Saints Row is a knockabout driving/shooting/flying ragdoll-’em-up in which you lead a misnamed gang of sociopaths. The Saints are loveable sociopaths to be fair, who alternate between organised crime and high-spirited hijinx like throwing themselves into traffic for insurance money, and also some light drug trafficking on the side. That’s probably the only description I can come up with vague enough to describe every game in the series, including this new reboot, without just saying it’s GTA except the jokes are funny.
Until now, every Saints Row sequel was more over the top than the one before, eventually finding new tops and then somehow over-ing them. Saints Row 2 had a villain with voodoo powers and your sidekick could take on an entire police force solo. Saints Row: The Third made you fight wrestlers, cyberpunks and zombies, which Saints Row 4 bettered with an alien invasion, while its spin-off Gat Out of Hell had Satan as the final boss.
When fans of say they miss how grounded it was, they mean they were including a Japanese game show about straight-up murdering people crossed the line. Personally, I enjoyed the escalating wackiness of the series, but it didn’t leave itself a lot of places to go. Which I guess is why, instead of making a new where you time-travel or establish a branch on an alien planet or something, Volition hit the reboot button.
