Many of your abilities are now tied to skills and perks that require you to fill meters as you fight. I was mostly strapped with my trusty 9mm and assault rifle, though I also picked up a shotgun from the local Friendly Fire gun store and enjoyed a couple of opportunities to turn one of the miniguns used by the Marshall faction against its owners.Ĭontrolling combat was roughly what I expected: gunplay that’s more about explosive, stylish action than precision aiming or expert timing-though that doesn’t mean any/all strategy has been thrown out the window. Your own arsenal, at least based on what I was able to unlock, seems a bit more traditional.

There were some wild weapons being used against me, though-for example, the Idols show up to battles dressed in rave gear and hurl neon-trailed boomerangs at me, and kept using something that looks inspired by SR3’s dubstep gun to stun and deal damage over time. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, of course, but in my roughly four hours of playtime about the craziest thing I fired was a rocket launcher. There were some story seeds planted about some sort of mysterious ancient relic, too, though I’m hoping we can avoid a Crystal Skull-style alien encounter.įor instance, while the more recent Saints Row games were perhaps best known for their insane arsenal of slapstick weaponry, I didn’t see one dildo bat or a single gun that shot bears, or bees, or bears with bees in their mouths (so when they roar they shoot bees at you). One lengthy chase was reminiscent of the convoy sequence from Uncharted 4, while another mission had me tearing through city streets with a shipping container tethered to my bumper like in Fast & Furious.

Jumping onto the roof of moving cars to fire RPGs at pursuers or clinging to the back of a harrier jet all felt right at home-and Saints Row is clearly not afraid to pull more blatant inspirations from a variety of pop-culture sources, either. While there’s definitely an abundance of ‘drive here and/or shoot these guys,’ my demo also shuffled up the action with setpiece encounters or particularly wild scenarios fairly regularly. Not every gag landed-we get it, 'Millennials like brunch,' and the quick-time event to motivate during a depressive episode went on a bit too long-but I definitely walked away wanting to see where the next chapter of these plucky psychopath’s story would take them next-and most of the missions the story strings together were equally enjoyable. As the unnamed boss of a gang of underdogs, you and your motley crew of would-be crimelords will have to bring them all down in order to take control of the city’s criminal underworld. There are the Panteros, old-school brawlers with a penchant for monster trucks, a group of technopunk-anarchists calling themselves The Idols, and Marshall Defense Industries, the billionaire-backed private military company. A blend of real-world cities like Reno, Nevada, and Austin, Texas (“ Keep it Strange, Santo!” is plastered on graffiti and billboards all over town), and Las Vegas, there's already plenty of crime plaguing Santo Ileso's streets. The overall setup for your takeover of the fictional southwestern burg of Santo Ileso looks to be staying true to the series’ DNA.

I also appreciated that the different voice actors for each option seem to bring a lot of themselves to the performances-sometimes even changing what language your character speaks in. Not every element of previous games’ creators have made it over-you can no longer adjust the pitch of your chosen character's voice, for example, and there’s no “Nolan North” option anymore-but beyond that, it seems the sky’s the limit.

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