was console-only I count Saints Row 2 as the first game and this was the sequel we wanted. If you just take Saints Row 2 and Saints Row IV then this is the best video-game series ever.I've watched a Let's Play of Saints Row and I enjoyed Saints Row the Third, but neither of them is anywhere near the calibre of the even-numbered games. That said, to get the most out of this one you really should have at least a passing familiarity with all three of the others, since characters and events from those games are referred to repeatedly throughout. The game will still be fun and hilarious either way, but it's better if you already know who the characters are.
The bottom line is, if you haven't played any of the Saints Row games, this is a fantastic game on its own merits and you should get it. If you have played the others then you have even more reason to get this one. If you were disappointed by Saints Row the Third and are worried about being similarly let down by this one, don't be.
Characters
This is where Saints Row IV really shines. Well, this and the super powers, but I'll get to those later. Saints Row and Saints Row 2 had some pretty great characters, and many of them are back (including several dead ones - don-t worry, it makes sense in context) and they even manage to fill in some of the detail that was missing in Saints Row the Third. Shaundi in particular is handled brilliantly. I even ended up liking the new Shaundi and not just wishing she was back to how she was in Saints Row 2.
The other returning characters are also great. Pierce is still the boss's right hand man, Matt Miller and Ben King are great as enemies turned allies, and Kinzie is given a bit more prominence here and comes across as much less of a geek's dream-girl personified.
The new characters are pretty great as well, although not as well developed as the returning ones. CID and Asha have both got a decent bit of implied and hinted back-story that you can pick up from incidental dialogue throughout the game. Keith David is basically in there as a joke, but he still plays a fairly important role in the story and isn't wasted.
Loyalty
After rescuing each of your homies from their own personal simulations you have the opportunity to complete a "loyalty mission" for each of them, which basically deals with the loose ends of their rescue mission, and these are the best bits of the game. The fact that it's a simulation and these aren't central to the story lets them get away with a lot of silliness and callbacks, and it's hilarious.
These missions also provide a lot of the character development (and the fact that the Australian version won't have Shaundi's loyalty mission is more than enough reason to get a copy from overseas) and although they are optional they not only flesh the story out a bit but they do also have an effect on the final level's confrontation with Zinyak, so if the fact that they're really fun isn't enough to get you to play them there's a couple of other reasons. Oh, and they unlock super-powers for your homies, which is awesome.
Villains
The main villain of the game, Emperor Zinyak, is pretty much perfect. You love him and hate him at the same time. He's utterly evil, but he's got style and personality. Although you only come face-to-face with him once near the start and again at the very end, he makes his presence felt throughout the game by messing around with the simulations, talking (and singing) to you during missions, and hosting the classical music station - which, by the way, is one of the highlights of the game. Even if you're some kind of horrible philistine who doesn't like classical music, listen to this station. You won't regret it.
The rest of the game's cast of antagonists is made up of new and returning villains summoned from the subconscious fears of the Saints. They start out confined to the private hells the Saints are trapped in, but when you free your homies, their villains follow and must be defeated in the main simulation. And then once you kill them you can bring them back to life on your team. You can roll with Maero, Julius and Tanya if you want to. And everyone has comments they'll make when summoned by themselves and a conversation with every other character. It's not quite as extensive as Dragon Age: Origins, which had multiple conversations between every possible pairing, but there's still a hell of a lot of dialogue there.
Story
This is a section where I will have to be a little bit critical. It's certainly not the failure that Saints Row the Third was in this regard, but if you were hoping for it to be as good as Saints Row 2 then you'll be let down. But you might not notice that since there's so much else about this game that makes up for it, and it's not that the story is bad, it's mostly just kind of short.
Although there's plenty to do in the game, the actual central story doesn't constitute a particularly large chunk of that. It can basically be broken down into three events. Aliens attack, you escape, you kill Zinyak. Of those three parts, the last is the most underwhelming. It kind of feels like a rush to the finish without the satisfying build-up of defeating the individual gangs of Saints Row 2.
This is counterbalanced by the first part though, which is just pure joy from start to finish. The explanation for how you became president, the alien invasion of the White
The middle stage, rescuing the rest of the gang, is fun and all, but it doesn't really move the story forward, and once you've done that it's suddenly time for the big fight against Zinyak. It doesn't suck, but it seems like it could have used a little more build-up.
Activities
After four games they've almost perfected these. I skipped a ton of stuff in Saints Row 2, and only did most of the activities in Saints Row the Third once (just to get the 100% completion), but I did every activity in this game and will do them all again. I did find a couple of them a bit frustrating until I figured them out, but once I had them down I even enjoyed those ones.
That said, they're not all great. There are five different Mayhem activities (on foot, telekinesis, super-stomp, hover-tank and UFO), and those are still trivially easy if you handle them creatively and a bit slow and dull if you don't.
There are a bunch of telekinesis-based activities and I just didn't really get into telekinesis much. I practically never used it outside of those situations in which it was mandatory. And there's the return of fight club, which I found frustrating in Saints Row 2 but kept doing anyway, and the addition of super powers has basically exacerbated that. If I were going to skip any activities next time I play the game it would be those.
