I thoroughly enjoyed Saints Row IV. It was, in sum, a well-written commentary of the current state of video games and pop culture. It wasn’t just the slapstick humor, the puns and rim shot jokes that made this game interesting — it also had several highlights especially in the loyalty side quests that the President had to go through (case in point Matt’s side quest on comic book characters).
Thus I was pleasantly surprised to have received a copy of Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, a standalone expansion that happens immediately after the events of Saints Row IV. As a standalone expansion, you don’t need the original game to play but I highly recommend playing it as this title is essentially one long re-skinned side quest involving Johnny Gat and Kinzie. Yup you heard me – imagine re-skinning the entire Saints Row IV elements and bringing it all to hell. The President’s superhero flight and running are back with Johnny Gat claiming the broken halo of Lucifer enabling access to what is essentially very similar powers from the original game.
What I loved: It’s more Saints Row IV! If you loved the guns, blowing up things, gathering data clusters oops soul-like things to power up,you’ll feel right at home. In fact, you’ll feel like you’re playing exactly the same game from the get-go. And this is also the game’s greatest weakness as it doesn’t offer a bigger incentive to plow through what seems like a never-ending chain of side quests. Party loyalty missions for instance (you can work on gaining favors from famous historical icons like Vlad the Impaler, Shakespeare and the Pirate Blackbeard) don’t go anywhere further than taking on already repetitive sidequests. Upon irst glance, Saints Row’s portrayal of hell was rather weak. Yeah, it looked much like a full functioning city from the beginning but it was more slum than Dante’s Inferno. The city had its own districts – dumpsters, high rise buildings, casino sites, well you know the drill.
For less than P500.00 on Steam, it’s worth it. I need to put some context though as the game really compresses a lot of what made Saints Row IV great into a shorter amount of time. The whole running around and flying may seem odd to new players to which I would recommend playing the original game first. In terms of graphics, they’re basically the same as SRIV so you won’t feel llike you’re playing an inferior-looking game. If you’re looking for a deeper story into the lives of Johnny Gat and Kinzie, you won’t find it here. All Johnny wants to do is get his best friend out of hell. There’s a bit of story there (Satan wants the leader of the Saints to marry his daughter Jezebel) but really, it pales in comparison to the writing of the first.
Oh and if you’re into musicals, watching Johnny Gat, Satan, Kinzie and Jezebel burst into song is already worth it.
CHECK IT OUT: Saints Row Gat Out of Hell – via Steam for P499.00
