Saints Row played: This feels like GTA San Andreas!

We understand the idea of ​​wanting to reinvent a game series. It can work wonderfully, see the soft reboot of God of War, which won numerous Game-of-the-Year awards around the world in 2018. Saints Row did not make any friends at the end of 2021, however, when the series restart in the first trailer for the announcement made a name for itself, mainly due to the pseudo-cool hipster protagonist gang. That’s no longer Saints Row, that would cuddle up to a supposed zeitgeist and so on and so forth.

Well, the overstylized group of friends still exists, but its importance has been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain. After playing the title extensively for several hours, we can confirm: Yes, the new Saints Row still feels like Saints Row. Literally, too, as the bizarre madness of Saints Row 3 and Saints Row 4 is now followed by a more down-to-earth approach à la Saints Row 1 and 2. And another classic that regularly came to mind as we played: GTA San Andreas!

The figure editor allows a lot of freedom. Who is now wondering: No, the censorship below cannot be completely removed.

Source: PC Games




But not with a view to the story: despite all the nonsense that happens there, San Andreas tells a surprisingly profound story about racism and the supposed “American Dream”. Saints Row, from what we’ve seen so far…has a story too.

We build a so-called boss, then we see in the opening sequence how he is buried alive at the peak of his career, time jump back to a few months before and the game starts.

At least at the beginning of the game, the story doesn’t quite manage the balancing act between seriousness and nonsense.

Source: PC Games




We live with the hipster noses in a run-down paddock, we have a lot of debt and we’re trying to make ends meet. Instead of doing this with temporary jobs, we become part of a heavily armed militia, and otherwise problems in the main and side tasks are mainly solved by us shooting hard at them.

Incidentally, this also applies to our roommates, who, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and tight trousers, are just philosophizing about waffles and cakes, and shortly thereafter commit robberies with guns at the ready.

No, we’re not expecting a great story from Saints Row of all places. So far, however, the mixture has not seemed deliberately contradictory to Tarantino-esque, but has not been thought through to the end. On the one hand, the writers want to bring a kind of profundity into their characters, on the other hand, this approach is immediately thwarted by the brutal factor. Oh well.

Let’s see if that becomes more coherent as the game progresses. In any case, there is no need to worry about too much hipster factor, this image of the game is based on the less than ideal first trailer.