Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

My first hour with Saints Row IV Re-Elected involved defusing a nuclear bomb to Aerosmith, piloting a stolen alien ship naked to a 90s banger, and unlocking the ability to sprint faster than any car on the road. The game wastes zero time establishing its tone, and that tone never wavers: gleefully, purposefully unhinged. This is not an open-world crime sim that got a little silly. It is a power fantasy wrapped in a sci-fi parody that uses a simulated version of Steelport as its playground, and the moment you accept that premise, you will have a hard time putting it down. The superpower mechanics are the engine everything runs through. You start with Super Sprint and Super Jump, then gradually unlock elemental abilities, fire blasts, ice projectiles, telekinesis, gravity stomps, by collecting data clusters scattered across the city. Upgrading the skill tree is genuinely satisfying: by mid-game you are gliding from one end of Steelport to the other in under a minute, and the city starts feeling like a jungle gym rather than a backdrop. The weapon roster keeps pace. The Dubstep Gun forces enemies and nearby cars to dance uncontrollably. The Black Hole Launcher swallows entire groups whole. The Inflato-Ray pops heads like balloons. Guns can be customised with skins and upgraded for damage, and the roster rewards players who mix absurd tools with the movement abilities freely. That said, the superpowers do create a structural tension the game never fully resolves. Once you reach peak sprint speed, cars become largely pointless, a genuine shame given how much personality the radio stations and vehicle customisation bring. The open-world side missions loop repetitively once the novelty of the powers wears off, and the city of Steelport is reused from Saints Row: The Third, which means returning players will recognise every alley. The campaign story missions compensate with handcrafted set-pieces: a Metal Gear Solid stealth parody, a Mass Effect crew-romance system played entirely for laughs, and a simulation-within-a-simulation 1950s diversion that lands much better than it has any right to. The writing is self-aware enough to acknowledge its own cliches, villain Emperor Zinyak gets called out for it, and the voice cast, with multiple selectable Boss voices, keeps the one-liners landing more often than not. The Re-Elected package matters practically: it bundles the full DLC run, including the Enter the Dominatrix and How the Saints Save Christmas expansions, adding several extra hours on top of a campaign that already runs long. Two-player co-op is included, and crossplay between Steam, Epic, and GOG Windows users has been patched in, which is a welcome modern addition for a game this age. Technically, on PC this version runs without the performance headaches reported on console ports, the platform this game was clearly most at home on. Visually it shows its 2013 origins, but the art direction leans so hard into neon absurdity that the dated graphics rarely feel like a problem. Saints Row IV Re-Elected does one thing exceptionally well: it makes you feel like the most overpowered person in any room, every room, without apology. The gunplay is loose, the side content gets repetitive, and the city map is technically a hand-me-down. None of that matters much when you are stomping a cluster of alien troops skyward, pulling them back with telekinesis, and finishing them off with a black hole launcher while the in-game radio plays something deeply inappropriate. If you want challenge or friction, look elsewhere. If you want a sandbox that commits fully to its own chaos, this is it.

Alex · Scout Team

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