Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell Reviews
Repetitive but hellishly enjoyable
The key problem with the expansion is that Saints Row has now become impossible to one up, even by its makers, due in no small part to the fact that it went off the scale bonkers in the main Saints Row IV adventure. Mix this in with the fact that the port is poor, bordering on shoddy, and you are left with a game that looks last gen, plays last gen and offers very little in the way of new content.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell captures the madness and destruction that made the series so fun, but even as an expansion pack, there's not much new here. So much of it is cut from the same cloth of Saints Row IV that the nuances end up meaning much less than they should.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is the Big Mac of games. You know what you're getting, it's a bit cheap, you enjoy eating it, you don't have to chew and an hour later you've forgotten all about it. Utterly unchallenging and lacking in fresh ideas, Gat Out of Hell is still capable of making you smile.
Outside of the flying woes, Gat Out of Hell is content to let you be an all-powerful demigod or goddess. The game is just plain, hammy entertainment. It doesn't aspire to teach you a great moral lesson—outside of "don't fuck with Ouija boards," which is pretty sage advice—and it's not trying to wow you with 60 FPS photorealism. Gat out of Hell, like its predecessors, is that essential reminder we need from time to time that, yes, sometimes it's okay for videogames to be dumb fun and little else.
By tying humor and outrageous context to its moving parts, Saints Row The Third and Saints Row IV became viable systems in the modern open-world paradigm. Gat out of Hell (mostly) forgets all of this, sheds (mostly) all of its psychotic humor, and bolts on (mostly) dated mechanics. Its intended function may be a stop-gap between major iterations, but its execution feels like a failed audition against its recent past.
Where Saints Row IV earned a promotion from expansion to sequel through an explosion of fun and interesting ideas, Gat Out of Hell feels more like leftovers than a brand new experience. The action can be entertaining and the fun infectious, but there's a lot of familiar content here, and Hell itself is a drab place to explore. If you love Saints Row and want more of the same, this expansion delivers, but most gamers will find more than enough Saints Row goodness in Saints Row IV.
So, if Saints Row's meta humor can get you through collecting your hundredth orb or doing the same type of mission on repeat, you may want to check out GOH. But, if not, I'd recommend staying away from this one, as it burns itself out a bit too quick.
The Saints Row IV Re-Elected + Gat out of Hell combo pack is well-suited for anyone who missed out on Saints Row IV when it released 18 months ago on last-gen platforms. If you've already played through that game, unless you're dying to play through a slightly enhanced edition, your best option is to pick-up the standalone version of Gat out of Hell, also available now.
aints Row: Gat Out of Hell surely will be enjoyable for Saints Row fans and to completionists, but to the uninitiated it will feel a bit shallow and easily forgettable. As a fan of the series I enjoyed my stay in Hell, but as a video game fan I felt trapped in purgatory, stuck with an endless amount of arbitrary tasks to complete and short lived satisfaction.
Neither heavenly nor hellish, Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell is an average standalone that is firmly stuck in Limbo.
Gat out of Hell brings an end to the crazy ride that has been Saints Row IV, but while some parts of that ride take you to interesting places and let you see exciting sights, most of the trip cuts through landscapes you'll swear you've traveled many times before.
The Saints go straight to hell, both literally and metaphorically, in Saints Row IV standalone expansion, Gat Out of Hell.
Although it pains me to say this, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell is sinfully disappointing. That's not to say that it's a bad game, because it isn't, but it's far from what it could've been.
Even with the occasional hiccups Saints Row: Gat out of Hell manages to be a completely worthwhile experience. The first new city since Saints Row: The Third, great characters, hilarious writing, awesome weapons, and a much more refined focus on gameplay all lend to the overall sense of fun that permeates every aspect of the game.
Gat out of Hell applies a dose of air freshener to mask the musty smell emanating from the more traditional aspects of the Saints Row formula and delivers a fun, if overly familiar, slice of its chaos-riddled gameplay.
Saints Row 4 fans have been waiting for this expansion to finally touch down for quite some time now and by and large the wait was worth it. The reimagined Saints Row version of Hell built from the ground up is impressive and much of the personality we have come to love about the franchise is prominently on display. Granted the game can be offensive at times but it never takes itself too seriously and is all about entertaining.
Gat out of Hell is not bad, but it's not great either. To put it simply, it's more Saints Row IV. If you go into it thinking its going to have all new gameplay with an all new story, you are going to be disappointed. It's fun but the overwhelming feel of deja vu may sour you a bit on it.
Gat Out of Hell is a comedic romp through myth, literature and video game tropes. The writing is smart, the gunplay is solid, and the city of Hell is a blast to fly though. Some may miss the more traditional mission design or lament its brevity, but Gat Out of Hell is a great way to cap off the story of the Third Street Saints