Developers Deep Silver Volition’s action-adventure game Saints Row (2022) which is the reboot of the series and with the game coming out on 23rd of August, here’s our review for the game.

Getting into Turf Wars

Saints Row (2022) has aim assist by default while during combat, meaning that it’ll auto move your crosshair to your closest target and while the aim assist can help you aim down enemies, it does have some tracking issues when it comes to targets that are moving in slightly higher speed or when they perform dodges so it’s note-worthy to keep track of when you want to have aim assist on. But personally, as an FPS player, I’d have aim assist turn off because I’m used to aiming without the feature.

On the topic of combat, while I personally think that the shooting feedback is satisfying to feel in game with hitting enemies and landing headshots have different sound effects, I feel the lack of weight coming from said sound effects, so personally if the sound effects during gunfights were slightly enhanced, it would bring more satisfaction to me when I kill off the enemies.

When players are out of combat, there’s an auto-health recovery mechanic where your health will replenish over time, so you won’t have to worry about regenerative items like health kits or whatnot. Another way for players to get health back is by running up to the enemy and pressing the “X” button to perform and execution. It doesn’t fully recover your health points and the execution also has a cooldown timer and not all enemy types can be executed.

The ammo you can carry for your weapons are generally limited but there are some missions where you have an unlimited amount of bullets. In those instances where your ammo are limited, you’ll need to kill the enemies within the mission to replenish your ammo. You generally don’t have to worry about locating the enemies since they appear in the mini-map.

There are some missions where the player will be partnered up with an AI and while they can help you out during the shoot-offs, you’ll need to keep track of your partner’s health too because not only that if you die which causes the mission to fail, having your partner die will also cause a game over. But on the bright side, your partner doesn’t instantly die when their health drops to zero, they will get downed and you’ll have a limited amount of time to save them but of course, you’ll need to make sure there aren’t any enemies nearby or you’ll be left defenseless when trying to aid your partner.

The Perks of Santo Ileso

In our review of Saints Row (2022), players have access to skills, both passive and active skills that can be unlocked by leveling up. These skills can be used to your advantage by protecting the player by throwing smoke grenades or you can use them offensively by using explosives to clear up a group of enemies.

As for perks on the other hand, instead of getting them through level ups, the players instead have to unlock them by completing the challenges in game. There are a total of 3 different tiers for the perks: Minor, Major and Elite and each of the slots will need the players to unlock them by spending money and with the perk being higher in level, the challenges to unlock them will increase in difficulty.

Skills and perks aren’t the only unlockable things in Saints Row (2022), players can also unlock abilities, weapons and even vehicles that are also locked behind challenges. Once players have successfully complete a task, the weapons will also unlock its signature ability. One of the examples being the KA-1 Kobra Pistol where you are able to kill off 20 people on the roof of a vehicle. Once completed, you’ll be able to unlock the effect of automatic reloading your pistol if you were to land a headshot with one of the last few rounds of your pistol magazine.

Personally speaking, these challenges are pretty unique to the weapons in game but also relatively specific which can be rather tedious for people to complete but it might be fun for people who like to look for challenges in their games.

There’s No Back-Seat In This Ride

Driving is an important element when it comes to Saints Row (2022) as it’s the main mode of traveling. The player has access to drive any type of cars and other types of vehicles such as the Hovermotor or a helicopter and freely explore the city, you’re also free to steal other people’s vehicles if you somehow mess up your current ride, or if you just want to be a jerk in the game.

Personally speaking, one of my favourite parts of driving is the drifting feature that they implemented in the game and it’s easily performed too, you just need to press the space button when driving and you can be part of Dom Teretto’s family.

But it’s not all clear and empty roads in Saints Row (2022) as you’ll encounter enemies on your drive and they’re just about as aggressive as a Myvi driver on the highways in Malaysia.  Those enemies will try to shoot you down and ram down your car and to avoid it, you can press the “A/D + Right” button to dodge the enemy’s onslaught on your vehicle.

The players will have access to using weapons to shoot back at the enemy while driving but if you’re the main driver, there isn’t much choices to your weaponry but if you’re on the passenger seat, you can use whatever weapons that you have and even have to option to climb onto the roof of your car to shoot down the enemies but at the cost of being extremely vulnerable when on top of a car.

As you explore more places in Saints Row (2022), the more places that will open up and that means more access to fast travel points which can cut the time of traveling from one point to another. To unlock fast travel of a certain location, players will need to grab out their phones to take a picture of the location. But it’s worth noting that players won’t get to have access to fast traveling when they’re currently on a mission.

Cash Is King

In Santo Ileso, not only do you have the main story line, but there’s also a variety of different playable content that allows you to earn money and upgrade your weapons as well as perks and skills.

One of the different ways of earning money is the bounty feature in Saints Row (2022). As the name suggests, players will need to kill off wanted bounties that are posted on your phone app in designated locations. There are some instances where the bounty that you’re trying to kill off have already been captured by the police so the way you can work around it is to be a law abiding citizen and kill off the police at the same time.

There are also other ways where the player can earn some extra side income is by completing some of the tasks that are available on the map. Those tasks consists of different types which comprises of eliminating threats, dealing with side hustles, finding new discoveries and just store quests, each with their own degree of difficulties.

Since the main goal is to build up your criminal empire, the Criminal Venture feature is a key factor in Saints Row (2022). Players have access to the Criminal Empire List from headquarters where you’ll be able to expand your businesses in 14 different open spaces after you complete the main mission “Expanding People”.

Dressed to Kill

At the beginning of the game, you’re able to customise the appearance of your playable character and let’s just say that the character customisation in our review of Saints Row (2022) offers a lot of details for players to tweak about.

And if you change your mind on how you want your character to look like after playing through the game, you’ll have access to the character customisation through your phone or your headquarters so you don’t have to worry too much about making the perfect character at the start of the game.

The game also offers costumes and accessories which players can gradually unlock as you progress through the game and these cosmetics don’t affect the character’s stats or abilities so players are free to mix and match according to personal preferences.

Verdict

In our review of Saints Row (2022), the game is still able to faithfully keep the series’ crazy and nonsensical antics which makes the games such a fun ride to play through. There’s so much to do in the game and most of the tasks are pretty interesting to go through and the customisation is generous enough for players to add in their own  personal flair to the game without sullying the overall enjoyment.

Although, my main gripes are that the enemy types aren’t as varying as I’d hope them to be and the lack of interesting boss-type enemies makes fighting the rival gangs not feel as exciting.