Ever since GTA IV took that series into a more gritty realistic style story the Saints Row series has been there to anchor the over the top side of the spectrum and it has done a great job of it. Saints Row IV finds you kidnapped by aliens and trapped inside of a simulation needing to free your crew and take on the aliens. While inside the simulation you get access to superpowers and basically become Neo. The game does a great job of being a goofy version of Prototype. The humour is fantastic and the game does a great job of referencing various movies such as The Matrix and They Live. There are also various scenes that just have a damn near perfect soundtrack choice to take the fun up a notch. For instance I had never had a dogfight in an alien craft before set to “What Is Love” but I have now and it was highly enjoyable. They also do a great job of referencing the various characters and stories of the previous Saints Row games. There is a crazy amount of customization you can do to your character’s body and clothes and to weapons and to vehicles. There are lots of activities you can do as optional side quests but I found I didn’t enjoy many of them. They weren’t bad, I enjoyed ones where you inject viruses or assassinate rogue programs but didn’t enjoy some of the ones that were a timed mission. They also highlighted the lack of side quests for crew members. All of the missions for crew members, aside from a loyalty mission, was just them getting you to do sets of three of the various activities. The game also did a good job poking fun at Mass Effect’s romance options and the suicide mission sequence from Mass Effect 2. The one thing the game lacked was custom music. In GTA IV I could point the game to my music folder and have a custom music station to listen to and Saints Row IV didn’t have that. It did allow me to create a custom mix tape from all of the stations but I still would have preferred my own music. The game had decent graphical detail across the board. At no point was I blown away but at no point was I disappointed. Even for a game from 2013 I can list games that are the same age or older that have better detail but can also list many that have worse. The voice acting was very well done for all involved. I actually ended up preferring the human weapons as I found the alien weapons to feel weak, maybe it was more of an issue of their sound then how much damage they do. They also could overheat where the human weapons couldn’t.
I played Saints Row IV on Linux. It was a decent port but not without issues. There were minor glitches I observed. My characters coat went through the floor of the car; a few times there would be no lip movement when a character spoke; and the AI movement was bad at times with them getting stuck around cars and obstacles. During play I had one time where the game froze and one time where the game crashed. The performance of the game was very spotty. I have put off playing Saints Row IV over the years as I like to play games maxed out and throughout the years as I upgraded from a R9 270; to a R9 380; to an RX480; to an RX 580 and finally to my 5700 XT I have always had frame rate issues. During that time I have also upgraded my CPU from a FX-8350 to an FX-9590 and finally to my Ryzen 5 2600X. The game spends a lot of the time above 60 FPS but can drop for no reason randomly to as low as 13 FPS and go as high as 130 FPS. There are seven different AA settings; five different AF settings; three different AO settings; and five other graphics options. You can change the difficulty level at any time. You can also save at any time but if you’re on a multi part mission it won’t save the progress and you’ll start from the beginning of that mission. There are 22 save slots you can use. The game also auto saves after missions and other events. Alt-Tab works.
VRAM Usage: 1315-1808 MB
CPU Usage: 12-28 %
RAM Usage: 2.8-3.6 GB
Frame Rate: 13-130 FPS
Graphics Settings Used: 8x MSAA; 16x AF; all settings at high; 1920*1080
Disk Space Used: 10.11 GB
Input Used: Keyboard + Mouse
Overall I had a lot of fun with Saints Row IV which is no surprise as I also had a lot of fun with Saints Row the Third. No other open world series is as goofy or over the top and it never fails to put a smile on my face. If you enjoyed any other Saints Row games I encourage you to try this one. It has some issues but they didn’t impede me from having a good time. I finished the game in 26 hours and 24 minutes on normal difficulty. This was enough time to beat the main story; do all crew quests and loyalty missions; and complete 87% of the game overall. I got the game for free with a graphics card upgrade years ago but it is easily worth the $16.99 CAD it currently retails for and I would pay as much as $30 for it.
My score: 8/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X 8GB | Mesa 20.0.7 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 20.0.3 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.7.0-3-MANJARO