• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

‘Saint’s Row’ reboot misses the mark and flops

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Video game developer Volition decided to create a complete reboot of the series. With its release, however, the new game leaves a lot to be desired.

Saints Row 2 and Saints Row the Third had both become a cult classic, with the latter getting a remaster that released back in 2020. Both games had its moments of absurdity, but it also had serious moments when it came to their storyline and gameplay. What also made the games classics were the great characters in them, such as Johnny Gat and Shaundi. This is the first issue with the new Saints Row. The game has characters that Volition felt would relate to mainly college students, with the main storyline being that the Saints are now a gang of broke college students. But this did the opposite of what they expected, as the characters in the game were dull and forgettable.

Saints Row also suffered with bugs and crashes that happened frequently throughout the gameplay. Soon after the game got released, players urged the developers of the game to fix a bug that they had all experienced during the gameplay. The game also had many moments where the sound design, such as the playable character, driving a car, and shooting weapons, felt lifeless, like the sound design was not complete.

To add to the many issues in Saints Row, the dialogue had many questionable moments, which is disappointing, considering the dialogue in the original series was one of the key highlights. Lastly, when the game launched, a few big name streamers decided to give the game a try. The game offered an option titled “License free music”, where the player is able to turn off the music in-game. This was originally thought to be a positive feature, since it allows streamers to play the game without the fear of receiving a copyright strike due to playing licensed music. The game, however, provided no license free music, which further added to the lifeless sound design, because the streamers would have to play with only game effects sound on, since almost all the music in-game was licensed.



I googled errors and glitches in this game and holy shit lol.


Animated GIF
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Good. Get fucked. I hope everyone in management responsible for this turd gets fired.

Shitting on the fanbase and all the ultra dumb “woke” shit aside, the game is overwhelmingly mediocre and incredibly poorly polished.

The audacity to ask 70 euros for this bug ridden snoozefest is an outrage.

Imagine having the limitless potential of the Saints Row IP in your hands and this is what you end up with. How embarrassing.
 
Last edited:

Stuart360

Member
With Agents of Meh-hem flopping pretty hard, they probably needed this to do well. And that makes this news even more sweeter as they went the woke route, thinking that will help sales, and yet again going that route has cost the game hard.
Now i actually dont want the devs to go under or anything from this debacle, and i hope they dont, but the more times shit like this fails, the quicker devs will understand going woke wont help your game, and in fact could negatively effect sales.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
I've played one Saints Row game and it was Re-Elected and it sucked major balls. Got bored after only a couple of hours. Too much cringe and juvenile humor for my taste. Fortunately I got it dirt cheap for like 3 bucks (it was some sort of mistake on the e-shop I believe).
 
its sad because that saints row subreddit waited patiently for a new game for a long time. I remember the optimism and how happy ppl were when they found out they were going to revive the franchise.

i have no issue with ppl bringing an IP back to life. But we've seen time and time again that its more likely to be watered down and pussified, or they wildly miss the mark by not understanding what ppl like about the IP in the first place.
 
Last edited:

isual

Member
lets be 100 here; we all know to some extent this is because of the wokeness or that appeal to new demographic, but did they not think that the past majority - who actually bought the games and were interested is a more sure market who are not the newer, woke, gen z in proportion?
 

HL3.exe

Member
Go woke, go broke. The bugs didn’t help either.
This is such a common misconcepted/dumbfuck argument, that's never been true. Just look at all the 'woke shit' that's -because of its inclusive nature, or because it was written smartly- had major mainstream success, like all the Black Panther, Wonder Woman and all those super hero garbage I personally don't care abou, but I can't deny how popular and financially successful they are.

Hell, TV shows like The Boys is incredibly successful while being incredibly progressive in it's writing. And here's why: It's actually written very well written while being culturally aware.

The reason Saints Row sucked is not because it's 'Woke'. It's because it has nothing to say, and no real focused vision that feel refreshing and new (Even after the bugginess gets fixed). The characters where written badly, not because they're woke, just because it's probably written by old farts trying to be hip. It's tone-deaf fir sure, but not bad because it's 'woke'. Other then that, it all feels incredible stale, while also boasting gameplay mechanics that stem out of the PS360 era, so that doesn't help either haha.
 
Last edited:

Saber

Gold Member
Yeah, shit exactly your fans and target audience. Trust me, it totally gonna works.

*Meanwhile the ones who they were trying to appease

Twitter crowd: Nah, I don't play games. But if you tweet something supporting us, I will be sure to give it a like.
 
