Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9 out of 10

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected is a third-person open world action game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The game is an enhanced version of Saints Row IV which was released on PS3 in August 2013, although the Saints Row series began development in mid 2003 initially under the name Bling Bling as a PS2 game before finally releasing in August 2006 as an Xbox 360 exclusive followed by multi-platform sequels in the form of Saints Row 2 in October 2008 and Saints Row: The Third in November 2011. Volition is no stranger to making great games as they have developed multiple games in the FreeSpace, Summoner and Red Faction franchises since 1998.

The core of the story begins when the leader of the Third Street Saints has begun his term as the President of the United States of America and is headed to a press conference in which, just before he is about to take the stage, he is warned that members of MI6 believe that they have information regarding a potential alien attack only for the President to immediately dismiss it, but to be proved wrong within a matter of seconds as the alien invasion begins and literally tears the roof off the White Crib conference room. With members of the President’s team having been taken hostage; it is up to the President to save the day by not only saving the hostages, but also saving the entire world from the alien invasion by figuring out a way to stop them, although despite his best valiant efforts this quickly takes a turn for the worst as the President has to first escape a simulation of the city Steelport that Zinyak, the Supreme Overlord of the Zin Empire, has created to torment him before being able to rebel any further against the alien race.

The story campaign sees players attempting to prevent the extinction of mankind, but first they must escape the dimension that have been placed following the player’s capture. Early on in the presidency there are important moral decisions of which world problems to cure; deciding how to deal with someone who questions your leadership; deciding to attend a party or work and much more besides.

Following the opening mission, players can choose their character with an extensive range of customisation including selecting a gender; race; build, skin tone; age; facial structure; hair; make-up; and personality. The personality allows players to choose from three males, three females and even Nolan North, while the compliments and taunts provide nods in the direction of famous films such as The Matrix; musicians such as Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson; wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan, John Cena and Ric Flair and much more besides which complements the adult humour and pop culture references encountered throughout the game. This is an exceptional level of customisation that allows players to make their character look exactly as required, although it would have been great to upload a personal image into the game via the PlayStation Camera.

The hub provides direct access to a range of important features such as a GPS map to display current location and a key of important locations around the simulation, a listing of quests, powers, upgrades, music playlists, a phone, a breakdown of in-game currency known as cache and extras including simulation cheats for unlimited ammo, maximising super power upgrades and more besides as well as providing a full set of statistics to inform the player of progression through the game.

There are 3 categories of quests including primary, side and extras with all of the quests provided by an ally from the gang called Kinzie who designates the objectives. The primary quests are highly important to the progression through the story and towards breaking out of the simulation, while the side quests allow detours to be taken from the primary objectives, alongside a total of 59 challenges which range from completing objectives quick enough to earn silver or gold medals to destroying 36 Zinyak Statues as well as collecting 8 text adventure fragments, 1,255 data clusters and 39 audio logs that are placed around the simulation and even punting aliens, getting a serious amount of hang time during super leaping and much more besides with each successfully completed challenge rewarding the player with cache, XP and in most occasions even a weapon, super power, gateway or vehicle as a special reward.

Flashpoints are areas that are surrounded by aliens and their technology which must be defeated and overthrown to gradually reduce the threat to survival, while gateways are of benefit to the player’s character as they provide a safe haven from the potential dangers of the simulation by offering access to a change of clothing, vehicles, weapons and much more besides.

There are plenty of upgrades that require a particular level to be attained by earning XP as well as earning enough money to be able to afford the purchase with both XP and money earned by completing missions and quests, while some upgrades will be immediately unlocked by completing a specific quest.

There are seven sets of upgrades for the character including abilities, health, damage, combat, vehicles, gang abilities and bonuses with the abilities providing a collectible finder to highlight collectible items in the world; gateways in multiple areas of the world which players can return to in order to access weapons cache, clothes, vehicles and gang customisation as well as the character’s notoriety decreasing at a faster rate; unlimited sprinting and an increase in stamina; while health provides an increase to the value of health pickups, an increased amount of health and a health vacuum to widen the range of health pickups that are sucked towards the character.

There are many more helpful upgrades too, such as the damages category which reduces the damage taken to the character from explosions, fire and small arms, combat upgrades including carrying more ammo for each weapon, dual wielding pistols or SMGs; additional ammo from the gateway weapon cache, super strength during melee combat for punching and throwing, as well as a range of five weapons that can be equipped from the weapon cache at a gateway including a musical dub step gun and even create black holes to suck aliens through with the singularity gun.

