Thank you Deep Silver for sending us a review code!

The first Saints Row game was released in 2006 for the Xbox 360. It had a massive following and five sequels. Since I haven’t played these games before, I can’t really compare this sixth entry which is a reboot of the series. However, the Steam reviews are mixed and the general consensus is that this title is not as good as its predecessors. Other negative reviews comment on the game’s stability and I only experienced one game crash throughout my twenty-one hour journey.

Saints Row begins with you designing your character which will become the future boss of The Saints. Shortly after your character’s creation you’ll see a cutscene of a party taking place at the gang’s headquarters and your character being buried in a shallow grave out back. The game then rewinds to a few months earlier where your character and their roommates are struggling to pay rent and decide to rob a payday loan place to cover that expense. Why they don’t just rough up the landlord is beyond me.

What’s interesting about this roommate arrangement is that most of the roommates are in different gangs which are all at war with each other. Kevin who is pansexual (sleeps with anyone with a pulse) and has an aversion to shirts is in a gang called the Idols who are against capitalist corporations. Nina is in a gang called Los Panteros (the panthers) who are big on cars and are often found driving muscle cars and monster trucks. Eli is the brainiest of the group and isn’t involved in a gang but is essential in establishing business ventures for The Saints.

Your character is employed by the Marshall Corporation who specializes in security and high-end technical defenses. They provide security for events that are at risk of being attacked by the other gangs. The roommates have an agreement to give each other a heads up if they are aware that their gang will attack another roommate’s gang. Failure to do so will result in extra chores.

It doesn’t take long for a massive flare-up that results in the roommates from having to choose between their friends and their gang. As a result, they decide to create a new gang called the Saints. The name and their logo are inspired by their headquarters being an abandoned church.

Money is crucial to your gang’s survival. It’s needed to fund business ventures, clothes, guns, vehicles, and upgrades for them. You can make a quick buck by visiting the Wanted app to pursue, eliminate, and collect on various deplorables like drug dealers and snitches. Business ventures cost money to setup, but they pay once they’re established and the local competition is eradicated.

The business ventures are shady and their purpose is to benefit The Saints above all else. As The Saints grow in popularity, more expensive business ventures will become available. Launching the business venture is just the beginning, in order for them to succeed you need to do a few missions for them to get up and running. For example, you’ll be assisting in hiding bodies for your laundromat that specializes in cleaning up murder scenes. These are stressful missions because they are usually timed. On the flip side, I really enjoyed the missions showing off the capabilities of the weapons your arms dealer sells. These missions are timed as well, but your only focus is to blow valuable things up.

Much of the environment is destructible. While the visuals are dated at times, I was really impressed with how immersive and alive the game world felt. Walking down an alley I saw a female urinating on the wall and commenting on how fun it is to pee standing up. As you drive by people you’ll get to hear their chatter and they’re often talking about the gangs.

As you drive/steal different cars they’ll often have different default radio stations. The music ranges from classical to gangster rap. I preferred listening to the synth electronica music over songs rapping curse words and talking about sexual acts.

Unlike previous Saints Row games, you can’t date your founding members. Instead you’ll get to hear about their relationships past and present. Each of the founding members will have bonding missions that will make them more powerful in battle once completed. Eli’s missions were the funniest as he introduces your character to live action role playing (LARPing). Instead of wielding your typical automatic guns and rocket launchers, your character is wearing cardboard armor and shooting a nerf-like gun.

Many of the main story missions are over-the-top and hilarious. I enjoyed the Good Cop Bad Cop mission where the geeky Eli was the bad cop and my character attempted to be the good cop. To deter the police from obtaining a search warrant for our headquarters we stole a helicopter and connected her car (with her in it!) to a giant magnet and swung it around and banged into various buildings and smoke stacks until she gave up the investigation. The dialogue is funny and the voice acting is great.

Unfortunately, you’ll get to hear the Lord's name being taken in vain and every swear word imaginable. While sex isn’t seen, it’s talked about often. Many outfits accentuate your character’s body. You can still strip them down to underwear when changing their attire. Drinking, drunkenness and drug use is shown and talked about. While The Saints will stop some drug crimes, they will use a food truck business venture to deal drugs.

There are a lot of moral issues in Saints Row and that’s why I haven’t played the games until provided a free review code. I can’t deny having fun in this game and I do see the appeal. I have to admit I’m curious about the better character development and non-wokeness of the previous entries. Most of the series is in our Steam family library. Maybe I’ll check them out if I can ever catch up on my backlog (unlikely).