These missions take place on largely linear paths and offer few creative or amusingly over-the-top paths to success. A counterfeit cosplay knockoff of Master ChiefĪre you dismantling criminal rings? Battling terrorists? Doing dirty work for a government that needs secrets buried? It's all unclear because the dialogue in these missions mostly focuses on your character bickering with their commanding officer in repetitive, unfunny fashion. This game's ratio is roughly nine agonizing technical hiccups and annoyances for every chuckle-worthy explosion or glitchy physics mishap. Worst of all, should you ignore this advice because you're eager for mindless chaos, steel yourself for a technical and mechanical nightmare. It can't touch the adventurous exploration, satisfying mechanics, and supercharged bombast of 2007's Crackdown, while its hole-filled plot and cookie-cutter characters aren't fun to laugh at, let alone with. Describing this game as a regression to the Xbox 360 era would be an insult to the late 2000s' best open-world adventures.

Saints Row (2022) is the rare open-world game that makes an average Ubisoft open-world game of the past five years seem refreshing by comparison.

Instead, this game simply wipes the slate clean-and leaves it that way. Previews suggested that this week's new series reboot, simply titled Saints Row, might wipe the slate clean to provide a fresh perspective on the crime-spree genre. By its fourth game, however, the open-world series' cars, heists, sex-toys-as-weapons gimmick, and explosive gunfights had seemingly run out of new directions to go. The Saints Row series emerged in the Xbox 360 era as a cheeky, irreverent response to the likes of Grand Theft Auto. Links: Amazon | Epic Games Store | PSN | Xbox | Stadia | Official website

Platform: Windows, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Stadia

Saints row metacritic download