Vehicles have their own upgrades too but also have some interesting touches directly from the upgrades menu such as extreme collision damage being inflicted to enemy vehicles when nitrous is engaged, every vehicle being driven having nitrous; and a collection of Monster Trucks being delivered to the gateway garage; while the gang abilities include upgrading the standard weaponry to SMGs; vehicle delivery, increasing the gang’s health, and toughening up the gang’s response to being shot, alongside a range of bonuses such as a currency boost; an increased reward for defeating flashpoints; 5% extra XP earned, twice as much currency dropped by deleted simulations; amongst many more upgrades.

There are additional upgrades for powers after players have earned them by collecting data clusters to create new elements of code for the chosen character within the simulation. The super powers include super sprinting, super jumping and much more besides such as telekinesis, blast, buff and stomp categories with the super sprint power upgrades including reaching maximum speed faster, taking less damage when super sprinting, an increase in speed and further abilities such as a tornado that knocks over objects in the character’s wake, wall running and even running on water. While the super jump power upgrades include an increased gliding distance, the character cannot be knocked down by anything even when standing still regardless of how powerful or fast it is, a mid air boost of speed, an increased jump distance and an increased height on charged jumps.

Player’s can take their current car to a garage for a series of tune up customisations as the car upgrades are split into four categories including performance, body mods, colours and wheels with the performance category providing four tiers worth of upgrades for torque, tyre durability, reinforced bumper and reinforced frame as well as nitrous and the addition of retractable blades located in the tyres to help take out the aliens of the Zin Empire. However, the body mods, colours and wheels categories provide an extreme amount of customisable liveries and unique looks for the cars which could potentially throw off the Zin Empire from zoning in on the vehicle.

The personal character, super powers and garage upgrades are excellent gameplay and design choices as they provide an amazing air of freedom to how the world can be affected around the character within the game and become far more powerful as a reward for gradually completing quests and flashpoints which naturally makes the gameplay more fun to explore with such a great level of experimentation which is made all the more rewarding for having to earn the abilities and powers.

The open world environments provide sprawling metropolises to explore which are thriving with life and activity from people driving a variety of vehicles or walking to make the environment feel realistic as people go about their everyday business unaware of the simulation, while Steelport consists of four districts that each contains lots of buildings of all shapes, sizes, purposes and architecture from small towns to skyscrapers.

In the virtual reality that Zinyak has created to imprison and torment within is not only the alien race of the Zin Empire to fight against, but there are also armed police forces with the notion that the Zin Empire can take over the bodies of the policemen in a manner reminiscent of Agent Smith from The Matrix Trilogy. Zinyak is an appropriately menacing looking and sounding villain, while your gang are dressed fashionably and there are lots of different bystander character models.

There is quite a wide range of weaponry including melee combat with your fists, a baseball bat or a stun gun, guns such as multiple variations of pistols, SMGs, shotguns and rifles, alien weaponry, explosives and much more besides with the gunplay during running and gunning as well as fine aiming being very accurate as each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses in regards to their damage, range and reload time.

There are a diverse range of cars from the classic eras and modern era of car design from extravagant sports cars to electric cars, vans, trucks, police cars, ambulances, taxi cabs and novelty vehicles, motorbikes, VTOL aerial vehicles, planes, helicopters, Zin vehicles, tanks, monster trucks and much more besides which all handle and sound as would be anticipated as a sports car has different handling characteristics than that of a classic car.

The performance during remote play is pretty good as the graphics, audio and general performance all remain at the same quality of the PS4 version, while the main criticism of the remote play performance would have to be that the control scheme has not been optimised resulting in the fine aim and shooting moving from L2 and R2 to the top left and right of the rear touch pad respectively, while the same can be said for crouching and melee bashing which have moved from L3 and R3 to the bottom left and right of the rear touch pad.

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected includes all of the previously released 24 downloadable content packs from Saints Row IV on PS3 such as Enter the Dominatrix, How the Saints Save Christmas and various costumes, weapons and theme related content as well as the standalone expansion Gat Out of Hell which is collectively a lot of value added content.

