Saints Row hands-on preview: A more grounded open-world with a lot to prove

The 2022 title will be released in August

It’s a soft reboot for the franchise (The Independent)

With the last standalone title in the series, Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, released in 2015, one of the choices Volition made was where to take influence from a series that had become notorious for its tendency to jump the shark. What started as a series about growing a criminal gang soon saw the eponymous “Saints” taking over the Oval Office, fighting aliens and eventually journeying to the depths of hell to take on the devil himself. It’s fair to say Saints Row has never been one for subtlety.

By rebooting the series, the team had an opportunity to reframe what makes a Saints game, and by bringing it back to basics, how the series might look in 2022. We spoke with principal designer Damian Allen about what  fans could expect to see from the latest game.

“What we settled on was a little bit more grounded than what you’ve seen in some of the later games. But taking the heart of wackiness and over the top gameplay, and putting that in places where it made sense.

“We didn’t say ‘oh, let’s make it exactly like Saints Row 3 or 2 or let’s go to the extreme of Saints Row 4 again’. We really said ‘okay, what are the parts that speak to these characters and this setting and this story and let’s be willing to add them or, or stop at this point before we go to the extreme of an alien invasion, or anything like that.”

In our four-hour playthrough of an early section of the game, Saints Row is set to continue revelling in its own mayhem once more. Read our full preview in the rest of the article below.

‘Saints Row’: £54.99, Game.co.uk

A typical commute in Santo Ileso (Volition)

• Release date: 23 August 2022
• Publisher: Deep Silver
• Age rating: 18+

Saints Row has always had a creative level of customisation and this latest release appears to be no different. There’s a wide array of different features, sliders and tailor-made options to play around with, such as birthmarks, hairstyles and even prosthetics are available in great abundance from the start.

After spending spending some time (frankly too much time) getting our own digital avatar just right, we managed to settle on a true reflection of our persona – a muscly, baby-faced, snaggle-toothed man with purple Farrah Fawcett hair and a matching handle-bar moustache. So far, it’s definitely a Saints Row game.

There’s plenty of customisation options (Volition)

As a soft reboot of the series the story of Saints Row follows “The Boss” as they begin their journey of founding “The Saints” criminal enterprise. The early hours of the game spends time establishing the different competing gangs and the head honchos of each one.

The prologue opens with The Boss acting as a low-level grunt for Marshall, a private militia company with a high staff turnover and a terrible insurance package. As the opening hours run through, we learn that The Boss, along with three roommates, Neenah, Kevin and Eli, have loftier ambitions than their current lot in life has provided them.

Through these characters, Saints Row introduces the three factions that dominate the new setting of Santo Ileso; Marshall, Los Panteros, and the Idols. Marshall has access to high-tech weaponry, while Los Panteros and the Idols operate as criminal gangs. And all three act as separate gangs all vying for control of each of the city’s districts.

The Idols is one of the gangs currently occupying the city (Volition)

Early missions see The Boss putting in time with Marshall which provides access to a large futuristic arsenal. While at an early stage, basic weapons such as pistols and shotguns were formidable enough to handle waves of enemies, and no doubt this will only expand in later stages.

Roaming around to explore the open-world of Santo Ileso, each district is visually distinct from one another, but as our time was spent on early portions of the game, with many of the early hours taking place outside the main city and even out in the sticks, there were plenty of freeways, dirt tracks and railroads to explore.

Driving feels sturdy enough, with the cars that were easily accessible from this corner of the map. Rather than focus on realistic manoeuvrability, drifts can be quickly performed with the push of a button, locking the car into a near-perpendicular slide that makes cornering simple enough while being able to focus on the surroundings and minimap, without slowing down.

Vehicular combat will play a big focus (Volition)

It’s also possible to perform vehicular combat with pursuers, by shunting vehicles that happen to pull alongside. During driving sequences, The Boss was also able to jump on the roof of the car, jump between vehicles and relinquish them from pursuers.

After seven years away, it looks like Saints Row is finally back, but the question is how much of that classic formula has changed? It’s safe to say that longtime fans will find plenty to love in those early hours, but sandbox games have come a long way since 2015. While reining in the absurdity will appeal to the series’s roots, Saints Row will still have a lot to prove in the face of overwhelming competition.

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