After many years of sitting back and watching other open-world games spend some time in the spotlight, you'd think Volition might take some cues from the shooting styles of beloved games like Grand Theft Auto V, Mafia 3, or Watch Dogs 2. Gunplay is stiff and only feels enjoyable when you abuse the auto-aim to snap between people's bodies and lightly flick the stick to move the reticle to their head. When it comes to actual gameplay, Saints Row feels like it's still stuck in the late 2000s in some areas. By the end, Saints Row is asking you to really care about these characters and it doesn't feel like the game has given you a reason to. There are roughly 20 or so main missions required to get to the ending with some worthy side missions that can pad out the runtime, but ultimately, it doesn't help the narrative feel better paced. Nothing about the ending lands because it feels like it's missing hours of build-up and it's rather jarring. It feels like Saints Row is missing its entire second or third act as the Saints have one of their first true victories and then it jumps to an unearned finale. Once it actually kicks into gear, the game feels like it ends not too long after. Broadly, it took longer than I had hoped to get into the meat and potatoes of building a criminal empire. It took hours of playing before I started to become even mildly interested in what was going on. The actual story of Saints Row isn't very remarkable. In some ways, it's meant to be empowering, in other ways, it's a cautionary tale of power and greed.

It's up to you to build something from the ground up, become leaders of the Las Vegas-esque city known as Santo Ileso, and more. It's not a game about people not wanting to work, it's about people who want to be properly rewarded for their work and they do so by taking matters into their own hands.

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