Saints Row 4 Re-Elected: My completed Game of the month.

So I am here again talking about the games I have completed in the month just passed (August) in this case I have completed 1 game a game I had already finished before but I also completed 3 pieces of downloadable content for it, two were DLC add ons and the third was a stand alone add on which doesn't require the actual game to run. This month I completed Saints Row 4 (Re-Elected) on the PS4 including the add on's How the Saints Saved Christmas, Enter the Dominatrix, and Gat out of Hell. In order to do this I will be following a similar format to last time I will be to some degree doing a review of the content but I will aslo be talking about issues such as  how long I have been playing them for, how hard or easy they were to complete and if I think I will ever go back to them again.

As I already mentioned I had already finished Saints Row 4 before I even purchased the PS4 copy. I had finished the game back on my Xbox 360 and I had enjoyed it a lot at the time. So why did I buy it again? Well for a start I thought about simply investing in the add on content but when I looked at how much How the Saints Saved Christmas, Enter the Dominatrix, and Gat out of Hell would have cost me on the 360 and then looked at buying the game again for the PS4 or Xbox one the price was effectively the same, In the end I opted for the PS4 Version because I found a website selling new sealed copies for £15 which was a good £5 cheaper than I could find an Xbox One copy. Something I feel it is important to note here is that for anyone thinking of picking this game up I really must emphasise that you should buy it new. Gat out of hell does not come on the disc Gat out of hell comes as a code printed on a flyer inside the box, this is a one time code so if you buy saints Row 4 second hand on the PS4 your not going to get Gat out of hell, well unless someone has been very silly not claimed it and not taken the code out of the box when trading it in (and I would guess the same is true on the Xbox One).

I will be treading over some of the same ground as I did in my games I think get to much hate Saints Row thread but bear with me. Saints Row the original was just another crime based sandbox game, its only redeaming quality being the time of its release and the fact it was released on a platform that had not yet at that point been saturated with games of that style. If Saints Row 2 had come out and been more of the same then I strongly believe that it would have fell flat on its arse. Saints row 2 and 3 could be described at times as gloriously stupid, they were so over the top that they were beyond parody they were parodies of the entire sandbox crime based video game genre and in that way they could either be enjoyable as humorous games cracking fun at other games or as sandbox crime games of there own. Again though I think if Saints Row 4 had been just more of the same the joke and the gameplay would have become old and stale. So what did they decide to do? They decided that they would spoof a slightly different type of game, they would spoof the super power based open world games like Prototype and InFamous. The parody factor doesnt end here though, they manage to put in some things which are clearly aimed at taking the mickey out of Mass Effect while also hitting you with a barrage of nostalgia brining in songs you wouldn't expect, referencing various films and shows, if you were a child of the 1980's there will be times when something in this game is used in a way which just makes you stop and smile happy that a piece of your childhood has been weaved into the insanity.

The game starts with you playing the part of the Boss, the same character from the earlier entries in the series but this time you are the president of the United States of America. This is when an Alien overlord and his troops decide to attack and enslave humanity, blowing things up and kidnapping people locking them up in a matrix style simulated world. From this point its your job to fight back. You do this mostly from inside the simulation by completing various tasks ranging from hacking to killing your enemies to committing insurance fraud by throwing your body in front of various moving vehicles and then there are races using your super speed and gliding abilities and you even take part in a crazy violent game show. You also have to take care of business in the real world as well as a few different simulations which I wont spoil for you.

You get to make your own version of the President, male or female, fat or thin you design the character and it makes you feel connected, it helps draw you into the game. There are so many different types of weapon and super powers in the game that you can really play the way you want, do you want to freeze people and then shoot them in to pieces with pistols you've got it or if you'd rather run super fast headlong into people and punch and wrestle them then your covered. 

So what about the DLC, well I could have written individual reviews for these but when there included in the package this didn't feel right. I am not trying to review the game I am trying to review the entire package here so now I will talk about each piece a little.