Targets
This is a new category, but is mostly a re-branding of pre-existing ideas. Hitman, Chop Shop, Strongholds, Gang Operations and Survival Calls have been renamed and slightly altered and are now grouped with a new thing called Tower Climbing as “Targets”. There are far fewer Hitman (Security Deletion) and Chop Shop (Virus Collection) targets now, but other than that they're largely the same as they were. Strongholds (Hotspots), Gang Operations (Flashpoints) and Survival Calls (Virus Injections) are variations on “go to a place and kill a bunch of dudes until there are no more dudes”, but the towers are somewhat out of place in that list, since they involve no killing at all and don't even put your notoriety up. You just do what it says in the name, you climb the tower. Well, jump and fly up the tower, mostly. Or you can get a hover-bike, helicopter, VTOL, aeroplane or abduction-gun and just go straight to the top. You miss a few goodies if you do it that way though.
All of the targets are pretty straight-forward and easy, and you can do them or not as you choose, although they are like the Gang Ops in Saints Row the Third in that you'll sometimes pass too close to one and activate it without meaning to. I did several of them earlier than I would otherwise have just because they were located in inconvenient positions and kept activating as I was trying to do other stuff, but they're not a big deal.
Diversions, etc.
Car surfing, streaking, hostage taking and mugging are all back. Possibly others. I haven't had enough time to do much dicking around in the world as yet, and I never did much of those in the earlier games anyway.
There are challenges similar to the Saintsbook, and just like in Saints Row the Third some of them are so easy you'll do them without trying and others are absurd and require dedicating a fair chunk of time to.
Shops are fairly similar to Saints Row the Third as far as buying and upgrading stuff goes, but have changed in a couple of ways. Firstly, you can't buy them any more. Instead you get a little puzzle mini-game to "hack" them to be under your control, which turns a bit of the map purple and gives you discount. The other thing is that they no longer provide sanctuary. Instead you can get your notoriety reset by chasing down a glowing orb that races through the streets. Or just returning to the real world.
Customisation
This is another area where Saints Row 2 still shines brightest, as the clothes available in this game work in the same way as the last. Layering and wear options have not returned. We do get some pretty cool options for customising guns though. Many of them are references to films, games and TV shows, but they're generally pretty awesome in their own right as well, so even if you don't get or don't like the joke you're still going to find some options you'll be happy with. Personally I found it pretty satisfying to dual-wield two copies of Mal’s gun from Firefly.
Weapons
Firstly, there are a lot. A lot of them seemed pretty gimmicky, but I must admit I haven't really tried out many of them. There are two reasons for that. The first is the exploding-bullet pistols from Saints Row the Third being back and the second is the automatic shotgun from Saints Row 2 being back. So it's not just one ridiculously overpowered weapon that makes everything else redundant this time, it's two. Although, from what I've heard, plenty of the other guns are similarly awesome, but I just went with what I knew.
I must admit, I did use my dual-wielded Tommy-guns with acid-bullets a bit, and in the real world segments the alien sub-machine guns really came into their own.
Some of the more hyped guns were a bit underwhelming though. The black hole gun, for example, is pretty piss-weak to begin with, and even fully upgraded it can't take out a tank as efficiently as an ice-blast auto-shotgun combo. The dubstep gun shows up pretty late in the game and didn't do a lot for me, but most of the others I just really didn't get around to playing with. There really is a lot of content in this game, it's hard to see it all.
The only real problem I had with the weapons is that you can't shoot while jumping, which means you have to land, wait a second to pull your gun out, then fire. It can really break your momentum. Hopefully this can be fixed by mods.
Super Powers
There are eight power categories that gradually unlock over the course of the game. There's Blast, which lets you shoot stuff out of your hands, Telekinesis, which lets you pick stuff up and throw it, Stomp, which is an attack that radiates out from you, Buff, which makes you and your bullets do stuff to people you (or they) touch, Speed, which makes you run fast, Jump, which lets you jump high and glide, Shield, which I only ever used for running through explosions instead of dodging them, and Death From Above, which lets your basically turn yourself into a missile.
You get Death From Above really late in the game and the shitty draw distance means that if you're high enough to use it then often there's no actual people on the ground to hit with it, so I never much used that. I didn't use Telekinesis, Stomp or Buff much either. I'm told it's better with an XBox controller, but with a keyboard it's just too much hassle to switch powers on the fly, so I pretty much stuck with Blast. And mostly Freeze Blast at that.
But running and jumping and gliding and climbing buildings is always fun. It does make vehicles pretty useless, but since you can now summon a vehicle to your location almost instantly I did actually call up a motorbike a few times, because they're still pretty fun.
Music
The radio stations in this game are brilliant. Best track list of any game, and there are scripted moments where particular songs play and it is amazing. Power and Holding Out For a Hero in Saints Row the Third were great, but the musical cues in this game are even better.
The only issue with it is that old problem of small, randomised playlists, you just seem to hear the same stuff way too often. If you could remove certain tracks from the stations then it would be perfect, because I really don't want to hear The Boys Are Back in Town again right now.
Oh, and the radio hosts are all great as well.
tl;dr
This is a game that's absolutely worth getting. It's not perfect, but it's probably the most fun game I've ever played, and may even have more replay value than Saints Row 2 did. It'll make you laugh and it's super fun. I just finished it and I kind of want to go back and play it again already.
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