Review | Saint Row (2022) - And Sinners
When I first heard they were making a Saints Row remake… I was gassed, man. Saints Row was the first series of games that showed me how to appreciate a story as a whole and it consumed my adolescence on the Xbox 360.
My first experience with the game was at my friend's house - back when the 360 had just launched. The first game looked better than Grand Theft Auto San Andreas in every way and was less punishing. I was hooked.
I got my Xbox 360 Elite and Saints Row for Christmas, and by the end of the year had 1000 Gamerscore for the game. I would spend countless nights on ‘Protect Tha Pimp’ and ‘Team Big Ass Chains’ in multiplayer with friends and my brother. The sequel (Saints Row 2) didn’t have such a good multiplayer mode, but the story made up for it.
I don’t remember much about the third game until I started PC gaming and bought Saints Row The Third on sale and it was a massive tonal shift - I wrote a piece about it for this very website. Finally we got Saints Row IV & Gat out of Hell and we were left with the question, “What Now?” How do you top being a superhero & going to Hell?
Well we had a seven year break (because nobody counts Agents of Mayhem) and a remaster of Saints Row the Third to start. But then in August 2019, Volition released a lowkey statement that they were working on a new SaInts Row game - I was overjoyed. In August 2021 we were given out first look at the new game… and I despised it.
With every fiber of my being, I earnestly feel like Saints Row (2022) is a bastardisation of the series and story I came to love. Firstly: a reboot? We just got a goddamned time machine and set up for Saints in Space! The Saints could have gone anywhere else and doing anything. Secondly: the characters like Johnny Gat, Kinzie Kinzington and Keith fuckin’ David - the character development, ongoing storylines and zainy adventures yet unfortold, thanos snapped, gone.
What lay in its place was this neon coloured, sand ridden, midwestern inspired ode to cringy dialogue and stagnant rehashing of ideas.
Si vis Pacem
Saints Row (2022) starts off with the gang at the pinnacle of their success. A raging party at their hideout before the tone totally shifts. Nothing happens that you see, but you can tell something bad happened. You then see a “Texas Funeral” (similar to that in Saints Row 2) and get treated to flashbacks before the game starts. That is a strong opening, to kill off the player at the start before going into full flashback mode and starting the game.
That there is the only original quality to the story. You start off as this new recruit to a company called Marshal - a PMC group (similar to STAG and Ultor in previous games). You are essentially the wild, rowdy newbie who can’t be brought in line - basically any wild maverick from an 80s movie. Thanks to your character being pretty insufferable you understandably manage to annoy your commander to no end and earn her ire.
You do however manage to capture the big bounty target with your loose-cannon antics. After this, you go home to your friends and rob a pawn shop. You get into trouble with the cops and a gang known as ‘Los Panteros’. A gang full of spandex wearing, buff, muscle car and monster truck driving wannbe wrestlers- See Saints Row The Third ‘Luchadores’ for reference. Some wonky physics leads to a awkward scene of your friend driving on a billboard before going home.
Physics be damned!
You then go and save some antiques at work and with more loose cannon antics you impress the head of the company and get a promotion. In your “First Big Break” you meet the second gang - ‘The Idols’ - the Neon wearing, EDM listening, techno - they are just the Deckers from Saints Row The Third .
You might be starting to see a pattern here. The gang shoulda changed their colour to green with the amount of recycling going on here. Though I am being broad with my strokes, the parallels to the rival gangs is one that anyone could draw, and just seems odd when you could do, literally anything else with your gangs.
SR1 had The Westside Rollerz - Car enthusiasts in the tuner car field. SR2 took this up a notch with The Ronin - Japanese Car enthusiasts. Small change yes, but SR2 also brought motorbikes and those were widely used by Ronin gang members. SR1 had Los Carnales - columbian coke runners, SR2 changed that to Sons of Samedi - Hatian drug producers with a vodou spin creating a drug called Loa Dust.
Everything had a parallel that it then grew upon, The Westside Rollerz became The Ronin who went on to become The Deckers. The Vice Kings became The Brotherhood that turned to The Luchadores - big cars and even bigger guys.
It meant by Saints Row The Third you could easily buy into these ridiculous gangs because they were slow excilated towards but here, you start out with the weirdo gangs and that are outlandish for the sake of it.
Para Bellum
Right after your big promotion - the proverbial shit hits the fan. You are attacked by both gangs and the McGuffin is stolen and you are blamed and fired. What follows next is the most misguided pandering to Gen-Z I have ever seen. A whole section of button mashing QTEs to get your of your depressive slump of laying in bed, followed by an equally downtrodden button mash to make a waffle before resorting to retail therapy on the couch.
This whole section could be replaced with the Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow kids” gif and it wouldn’t change much. It’s not even funny, its just patronising.
Anyway - after a small time you and your roomates decide that rather than everyone working for other gangs… why not just make your own? You then have this big corporate-like meeting and you decide to set up in an abandoned church (on Third Street), in doing so you get your logo and the eureka idea to call yourselves “The Saints”. What follows from here is a mix bag of good and bad.
The Good
SR 2022 breaks free of the series mold in that you no longer need to gain enough reputation to unlock missions, though there are some arbitrary barriers on some. When certain missions require something they outright tell you, like if you need to set up a certain number of “Criminal Ventures”.