Last edited:
I’m just disappointed. Saints Row deseves better.
especially with how good some of the earlier games were. And with all the time thats passed. They had a chance to do something special. Hell Fortnite stole their look so make a Saints Row BR. Where you run around with the pimpcane shotgun and pimp hand. GTA RP isn't available on console....So get in that space before GTA does it. Load the game up with tons of side activities like skateboarding, a full game of basketball, all the ambulance/firetruck/police car stuff gone from GTA. There were so many possibilities.

why choose to make a terribly written, buggy game, completely devoid of the tone and style that ppl want. Who was this game for?
 

Pejo

Member
The crazy thing is that it's already one of the best series for representation and diversity, and the cast was actually well-liked by fans already. So they purposely not only remove all of the characters that already had fans, but also replace them with the absolute worst possible replacements you could come up with....and then the dialogue....then the EGS exlusivity....then the bugs....

This is another blunder like Babylon's Fall in that a whole lot of people saw these issues and went ahead with it anyways instead of putting it back in the oven, delaying it, and making a game that people would actually like.
 

Bridges

Member
Hell, TV shows like The Boys is incredibly successful while being incredibly progressive in it's writing. And here's why: It's actually written very well written while being culturally aware.

I love The Boys but it is not a well written show lol. Its "cultural awareness" is just using the hot controversies of the day alongside thinly veiled allusions to the bad guy being Trump. The premise and cast are just so fucking strong it makes it worth watching, but I entirely reject the idea that the show is doing a good job with its progressivism.

Admittedly I have not played the new Saints Row, but I highly doubt wokeness is the major flaw. The game seems buggy and stuck in the past from a design standpoint. If the game was fun but included BLM slogans and pink haired feminists it would still be a success, because fun is fun regardless of the agenda, just like The Boys. They just failed to deliver and people were already skeptical after the reveal trailer showed a dramatic shift in tone.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Go woke, go broke. The bugs didn’t help either.
While i hate woke shit, the game has been received badly because its full of bugs and glitches.

Theres other games that's woke and commercial success, so it's not really the case sadly.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
While i hate woke shit, the game has been received badly because its full of bugs and glitches.

Theres other games that's woke and commercial success, so it's not really the case sadly.
The diehards where disappointed from the cringe reveal on, long before bugs. Bugs were the icing on the shitcake.
 

Hestar69

Member
Biggest disappointment of the year for me. glad I did not buy it. Beat it and deleted it off my pc soon as the credits rolled.
 

HL3.exe

Member
I love The Boys but it is not a well written show lol. Its "cultural awareness" is just using the hot controversies of the day alongside thinly veiled allusions to the bad guy being Trump. The premise and cast are just so fucking strong it makes it worth watching, but I entirely reject the idea that the show is doing a good job with its progressivism.
I agree it's not high art. I'm not referring to an Thomas Vinterberg film or something from the dogma scene. If I wanted to point out well written TV dramas I would've referred to SUCCESSION. The Boys though is fine from a writing standpoint. it's straight up pulp, but it is definitely making a point in favor of progressivism.

If not for the writer behind it as well as producers like Seth Rogan being very vocal of his politics. Which is personally alright by me. It has alot of specific poiniant scenes that deconstructs the way we treat woman, the way we look at African Americans, and how tone-deaf we can be of our own identify. These theme's are repeated alot as subtle as brick through a window, but it at least has an opinion.

Having a stance on anything in your work is a given, otherwise you'll get this sanded down corporatist grey slob without anything to say (Saints Row reboot is actually a good example).
 
It looked like trash from the very first trailer.

They needed to do a GTA clone. That's when the game was at its best. The moment they started with all the campy, goofy shit it all went downhill. Can't even remember the last Saints Row game I played a few years ago but I only lasted 15 minutes before turning it off.
 
What got me the most were the comments about wanting to move in a new direction.. but we will still be using things from games that came out prior to this one, but guys trust us... we are totally moving on from past games. I will never forget one thing, this reboot made me love the original games even more, so I have to be thankful for that.
 
Last edited:

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
I gave them a path to success. I GRACIOUSLY GIFTED THEM the title of 5aints Row for a Saints Row IV time travel followup, and they REFUSED IT, the FOOLS.
 

KiteGr

Member
Yes, what a surprise. As soon as I saw this bitch face in the trailer I was done with this game
SchVO1V.jpg
Yup...
That trailer was the moment when you realized that they had no idea what made the games likeable. The fortnight costume, the zoomer characters and the woke garbage pretty much rised all the red flags.
The gameplay being an uninspired bugfest was just the cherry on top.
 
Top Bottom