planet, you’re also leaping around collecting data clusters and capturing alien towers. You’re also doing the same kind of missions you would get in GTA or Saints Row 3, helping out ‘homies’, racing or pulling an insurance scam.

Despite living in the shadow of the third game, Re-elected is still fun to mess around in Virtual Steelport. Even early on the superpowers make you feel powerful and at the very least make getting around the city fun to do. If you’re also into using your powers to collect orbs you could kill a few hours hunting down every cluster. It’s nice to go back and spend some time with these characters and cause some havoc. 

After Saints Row The Third hit the peak for the series, it was hard to know how they could top it. Turns out they couldn’t, originally intended to be an expansion for the third game it instead wound up stretched out into what we have here. It didn’t help around this time that THQ went bust and left Saints Row amongst other franchises in limbo. The game feels like it wanted to emulate the outrageousness of the third game and more often than not feels like it’s almost a parody of itself. There are some gems still, having actor/VA Keith David as a character in the game for example, and some of the riffs on Mass Effect (even though at the time they were a bit out of date already). The game manages to make interactions between the group fun and it’s like a big immature family, I’m glad there was another game where they could all be doofuses. Given that the Saints Row series leaned more and more into immature jokes, it should be no surprise that some of them have not aged well. In fact they were outdated at the time, only more so now. When the well thought out goofy humour works it can be genuinely funny, it’s still hard to manage in a game of this genre. When it doesn’t work and then leans into it, it drags everything down for a few minutes. Thankfully the dud moments don’t usually last long and there is much more to enjoy instead.

The more the game leans into the superpowers the less it feels like a Saints Row game, but then the game before it also messed around with genres. While it’s not the same running around Steelport faster than a car, it is fun to be able to go wild with the amazing traversal powers you’re given. Cars only matter when you can’t use your powers, and combat is still a let down in Re-elected. It is felt the most at the beginning when you’re on a super serious mission (until you’re climbing up a rocket to Aerosmith blasting in the background), and it is just the combat, no open world shenanigans. It’s hard to narrow down what it is exactly, but in short the combat isn’t fun. Early on before upgrading any weapons the guns feel ineffective, which is fair enough that you don't get all the good stuff right away. Although in the first hour of the game you not only get to fire off rocket turrets at alien spacecraft you also get a rocket launcher. The walk back to the basic pistol and shotgun is wild, given not long after you start getting actual super powers. It also just happens to be that the waves of enemies are bog standard third person shooter fare. For a game where you can jump high as a building and use telekinesis, the combat feels cumbersome and outdated (even at the time).  

Re-elected looks like it did nearly seven years ago, at least it was never a bad looking game. The biggest let down was that the world for the majority of the game is permanently stuck at night. While it highlights all the neon lights, it also makes the world feel static. It’s a far cry from a living world, even just some sunshine would be nice. When it comes to your character customisation there is still a massive amount of options, whether it’s the head and body or all the clothes you can buy. You can at least make sure you’re messing up the aliens in style, or in your underwear! It’s up to you. This also is reflected in the weapons you carry. While you get your standard pistols and rifles, there are still the ‘outrageous’ novelty guns like the Dubstep gun or the Penetrator. You can also grab alien weapons and you likely will when you run out of ammo in the middle of a multi wave fight, but they’re nothing fancy and you also have some powerful super powers to do big damage with.

After all this time since the original game came out, it’s hard not to put on the rose tinted glasses. Remembering how off the wall the series could go, the abrupt tonal changes before you’re doing the most ridiculous activities. I’ve also had more time to accept what Re-elected is and enjoy it for the superhero open world. I can also see it being a harder sell for people coming in fresh looking for a GTA style game on the Switch. Driving is nearly useless for most of the game, the sandbox city is more of a playground for running and leaping around to collect clusters so you can upgrade your skills even further.

Saints Row the Third on the Switch didn’t get off to a good start with some rough performance issues. Re-elected can have some choppy moments, but I could speed around town and it generally held up. It still doesn’t look as nice as it did on my PC back in 2013, but this game was never going to win any awards for graphics. It is also great to be able to play Saints Row on the go, the handheld mode runs well like it does docked.

While we still don’t have a GTA on the Switch, the Saints Row game’s are a more than alright substitute. It’s hard to know if the series can top the absurdity of 3 and 4, or if the Switch would even see a sequel. Re-elected manages to be the open world superhero game the Switch needs right now. With enough time away from the series it’s easier to go back and enjoy the game for the super powered oddity that it is. 

Review Code provided by Deep Silver