Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9 out of 10

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a third-person open world action game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a standalone expansion which continues the Saints Row series and is also included in the PS4 release of Saints Row IV: Re-Elected.

The story begins at Kinzie’s Birthday party where a Juju spirit board opens up a portal and sucks the President of the United States into Hell and where Johnny Gat asks to be sent in order to free the President and bring him back home. Johnny Gat and his friend Kinzie set out on a journey to bring their friend back from Hell, although Johnny’s plan is improvised as he goes along, as he sets out with the only thought of punching Satan in the face but is helped by Dane Vogel who presents Johnny with an ancient artefact in the form of a halo that provides the hero with arcane supernatural powers.

The hub provides direct access to a range of important features such as a GPS map to display the current location and a key of important positions around New Hades, a quest log, arcane powers, upgrades and audio tomes, as well as providing six pages worth of statistics to inform the player of their progression through the game.

In Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell; pretty much everything is a primary objective as it will help players to gain attention from Satan as they attempt to find the location of the President to be able to free him from Hell and return home. Quests are categorised into allegiances with 4 emissaries providing missions that will charge up Johnny Gat’s halo and missions provided by Dane to help his business Ultor continue to grow in exchange for further help in bringing Satan down and finding his friend, while there are also a range of activities such as completing objectives quick enough to earn gold medals as well as a range of challenges related to diversions, arcane powers, weapons, enemies and much more besides, alongside finding all 30 commentaries from Johnny Gat and Kinzie, collecting 39 Satan tomes, 5 Dane tomes and 940 soul clusters that are placed around hell with each successfully completed quest, activity or challenge rewarding players with wages, XP and in most occasions even a weapon or supernatural power as a special reward.

Extraction facilities are effectively engineering plants that belong to Satan. Souls are brought in to be processed with the buildings under control by demons with usually three control points that are guarded by dozens of the fiends which makes it significantly hard to kill them and manipulate of all the control points in order to shut down this particular facility.

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

There are six sets of upgrades for the character including abilities, health, resistance, weapons, bonuses and activities with the abilities providing a finder to highlight collectible items in the world; a high chance that husks will help when in combat against the demons; earning more time during activities; the notoriety decreasing at a faster rate; and increases in stamina; while health provides a health magnet to widen the range of health pickups that are sucked towards the character; an increase to the value of health pickups; a faster regeneration and increased amount of health. There are many more helpful upgrades too such as the resistance category which reduces the damage taken to the character from explosions, fire, melee and small arms; weapons upgrades including carrying more ammo for each weapon; dual wielding pistols or SMGs; instant reloading for weapons; and super strength during melee combat for punching and throwing, alongside a range of bonuses such as a 5% boost for wages earned from activities and diversions; 5% extra XP earned as well as a listing of upgrades that are naturally earned from completing objectives; amongst many more upgrades.

There are additional upgrades for supernatural powers after players have earned them by collecting soul clusters for the character’s arcane supernatural powers within Hell. The supernatural powers include super sprinting, super jumping and much more besides such as summons, blast, aura and stomp categories, the ability to hover in midair; executing higher jumps and more forceful flaps; and an instant recovery of 25% stamina immediately after landing from flight; amongst a range of other upgrades.

The personal character and supernatural powers upgrades are excellent gameplay and design choices as they provide an amazing air of freedom to how players can affect the world around them within the game and become far more powerful as a reward for gradually completing quests. This 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 supernatural powers.

The open world environments provide large scale cities, which are full of anarchy and activity, to explore. Husk’s drive a variety of stripped apart and flaming vehicles or aimlessly walking around as they contemplate how to escape Hell, while New Hades consists of five districts that each contains lots of buildings of all shapes, sizes, purposes and architecture all designed as part of keeping the husks imprisoned as lightning strikes repeatedly in the distance and a swirling vortex hangs above in the sky as lava pours across Hell instead of water, while comets continually rain down from above to make for an atmosphere that permanently strikes fear into the husks.

The various demons the player battles throughout their journey to finding the character’s friend are quite menacing and have an evil appearance to each and every one of them which is rather fitting for the subject matter of the game, while husks miserably walk the streets fearing they will never find a way to escape Hell as Johnny Gat, Kinzie and Dane are dressed as fashionably as ever.

There is quite a wide range of weaponry including melee combat with fists, a baseball bat or a stun gun. Guns such as multiple variations of pistols, SMGs, shotguns and rifles, explosives as well as variations of weapons such as the organic SMG that shoots biting insects at enemies and arguably the most fun, standout weapon of all is the fully automatic Armchairmageddon which allows Johnny Gat to put his feet up on a recliner while shooting demons with a chain gun either side of him. The aiming of such weapons is very accurate as each has its own strengths and weaknesses in regards to their damage, range and reload time.

There are a range of stripped and damaged cars from sports cars to electric cars, vans, trucks, police cars, ambulances, monster trucks and motorbikes and much more besides which all handle and sound as would be anticipated as a monster truck has different handling characteristics than that of a sports car with monster trucks providing the standout driving experience as they are driven by demons with a loud horn that is the demonic equivalent of a siren and have flames coming out of the exhausts that is most probably inspired by Johnny Blaze’s motorbike in Marvel’s Ghost Rider.

