More of the same with superpowers

Went into this with great anticipation after loving the 3rd game and feeling lucky to get it at all after THQ's collapse. However upon starting it, it felt like a continuation or expansion pack of the exact same game. Same engine, same world (mostly), same mechanics, same vehicles, same abilities, mostly same weapons, mostly same characters, same rewards scheme, same logistics, etc. Only differences are the plot, main enemy, the addition of superpowers and some new vehicles and guns. So starting off from scratch at level 1 again having to regain all abilities, money, weapons, upgrades etc felt like a bit of a kick to the nuts.

It did start to improve as it went on and more powers were unlocked, but it felt like they were being drip fed and feeling that I should have been able to keep everything from Saint's Row 3 never really went away. The story was cool with lots of back references to the previous 3 games. I got most of them, but not the ones to the first game because I didn't play it. Thankfully in this game, the optional side missions and main missions were separated and labelled so you could avoid the small ones if you weren't so keen to do them. There were also a lot of nice piss-take references to other games like Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid as well as films like Armageddon, They Live, The Matrix, etc etc. Overall lots of mad-cap fun that turned the insanity up even beyond what was in the 3rd. Many parts were awesome, but it still ended up somehow feeling tiresome compared to the 3rd because much more of it was the same than was different and yet you had to start out all over again.

There were also quite a large number of technical issues when I played this co-op online on the same network. Many repeated crashes, lock-ups, events not happening, necessary NPCs disappearing textures disappearing and so on and so on which added to frustration.

It's good to have the Saint's Row franchise as an alternative to the more serious things like GTA because it's just pure madness. But after the setting and plot line of this game, I'm wondering where is left to with Saint's Row 5....If there is one....I still preferred the 3rd game to this though for some reason. It just felt more coherent, tense and epic.

Side note: This is the 122nd game I have finished this year. Already taking me over 2011's total of 121. And we're only 2/3 through the year. Plenty of time left to beat 2012's total of 138.

[Edit] As I was requested to state: there were many many wubs in this game also that greatly added to it's hilarity.

Wow. Hardly know where to begin. Approximately 4,000,000,000 % better than the previous entry. No more tedious grinding for respect. No more crap boring missions. No more scrounging for cash and guns and vehicles. Respect is not needed, cash, guns and vehicles all come easily allowing you to focus on just having lots of fun. Pretty much every mission was just rampant insane mad cap chaos. And lots of fun. The only possible exceptions were the activity tutorials which were dressed up as minor missions but they were still fun too to just do once.

Lots of voice talent too including Hulk Hogan, Jessie Ventura and of course, Mayor Burt Reynolds. Everything is vastly improved over the old game including vehicle handling, shooting, combat (which is hilarious), flying, voice acting, script, plot, everything. Just everything. Just madness. This series has gone from being a boring GTA clone to realising what it should be and having it's volume turned up to 15 to just make it mad as hell. This is what games should be. Just non stop roller coaster rides of fun. And even better in co-op. Can't wait for the fourth.

Started this on 8th of December 2012. Took over 7.5 months to finish it on and off. Extremely slow start. Albeit not as slow as the first game which I abandoned completely out of sheer boredom. Not something I do too often. But it did pick up later on when the missions got more exciting. The developers seemed to slowly realise that they have to stop trying to be GTA and just be sheer nuts. Something which seems to have carried on to the 3rd and soon to be 4th games.

This was a decent enough sandbox shooter but felt like quite a lazy port and it was very hard to get the PC controls to sync up well to a keyboard or another controller. And as usual with games of this size and scope, it did have its fair share of bugs and glitches. But all that being said, once you got into the good missions, got good gear and vehicles and got some momentum going, it was a lot of fun moving through the missions and it did have a very good story involving the Saints taking over the town from 3 rival gangs and then a huge corporation. But far and away my biggest complaint was the padding used to make you require doing the optional side missions in order to earn the respect required to activate the main missions. So annoying. On to the next one in the series. It seems like it will be way less fluff and irritants and just much more madness.