Saints Row, impressions from our visit to Santo Ileso
Saints Row welcomes us to Santo Ileso, in an adventure that we have to discover for ourselves in our own way and personality.
A few days ago, we had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada to visit a hotel that simulated the setting of Volition's new video game, the reboot of Saints Row. Santo Ileso, the next city that we will explore in the franchise, opened its doors to immerse us for a little more than 4 hours in the title that will be released on August 23rd, 2022.
The Thunderbird Boutique Hotel was transformed to receive around twenty journalists and influencers in a closed-door session where we had the opportunity to play the campaign mode, and even live some of the experiences of the fictitious city. We turned into a boss and even enjoyed the Metalachi concert to live the full experience.
Creating our boss
Part of the game's charm lies in the design of our main character. As we described in our article about the Boss Factory -the tool players use to create their character- the game starts with a brief narrative intro that will lead us to meet the boss. After creating our character, the story will show us a sort of fatal outcome, which will be the preamble to learn about their origin.
Starting from scratch
The plot's initial stages will take us to a sort of squad that will try to solve a mission headed by Gwen, commander of the Marshalls (a private armed elite group) from whom we only receive bad treatment and orders.
As usual in the games of this series, this entire stage will be full of absurd and ironic moments where we will be practically invincible in order to reach the end of the mission. This event will lead us to a lucky break to put us in charge of a more important mission, although our failure will result in the loss of our job. This part is where our roomies and future accomplices will have their entrance to seek to be the bosses of all Santo Ileso, but for that, we will need a lair that we will get "the hard way" by means of a construction truck and a few turns to the land owner.
This is where we will begin our adventure in this open world, selecting our missions to complete them one by one.
A crazy game
Hands down, the control is one of the best adapted to the genre and the series itself, as it has disc menus on the fly, where we can select the type of weapon we are going to use or perks or moves that we will gain as level up in experience.
It is important to emphasize that ammunition is earned as you defeat enemies, so it is important to know how to manage it and not spend it pointlessly. Something that we really liked is that in case we run out of weapons or vitality, we can resort to hand-to-hand combat to recover life and bullets.
Another important change is the way in which we drive a car, it now has a sort of charge or sweep that will allow us to get our enemies out of the lane. Mastering this movement helps considerably in the pursuit missions.
An additional feature that is appreciated, is that despite being able to shoot from the car, we can climb on the car's canopy to shoot standing or lying down, just like in an action movie.
Earn your clothes
One of the most appealing replayability elements is that as we complete missions, we will gain items to customize our avatar, from masks to celebration moves.
Unique interface
Definitely, one of the things that shines the most is the user interface, in fact, we had a chance to talk to Danielle Benthien, the associated user interface artist and she gave us all the details about the conception of the smartphone menu, the way perks are selected, movements, the creation process and so on.
Radical visual change
Saints Row retains that animation approach that exaggerates the physics in favor of the absurd narrative, but in general, the character design, levels, textures and even lighting effects are well achieved. It should be noted that the version we tested was a PC port, so we'll have to see how it finally turns out in its console versions. But at least in the Master Race it looks to be a great title that will definitely demand the best graphics cards.
Guerrilla radio
Open worlds where you spend part of your time in a car can't go wrong when it comes to radio, and Saints Row is no exception. This section really impressed us with the variety of melodies, as well as the announcers. The best thing is that the Hispanic touch is present in almost all its radio stations that offer a good number of genres for all kinds of tastes.
Customization worthy of a metaverse
Undoubtedly, Saints Row will give us many surprises on its release day, since the personal touch that we can provide is monumental, whether it is the weapons, our boss or cars, will make us live our adventure in Santo Ileso at a unique level.
Saints Row will arrive on August 23, 2022 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC via Epic Games.