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 the same as that found in Saints Row IV: Re-Elected as 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.

There are effectively three sets of control schemes covering on foot, driving and flight controls which are loosely based around the control schemes found in Saints Row IV: Re-Elected. The on foot control scheme consists of pressing R2 to perform the primary attack; pressing L2 to perform a secondary attack or to fine aim; pressing R1 to use a supernatural 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 pickup 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 supernatural powers; 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 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 or L1 to perform a primary attack; pressing square to look behind; pressing X to drift; and pressing R3 to beep the horn. The flight control scheme is partly similar to the driving controls as up, left, right and down on the d-pad have the same purposes as the on foot control scheme, although O and the left and right analogue sticks remain the same as the flight control scheme, while pressing L1 to fly; pressing L2 switches between flying and hovering; pressing R1 to use a supernatural power; pressing X to flap your wings; pressing square to brake; and pressing triangle to dodge. The touch pad implementation allows access to the hub menu by tapping on the touch pad, while the light bar produces a light shade of dark red as a reminder that Johnny is in Hell, alongside vibration which can be felt at its strongest when charging a jump.

Graphically, Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell looks just as good as Saints Row IV: Re-Elected on PS4 and performs in a smooth and crisp 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second with plenty of textures and details that show clearly in the lead characters, enemies and surrounding environments, especially the atmospheric swirling sky.

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 main menu revolves around scrolls, a chalice and a book with the Saints Row symbol on the front, while the other menus have the Saints Row logo presented in a variety of sizes.

The voice-over cast is not quite as large in scale as Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, but the cast still possesses an amazing array of talent including Daniel Dae Kim who performs the role of the lead playable character Johnny Gat and is the known for his acting roles as Gavin Park in Angel, Tom Baker in 24 and Jin Kwon in Lost. Natalie Lander voices Kinzie, the second playable character, who is known for roles such as Kisala in Rogue Galaxy, Terra Branford in Dissidia: Final Fantasy and Pandora in God of War III. Troy Baker voices The Boss and is known for leading roles as Booker DeWitt in Bioshock: Infinite, Joel in The Last of Us and The Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins. Travis Willingham, who voices Satan, having previously voiced Knuckles the Echidna in various Sonic games and the television series, Guile in the Street Fighter IV series of games. Further standout performances are provided by Nathan Fillion from Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Castle voicing God, while Jay Mohr performs the role of Dane Vogel having previously voiced the role in Saints Row 2 as well as acting as Professor Rick Payne in the television series Ghost Whisperer and various film roles such as Jerry Maguire and Street Kings.

The sound effects mostly include weapons being fired by the character at demons and them firing back at you, explosions, car engines and the groans of lost souls trapped in Hell. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which is surprising as it could have produced select voice-overs from character’s wisecracks, allies, demons or souls walking along the streets or driving in their cars that are encountered as the player explores New Hades, although perhaps it could have been utilised for the sound effects.

The trophy list includes 46 trophies with 35 bronze, 7 silver, 3 gold and 1 platinum trophy. The majority of the trophies are earned naturally by progressing through objectives and completing challenges, while there are some supernatural power related trophies such as the Fly, You Fools bronze trophy for flying for 250,000 meters; the Footprints in the Sand bronze trophy for using the stomping supernatural power to kill 150 demons; and the Oxymoronic bronze trophy for killing 100 demons using the coldfire aura supernatural power. There are also trophies for finding collectibles such as The Book of More, Man silver trophy for finding 64 of the tomes and the Soul Drain silver trophy for finding 100% of the soul clusters, while the longest trophy to achieve is the Twenty-Twenty Vision bronze trophy for spending over 20 hours in Hell. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around 20 hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including casual, normal and hardcore with the major differences between the easiest and hardest difficulty levels being the amount of damage inflicted upon demonic enemies, the amount of damage inflicted by demonic enemies on the chosen character and how quickly health regenerates, although players can technically make the game as easy or hard as required 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 they choose to join in the game regardless of whether they are on a friends list or not, a friends only game which only allows friends to join in 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 one 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.

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 demons and how quickly each of the quests, activities and challenges have been successfully completed as well as how quickly the player took control of each extraction facility.

The replayability is provided by plenty of missions in the story campaign and online co-operative multiplayer, collectibles and a wide range of vehicles, weapons and even supernatural powers to assist in defeating Satan and bringing the friend back from Hell. whilst players can expect to complete this standalone expansion in around eight hours; the ability to free roam the city after having completed the game will certainly have you returning to Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell for many hours beyond completion to continue experimenting with weapons and generally having fun in the open world environment.

Overall, Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell possesses a huge amount of value regardless of whether purchased separately or in the Saints Row IV: Re-Elected bundle, therefore it is a fun spin-off for the series to take and if a fan of the Saints Row series, open world games or the third person action genre; Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a highly recommended purchase.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

* Title: Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell

* 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: 7GB