There are effectively three sets of control schemes covering on foot, driving and aircraft controls. The on foot control scheme consists of pressing R2 to perform primary attack, pressing L2 to perform a secondary attack or to fine aim, pressing R1 to use a super power, pressing L1 to sprint, pressing X to jump or holding X to perform a super jump, pressing square to reload or holding square to pick up a weapon or object, pressing O to access inventory, pressing triangle to enter or exit a vehicle, pressing up, down, left or right on the d-pad to select a set of super powers, holding up on the d-pad to recruit followers, holding down on the d-pad to dismiss followers, holding left on the d-pad to perform a taunt; holding right on the d-pad to perform a compliment, pressing L3 to crouch, pressing R3 to perform a melee bash, changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move the character, changing the direction of the right analogue stick to rotate the camera angle, pressing the share button takes the player to the share feature menu and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

The driving control scheme is similar to the on foot controls as L1 to sprint is replaced with engaging nitrous as triangle, O and the left and right analogue sticks remain the same as the on foot control scheme, although pressing R2 is to accelerate, pressing L2 to brake or reverse, pressing R1 to perform a primary attack, pressing square to look behind, pressing X to drift, pressing left or right on the d-pad to change the radio station, pressing down on the d-pad to scan the current vehicle into the gateway garage and pressing R3 to beep the horn.

The aircraft control scheme is partly similar to the driving controls as up, left, right and down on the d-pad as well as triangle and the left and right analogue sticks have the same purposes as the driving control scheme, although R2 and L2 remain the same as the on foot control scheme, while pressing R1 turns right, pressing L1 turns left, pressing O switches the flight mode in the VTOL; pressing X to accelerate in a plane or to ascend when piloting a helicopter; and pressing square to brake or reverse in a plane or to descend when piloting a helicopter.

The touch pad implementation allows access to the hub menu by tapping on the touch pad and an option to enable or disable the touch pad to be utilised for quick time events (QTE’s) to perform actions during action and fight scenes by swiping in the prompted direction, while the light bar produces a light shade of purple which is the colour of the Saints Row logo and the Presidents’ suit, alongside vibration which can be felt at its strongest when charging a jump.

Graphically, Saints Row IV has never looked this good on home consoles before as the PS4 version has better textures, improved lighting and shadows as well as genuinely enhanced performance with 1080p and 60FPS in comparison to the PS3’s 720p and 30FPS performance, while the PS4 version also has more detail and crisp textures on the distant background, although there are occasional collision detection problems such as being able to walk through the arm of a character in the White Crib and the draw distance shows sporadic occurrences of pop-in on some details such as street signs and foliage, but this does not detract from a smooth gameplay experience.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, campaign, co-op campaign, extras, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad. The background of the menu screens revolves around the virtual world the President of the U.S.A. has been placed within which depicts the alien technology covering the skyline of the cityscape.

The voice-over cast is a who’s who of amazing acting and voice-over talent that may not even be heard if players do not choose a certain lead character, although it must be said that the entire voice-over cast deliver exceptional performances including Nolan North who voices Nolan North President of the U.S.A. is most famous for his role as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series as well as Oswald Cobblepot and The Penguin in the Arkham City, Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight Batman games amongst many cartoons and videogames, while Troy Baker voices the first male President of the U.S.A. and is known for leading roles as Booker DeWitt in Bioshock: Infinite, Joel in The Last of Us, The Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins, Jack Mitchell in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and The Phantom Pain as well as Nathan Drake’s brother in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Laura Bailey voices the first female President of the U.S.A. who has voiced Fetch in Infamous: Second Son and Infamous: First Light as well as a range of Dragon Ball Z cartoons and games and much more, while Daniel Dae Kim as Johnny Gat is known for his acting roles as Gavin Park in Angel, Tom Baker in 24, Jin Kwon in Lost and Chin Ho Kelly in Hawaii Five-0. Keith David who voices Vice President Keith David and Julius Little is best known for his roles as Childs in The Thing and Imam in Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. Terry Crews voices Benjamin King and is known for such roles as Hale Caesar in The Expendables films, Julius in the television series Everybody Hates Chris, and Sergeant Terry Jeffords in the series Brooklyn Nine-Nine; alongside JB Blanc as the villainous Zinyak who is known for his role as the villain Robert Guerro in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, El Fuerte in the Street Fighter IV series as well as various characters in a range of videogames and cartoons such as Blade, Bleach, Naruto: Shippuden and various Marvel cartoon projects.

The sound effects mostly include weapons being fired by the character at aliens and them returning fire, explosions, car engines and the general hustle and bustle of the city, while the opening of the first mission begins with a cut scene on a helicopter with Long Tall Sally by Little Richard playing on the helicopter’s radio which provides a real throwback to the classic iconic action film The Predator and even Aerosmith’s Armageddon soundtrack I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing plays whilst the player attempts to save the world at the end of the opening mission.