How the saints saved Christmas is the shortest piece of DLC and was the one I enjoyed the least. The story is not to bad, its basically a video game parody of all of those sort of Christmas specials in which a character learns about the joys of Christmas., It also has a robotic evil Santa a bit like Futurama and its all as wacky and crazy as you'd expect. In honesty though there is only about an hours worth of gameplay here. Enter the Dominatrix is not much longer to be honest but it has a very tongue in cheek forth wall breaking way of taking the piss out of itself which I found very enjoyable, still on its own it wouldn't be enough to recommend someone spending much.

That leaves Gat out of Hell. Now I have an issue with Gat out of hell in that I personally find it less fun to be given a character to play as than I do to create my own character but that aside I actually enjoyed this a lot. You get the feeling that in a way the game is a video game and a joke. I mean lets look at the usual sequel path for horror/B movies usually you will have a few films and then you look at sending your hero or villain in to space, this has happened to Jason from Friday the 13th, it has happened to the Leprechaun from the Leprechaun films but you always have the feeling that when it reaches this point they are really kind of scraping the barrel and just don't want to give up on there cash cow. Well Saints Row went to space in Saints Row 4 (As well as going in to virtual reality and through virtual reality programmes playing with time travel/the past a little) so that kind of raised the question where next? Well where do other products such as horror movies tend to venture? Yep Hell. So here we have what basically is Saints Row goes to hell but rather than trying to predictably drag a whole game out of the idea and have it outstay its welcome instead they decided to make it in to a fun bit of DLC. 

In some ways Gat out of Hell is very much a re-skin of Saint Row 4 but then again for its price I wont hold that against it too much. You have lots of different weapons here with my favourite part being 7 guns based on the 7 deadly sins, you also have what at first seems strange Disney style musical theatre like songs. These are a precious treat though my fiancée is a big fan of musicals and Disney films and even she thought that even while being twisted they were delightful and funny. I see this as a good piece of DLC which has a little fun with its audience without outstaying its welcome. If they had tried to stretch this game out in to a full price full length retail product I think it would have been a huge mistake and we all know that plenty of studios would have done this only caring about its potential to make as much cash as possible with as little effort as possible.

I started both Saints Row 4 and Gat out of hell side by side. I finished Gat out of Hell within a week of buying it but enjoyed it greatly. At first I didn't know how much of Saints Row 4 I was going to play. I did consider just getting to the point it would let me sample the DLC and then stopping, but in the process of doing this I started to enjoy it so much that I couldn't help but play it again. The truth is even since finishing everything this package has to offer I have found myself dipping in to it now and then just to try and beat a score or to collect something I have missed. I think this speaks pretty strongly about both the game and Gat out of Hell.

Conclusion

At first Re-Elected doesn't really seem to look or feel very different but there are some upgrades done to improve this from the last generation versions, things that you wont really notice in screenshots. These are subtle things for one the draw distance is improved and things look a little smoother when in motion in general, this version is also free of the slow down that you sometimes got when firing off a lot of super powers with a lot of characters on the screen. So I feel that enough has been done that I have to say that even though this version might be a remake it is defiantly the definitive version of the game. That being said if you played this game on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 and for whatever reason it wasn't for you then your still not going to like it it is the same zany super powered game it was in the first place. The same can be said about the DLC if you didn't enjoy the original your unlikly to enjoy any of these, however for the person who enjoyed either the Original Saints Row 4 or one of its prequels and who wants a good value for money package I don't think you can go far wrong here. The current price for this on Amazon is now £15 for either the PS4 or Xbox One and I think you could do a lot worse than giving this game a try.

I would give this package overall an 8 out of 10. Its not a game that's going to change the world or make you reassess your life but if you want a good laugh and to let loose and be a little crazy while enjoying reworked blasts of nostalgia then this is for you.

Games I think get too much hate. 2: Saints Row in general.

