It’s been over a year and a half since the Third Street Saints faced off against Zinyak after he blew the planet up. In that time, we’ve found out about the latest adventures of the Boss and the Third Street Saints. Does Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell continue to deliver the same experience that Saints Row IV has brought us?
What starts out as a birthday party for Kinzie Kensington turns into a hellish adventure for both the birthday girl and Johnny Gat as they journey to Hell to rescue the Boss who has been kidnapped by Satan himself. But it’s not as easy as walking up to Satan and punching his face. You’ll run into some familiar faces as you work to get Satan to notice just who it is on his stomping ground.
If you’ve played Saints Row IV previously, the controls will feel quite familiar to you. Thanks to Dane Vogel, Saints Row 2 antagonist, you are granted the same powers as the Boss from Saints Row IV. Instead of getting the super jump, you are able to fly across Hell with impressive wings. Flying does take some skill to use but it definitely beats walking or driving. The controls do take some work to get used to. But once you get the hang of things, you’ll be flying like a pro.
After you are greeted by Vogel, you can set off to one of four ‘allies’ to unlock the super powers. This makes it easier to have all the skills at your disposal without having to wait for access to a later mission. Upgrades for the skills are unlocked via collecting clusters of souls, much like the data clusters from Saints Row IV. Elements are unlocked when you complete one of eight altars of souls.
Though there are quite a number of missions and diversions you can tackle, there is no set path to take to beat the game. You can choose to do all the missions or you can just go out and kill everything in sight. Cutscenes are triggered once you hit a certain part in the meter that gauges Satan’s wrath. This can be great for the ones who might dislike an activity or simply have trouble getting at least a bronze.
The lack of a set course of main missions will turn off players who like to have some way of knowing what to do next. However, I will admit that I might be one of few who like going off the beaten path. It does hurt the game from hitting its max potential and Volition shows that they know this via a cutscene. What makes the lack of main missions hurt the game is how repetitive the optional ones are. Though they are tailored to fit the setting of Gat Out of Hell, the optional quests are similar enough to the ones found in Saints Row IV. Examples of some activities include the Rambulance in which you hop into a rambulance and mow down tortured souls and the rag-doll fraud that has you help souls take off years by enduring brutal torture.
While I haven’t really delved into Saints Row IV on my computer, I have spent plenty of hours with the PS3 version. Comparing the graphics from Gat Out of Hell on the PC to the PS3 version of Saints Row IV makes me feel that it’s the same quality you get from the Saints Row IV PC version at the same settings. At the least, it looks as good as the PS3 version. As far as any graphical issues go, I have only encountered one where the item I was interacting with was not visible. It was still there and I could interact with it, but it wasn’t on the screen.
The voice cast from Saints Row IV returns in Gat Out of Hell. When combined with the new characters, you got a really good cast on your hands. There is a musical number in Gat Out of Hell, which can be watched in one of the trailers that had been released. But other than that musical number and the occasional snippets of music you might happen upon, there is no musical playlist to be found in Gat Out of Hell. There is background music and it is pretty fitting for the game. Just don’t expect to hop into a car and have the radio play some heavy metal tracks. Or pop tracks, depending on what you would consider a hellish genre.
Get Out of Hell isn’t quite a short game. While it can be completed within 5 to 10 hours, there is a number of things you can do that can add out hours and hours of gameplay. You can also go through the game twice (once as Gat and once as Kinzie) to hear the differences in the dialogues. You can also play the campaign with a friend online. There is no separate mode for co-op but with the free-for-all attitude that Gat Out of Hell possesses, there isn’t much need for one.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is not a sequel but rather an expansion of Saints Row IV. If you are a big fan of the Saints Row series (especially the third and fourth entries), then it is well worth the $20 price tag. Those who might not enjoy the humor or series might be best renting it or waiting for it to drop in price.
UPDATE: Be sure to check out Justin’s mini-review for the PlayStation 4 version of Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell here.
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Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell
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Platform: PC (reviewed), PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One Genre: Action- Adventure Release Date: January 20, 2015 Developer: Volition, Inc Publisher: Deep Silver ESRB Rating: M for Mature MSRP: $19.99 |
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