There are radio stations and customisable music playlists available from the hub menu with each radio station having its own unique style ranging from rock to classical with dance, rap and such genres also covered. Choice selections from The Mix 107.77 radio station include Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible and Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town, while Klassic 102.4 provides some of the best classical music such as Johann Strauss II, Tchaikovsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Verdi, Rossini and Chopin, amongst other recognised classical composers; therefore it should be highly likely to find the appropriate balance of music that suits the personal tastes. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which is surprising as it could have produced select voice-overs from the character’s wisecracks, allies, enemies or characters walking along the streets or driving in their cars that are encountered as players explore the world, although perhaps it could have been utilised for the music or sound effects.

The trophy list includes 51 trophies with 42 bronze, 5 silver, 3 gold and 1 platinum trophy, while both downloadable content packs contain 7 bronze and 3 silver trophies. The majority of the trophies are earned naturally by successfully completing missions as well as everything from quests to loyalty missions and more besides for each of the character’s allies, while there are some super power related trophies such as the Don’t Look Down bronze trophy for being airborne during super jumps for a combined 10 minutes of gameplay, the Chill Out bronze trophy for freezing and shatter killing 100 aliens with the freeze blast super power and the Here! Catch bronze trophy for killing 100 aliens with the telekinesis super power. There are also trophies for finding collectibles such as The Whole Story bronze trophy for finding all of the audio logs and the A Real Cluster silver trophy for finding 100% of the data clusters, while the longest trophy to achieve is the Fourth and Forty gold trophy for spending over 40 hours in the simulation. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around 40 hours to platinum the trophy list, while both downloadable content packs would take between 2 to 4 hours to 100% each additional trophy list.

There are 3 difficulty levels including casual, normal and hardcore with the major differences between the easiest and hardest being the amount of damage inflicted upon enemies, the amount of damage inflicted by enemies on the character and how quickly the health regenerates; although players can technically make the game as easy or hard as required to by purchasing as many or as few upgrades as prefered.

The co-operative online multiplayer campaign supports two players with the ability to privately host a co-operative game by inviting whoever chosen to join the game regardless of whether they are on a friends list or not, a friends only game which only allows friends to join the game or to open the game up to anyone to join whenever they want to, while there is the capabilities of joining a friend or searching matchmaking for a game rather than hosting a game and there is also the option of playing over a local arena network (LAN) connection, alongside the options for light damage or heavy damage regarding friendly fire adding some extra fun to the proceedings.

There are 2 competitive online multiplayer modes including a returning mode from Saints Row: The Third called Cat and Mouse in which the cat has to kill the mouse to prevent him from scoring points, while the mouse attempts to score 10 points per second by surviving the cat’s attacks with an extra 250 points awarded by reaching a checkpoint within the 2 minutes 30 seconds duration with the eventual winner earning $200 in cache. Death Tag is a new mode providing deathmatch style gameplay with an arsenal of weapons to use within the 5 minute duration to score the most kills over an opponent as the winner earns cache as a reward.

However, there is no local multiplayer which is surprising as it could have reflected the gameplay of the online co-operative multiplayer, while it is just as surprising to see no inclusion of online leaderboards as they could have competitively compared a wide range of statistics such as the amount of aliens and flashpoints areas defeated as well as how quickly each of the primary quests, side quests and challenges have been successfully completed.

The replayability is provided by plenty of missions in the story campaign, online co-operative multiplayer and two competitive modes, collectibles and a wide range of vehicles, weapons and even super powers to assist in dispatching the Zin Empire as well as all of the downloadable content released for the PS3 version combined with the Gat Out of Hell expansion and the ability to free roam the city after having completed the game which will collectively have players returning to the game for many hours.

Overall, Saints Row IV: Re-Elected possesses a huge amount of value in a bundle that just keeps on giving from Saints Row IV to the original downloadable content and the standalone expansion Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, therefore if you are a fan of open world games or the third person action genre, Saints Row IV: Re-Elected becomes a highly recommended purchase.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

* Title: Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

* Developer: Volition

* Publisher: Deep Silver/Koch Media

* System: PS4

* Format: Retail/PSN Download

* Cross-Buy: No

* Cross-Play: No

* Players: 1 (2 Players Online Co-Op)

* Hard Drive Space Required: 13GB