I am always one to praise the Saints Row games and to get excited when a new one is released but on most occasions and in most groups I tend to be the only one. I hear people mention the fact that the first saints row was nothing more than a Grand Theft Auto clone and that every Saints Row ever since has just got more and more ridiculous, but this is the very reason I like them. I guess this means in defending Saints Row I will have to talk about GTA quiet a bit but I just want to get things straight I enjoy a lot of the GTA games just not all of them.

Sure the first was just a GTA clone but when the Xbox 360 was out and incredibly popular and Rockstar seemed to be dragging there feet when came to getting a GTA game out on a new system and capitalising on the 360's position. With this in mind can you really blame someone else for seeing that gap in the market and trying to profit off it? I enjoyed the original for what it was but I never viewed it as a classic, I viewed it as a smart business move but also recognised that if they didn't do something to capitalise on this then the game would drop into obscurity the minute a real GTA game was launched.

I had spent many hours messing around on GTA, GTA 2, GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas I loved the games but I appreciated them the most when they didnt take themselves too seriously. When GTA 4 came out it was this grey and brown game, with cars which from my perspective felt almost too realistic in the way they handled, you were constantly getting phone calls from people who you were compelled to spend time it felt to dull too drawn out and too much like real life. This seriousness was a Million miles away from Vice City and its bright lights, 80's music balls to the wall fun.

In Saints Row 2 you get to make your own character, you customize how they look physically and then latter on you get to buy them all manner of clothing, I prefer this to the character of Niko Bellic from GTA 4. Add on to this that GTA 4 stars with meeting your cousin Roman the guy who can charitably be described as the biggest drain of fun in the game, and less charitably described as a moaning bumbling arsewipe who will dog you via your in game mobile until you want to batter yourself to death with your own controller. In Saints Row 2 you start off with an awesome jail break. Yes you can say GTA 4 takes time to get going, it tries to build characters but I will take the explosive fun instead thank you. Its not that I am unsophisticated and cant appreciate a drawn out gripping story, I recently read and enjoyed To Kill a Mocking Bird however a story about gangsters fucking each other up doesn't really need to try and be a literal classic in game form. The first five Grand Theft Auto games were pretty much the video game equivalent of a pulp fiction novel and it didnt do them any harm.

Saints Row 2 was ridiculous but it was fun, the characters in it where over the top and the game could best be described as bat shit crazy. This for me was the game where the Saints Row Series got into its stride where it began to make characters you would care about, they can best be described as a collection of crazy misfits, the psychopath Johnny Gat who thinks he can solve everything by shooting someone in the face, and Pierce the fast talking con-man entrepreneur for example. The great thing about the game as a series though is that someone who is a minor villain or a relatively unimportant character in one game can return in a latter game with a bigger more fleshed out role. When you look at Saints Row 4 in particular there doesn't seem to be a single character from the previous games who has been forgotten more or less everyone at the very least gets talked about.

Grand Theft Auto 5 has actually addressed a lot of my issues with GTA 4 and is a much stronger game than its predecessor in my opinion but its still pretty much a game that stand alone. Every game in the saints row Series fits together, its like enjoying a long running Television series you love, you will play your way through the games and the DLC  and get to see what the characters have been up to. Even though they are humours games some of the characters do go through a lot of development from game to game and this makes you feel connected to them more than you might realise.

The Saints Row games seem to be made with a mantra of ''concentrate on what would be fun and fit the story, the characters and the game around this fun''. Yes they can be over the top, rude, crude and tacky but they are fundamentally silly and fun. You will find yourself doing crazy missions like spraying shit all over rich peoples homes to lower there houses worth, committing insurance fraud by throwing your seemingly indestructible body in to the way of passing cars in order to scam them out of insurance money, If you start from the beginning and go through the games you will find yourself fighting gangsters, wrestlers, zombies, aliens, gimps, leather wearing dominants and even hell-spawns it wont always make sense but it will always be fun.