Much ado was made of the Saint’s Row reboot last year. When I previewed the game, I was unimpressed by its stylistic and tonal changes from the original series. It felt like a crime game run by yuppies that somehow took place in the Fortnite universe. Look at that image above! It could be a still from the latest Fortnite season.
Perhaps that’s fitting, given it’s the latest free offering from Epic Games during their holiday Epic Game Store event. Almost every day, the Fortnite publisher and creator of Unreal Engine is giving away a game for free to PC players, and Saint’s Row is the latest. The games given away thus far have been:
- Destiny 2: Legacy Collection (December 13 – December 20)
- DNF Duel (December 20 – December 21)
- Melvor Idle (December 21 – December 22)
- Art of Rally (December 22 – December 23)
- Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (December 23 – December 24)
- Ghostwire: Tokyo (December 24 – December 25)
- The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition (December 25 – December 26)
- Human Resource Machine (December 26 – December 27)
- Cursed to Golf (December 27 – December 28)
- Cat Quest (December 28 – December 29)
- Snakebird Complete (December 29 – December 30)
- Saints Row (December 30 – December 31)
Much of the controversy surrounding Saint’s Row before its release centered around concerns that it would be “woke” which I thought was a little weird. There’s nothing “woke” (which is itself an often confusing and unhelpful pejorative) about having a diverse cast of characters in a modern crime game (or film, or show, etc.) GTA V was very diverse and hardly “woke.”
I think a lot of people just reflexively go to this critique (if you can call it that) whenever anything with even a whiff of diversity and inclusion can be found. Again, my worry about the game was that it looked A) too much like Fortnite; B) too much like what yuppies think crime stories ought to be; and C) boring and uninspired. That last one, especially, appears to have been the case.
In Forbes’ review of Saint’s Row, Matt Gardner wrote:
In a weird way, I don’t regret completing Saints Row, but it’s because I’m a fan who knows what I was getting into; I just didn’t think it’d be such a blast from the past. I simply can’t think who’ll be genuinely delighted or impressed by this game–open-minded fans will be let down by its half-story and meagre evolution; critics could fairly name six or seven third-person shooters in the last three years that do it better.
None of it’s to do with wokeness, though; it’s just a tired format for 2022, with uninspiring dialogue from restricted characters, repetitive missions, lackluster combat, endless driving, and its most underdeveloped storyline yet. There’s fun to be had, but at this rate, it’s hard to see where the Saints Row franchise will go from here–if this doesn’t end up being its swansong.
But hey, now it’s free so if you’ve been on the fence and aren’t averse to using the Epic Game Store as a launcher, you can try it out without spending a single red cent. The question now is whether it’s worth your precious time.