The ventures bring in the beloved side content known as “Activities”. Mayhem and Chop-Shop make a return as does Hitman but it’s not a venture, just an app on the in game phone. There are a few new ones too that are similar to old ones, like Riding Shotgun - It’s essentially Escort but you destroy the gangs as opposed to avoiding the media.
The story is surprisingly decent. Even if I really dislike these characters, the tale they are thrown into is pretty fun.. However, the it’s kinda short - despite feeling padded because you need to complete 10 Ventures to completion. Some of these can take gathering up to 20 collectables to complete - all marked on the map (thank god) but it is still rather tedious, and not exactly revolutionary mission design. There are 25 main missions and an additional 10 tied to boosting relationships with your friends.
However it is worth noting that full completion requires the whole damn map to be coloured purple so yeah, let’s talk about that.
The Bad
Firstly, the aforementioned padding. This is very much a problem. In previous games in the series you needed enough rep to do missions, now you need to do Ventures. This sounds like a pretty equivalent exchange but each Venture has five fights and at least one objective in each district. It says you need to complete the Venture and some have 10 objectives while others have 20. You have no idea prior (unless you google it) how much work you are signing up for and this is all just to unlock missions with actual story tied to them.
Tonally, many things are off. Characters seem like shallow archetypes and checkmarks on a sheet to be filled to show how different the game is. Casual conversations about sexualities in the midst of the whole city trying to kill you come to mind. Everyone has this neat little box they fit in and it gets attention drawn to it for a mission or two before being dropped: The female mechanic who loves cars, the business orientated nerdy LARPer or the polyamerous friend who has seemingly slept with everyone. These points are picked up and swiftly dropped.
Speaking of the tone being off, when jokes hit… they hit good, but for every hit there are a plethora of misses. I read they wanted to bring it more in line with SR2 than SR4, but they missed the mark. SR2 is dated because it’s too serious. It’s the same reason that Grand Theft Auto IV (though good) isn't looked upon as fondly as any other game in the series. Both of these games took themselves a bit too seriously but Saints Row (2022) misses the mark due to the balance it tries to strike.
Balance?
Balance is key. If you tell a dark gritty story and have little to no light moments then it’s depressing. In turn, if you crack wise and funny every other line you may have a comedy on your hands and that's great - if you’re trying to write something depressing or a comedy.
Saints Row (2022) is comedic and serious and in all the wrong places. In one mission you kidnap someone and put them through hell to stop them looking into your gang. Your partner then mentions one of their illegal side gigs the person has and they retort “You should have led with that I would have folded instantly”. Given everything you have done - this is funny. A clever subversion of expectations.
On the other side of this coin we have an earlier mission where the player is jumping from car to truck (Mad Max Fury Road Style) being told they are excellent bait by their boss, all the while moaning about it going on their performance review. This is a thrilling moment where normally the play would get to just enjoy the set piece but it is undercut by this mistimed joke. Though not the best examples they prove a point: you need to strike a balance and Saints Row seems to overcorrect more than it gets right.
The Ugly
In terms of progression, the game does a poor job of letting the player know how you have progressed. You have levels (up to 20) - but there are S tier skills and F tier skills all mixed together without rhythm or reason. Throw a grenade, gain health when you damage enemies, proximity mine and invulnerability all clumped together are great skills. But the other sixteen miss the mark.
Weapon buying has taken a hit. Because you have the skills to throw grenades… you cannot buy them. Odd choice given every other game of a similar genre has multiple “thrown” weapons - Pipebombs, grenades & Molotovs being the main ones. This coupled with lackluster weapon upgrades makes gunplay a sad state of affairs.
In that regard progression becomes hard to quantify. The best example I can give is by comparing it to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. In those games, you buy an expensive car to go about faster and you mod it, and improve it. Eventually you may have spent over five million on the car, but you can see it, it is tangible, it shows progression.
Saints Row 2022… you can’t buy cars. You quantify your wealth by having more Ventures and church upgrades… that you don’t buy. Sure you pay for the Ventures but after an hour you already have double the money back so there was no loss, you also gained nothing tangible gained as a player. You don’t feel like you are progressing, there are no million dollar cars to buy only to steal and those are all the same.
The Concept
I say this about a great many games: It wanted to be something, but turned out to be something else when released. It has the essence of the Saints Row series in there, in the same way Saints Row has the essence of Grand Theft Auto. Had this game even sold itself in a different way, maybe a spin-off not a reboot, my feelings towards it would be different.
I mean the ideas there are already pretty recycled but then it gets better - recycled animations. Many of the actions and animations have been in the games since Saints Row 2. In essence it took seven years, a failed spin-off and radio silence to produce a game whos prominent colour should be green.
Look, I get it… development is hard but what we got is lackluster. The map is rather small, the content often cringey at best and the story is widely uneven.
In Memoriam
Obviously - I have nostalgia for the old games. Yet this game - though heavily slated above - had a few moments that did give me a good old chuckle. But like I said, for every laugh there was hours of shrinking into myself.
Saints Row 2022 is a Saints Row for those who never got to experience the original saga from the start. But even sayingt that, would I ever recommend this flavor of Saints Row again? No. This game -to me- is a bargain bucket pick-up. Though they are clearly setting up for another entry - if Voiltion sticks with the same tone and design principles then future entry are gonna be a no from me.
In conclusion R.I.P Saints Row 2006-2015, you will be sorely missed, gone but not forgotten. Hello Saints Row 2022 -your opening act was weak but I am willing to give you another chance, please don’t fuck it up.
