Saints Row Reviews
Technical issues notwithstanding, Saints Row is not without its shortcomings, but it succeeds more often than it doesn't.
You could consider Saints Row a love letter to a time when games worried less over quality and more about fun, but that doesn't excuse its faults.
Indeed, there remains about Saints Row the air of a slightly desperate brainstorming session.
The new Saints Row features enjoyable open-world gameplay but bland characters and an overall timid story make it the weakest entry in the series.
Volition's reboot mixes its shameless action with witty social commentary to nice effect, but fails to construct a compelling open world
You can spend many happy hours in the new Saints Row game, without it leaving a lasting impression. The story is rushed, and for all the slick shooting and driving this game doesn't feel fresh.
There is no shortage of enjoyable things to do in “Saints Row,” but doing them means putting up with a severe lack of polish. As it currently stands, “Saints Row” is barely playable. It’s good, mindless fun, but I cannot recommend it in good faith. I offer a little prayer that a day one patch can address some of these concerns, and that the studio has a long-term plan to salvage this promising title.
Saints Row is a perfectly fine open-world game. Just don't expect any surprises, as the reboot lacks much character.
This may not be as over-the-top as previous Saints Row games, but it could be the start of something great.
It’s been nine years since Saints Row 4, and this new entry feels like a back-to-basics reboot. But technical issues, bugs, and many more little frustrations conspire to make this a middling experience at launch. It’s unfortunate because when Saints Row fires on all cylinders, it’s an absolute blast with some truly lofty high points.
We do need to take a beat and talk about the bugs in Saints Row, and there’s plenty of them to go around. My gun flipped around and wouldn’t fire while facing the wrong direction. The car physics are more springy than a Super Bouncy Ball. Running over a fire hydrant will shoot a tank-sized vehicle upwards and onto a nearby roof with little effort. Vehicles disappear and reappear. I even had a moment during a mini-boss where Eli went down, and once resurrected stood there doing nothing repeating his lines for being downed. That and the boss wouldn’t get to his cooldown for me to damage him, and for whatever reason I wasn’t taking any damage. And none of that addresses the current state of cooperative play.
Saints Row (2022) succeeds at returning to the roots of its predecessors by paring back the outlandish absurdity without losing an ounce of chaos, but sometimes feels as if it's holding on too tightly to a past best left forgotten. Plus, it has a distinct lack of polish.
With its wonky sets, dodgy cameras and bizarre plotlines, this reboot of the gangster adventure series is haphazard but joyful.
Despite all its flaws (and there are more than a few), Saints Row is undoubtedly fun and explosive in its over-the-top presentation. While its punctuated with memorable moments, they are often diminished by the repetitive nature of its side content, which makes up a significant portion of what Saints Row has to offer. If you’ve been a longtime fan of the series’s previous entries, you will find plenty to enjoy with this latest installment – just don’t expect much in the way of innovation.
It’s a below average open world game that’s stuffed to bursting with bugs, and the best thing we can say about it is that making our Tobias Fünke-inspired character crouch over and do the wanker gesture while he walked down the street made us laugh. Probably not quite worth the price of admission.
Saints Row is ultimately an underwhelming missed opportunity. It's a shame, as this was a chance to do something big, bold and different – showing us where the franchise could be heading in the years to come. But instead, the end product is a basic and fairly tedious experience that is stuck in an era of gaming long past. There are a handful of fun moments, but these are fleeting and it's difficult to suggest anyone picking the game up.
After nine years of hibernation, the Saints Row series is making a comeback. A comeback that is an outdated turkey and sanctimonious entertainment of high class at the same time. Although we too often growl in frustration, we also find it difficult to put down the controller – it's so much fun! Most of the time anyway.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
Saints Row had chance to be something much more, if only the team behind the game tried to take a more bold and careful approach.
Review in Russian | Read full review