Recent reviews by ghostfaces gf<3

Honestly, I really liked this; but there just isn't ENOUGH of it. The story ends so abruptly that the game just doesn't even remotely feel full; you || plan a heist to "pay for the newbie Saints", and then you're immediately off to kill each gang with one mission each. After those few missions, you get to the party that's foreshadowed at the beginning of the game which you DON'T EVEN GET TO ATTEND, it just skips it, and then you're at the endgame. || Genuinely I'm recommending this because the core gameplay was fun and had a lot of good ideas; but at a regular $70 price point this game doesn't have enough weight to carry itself. The reviews criticizing this game (excluding the culture war Twitter gooner goons) are fully justified.

Before you get too far into the game, I recommend going into the Gameplay settings when you start and turning off the Aim-Assist and Lock-In settings; otherwise, this game kinda plays itself. But the moment you turn those off, it just kinda feels like a stupider Saints Row 3.
---------------------------------------
The Good:
-The changes to the notoriety system are incredibly welcome; having 20 gang members and their boss chase me down at 5-star notoriety just for it to literally blow up in their face because their reinforcements drove over my proximity mine and triggered a street long explosion is peak gaming, in my opinion; in contrast to GTAV's sandbox, I actually find this game really enjoyable to stay in.


-The combat is more or less the same; you can't spam takedowns now, but there also seems to be a LOT more takedown animations, which I personally appreciate. Bodies still fly off of melee attacks, and shooting people in the skulls with a handgun still feels satisfying (assuming you turned off Aim Assist. That ♥♥♥♥ was AWFUL at the beginning.)

-The physics are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. It's both a plus and a con, really; t-boning a car and watching it fly up into the traffic lights is a treat, and accidentally flying off bridges can be funny if not annoying at times.

-The character creator seems a bit more robust, allowing you to have even prosthetic arms and legs; also, my girl has abs :]

-Some of the main cast, while insatiably annoying at first, started to grow on me over time; Eli's an autistic little baby, Kev reminds me of a DJ Johnny Gat (I actually thought they had the same voice actor for a minute.) The girl... is also there. She's affiliated with one of the other gangs and doesn't seem to have any other notable traits besides liking her car.
---------------------------------------------
The Bad:
-Do you remember how SR1's Boss didn't talk? Well, now they don't shut the ♥♥♥♥ up. I initially had my voice set as Voice 4(?), who sounded like a bratty teenager in-game; during the first mission, you're supposed to be in a paramilitary squad hunting down a gang leader; however, every time your captain speaks, your character has to reply with some annoying as ♥♥♥♥ quip. I ended up changing my characters voice to be a fake-Texan accent partway through, which made the character bearable.

-For a game that tried to sell itself on inclusivity to a degree, not having the option for custom genitalia was... certainly a choice. There's also this weird scene in the beginning where the lighting completely blacks out the Transgender portion of the Pride flag in the apartment, which was just weird.

-Technical errors are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wack in this one; sometimes enemies will just straight up disappear. I also don't know if it's a glitch that some of the gang members run away; usually this seems to happen at the end of combat, so I think it is intentional and "realistic"; however from a gameplay point, it kinda sucks.

-The game. is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ short. I'm so tired of the 2025 video game quality of "Have Many Collectibles And A 3 Hour Storyline"

-Also, the... writing of Boss and the "conflict" with their friends is so weird. I very much get what they were going for, but it was so badly done. The ending is almost like Life Is Strange's ending, which sucked. "Trippy" endings in video games are so played out at this point, you won't be a Far Cry 3, just stop it.

----------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, this series is going to die and continue dying. Volition repeatedly couldn't tell who this game series was for, from the gangbanging original two, to the 3 and 4 that were obnoxiously out of the box and teehee-wacky, to this one, which tries to adhere to all of the above while appealing to Zoomers.

I very much get why the Saints can be inclusive; the original Saints would virtually let anyone in as long as they could hold their own and had something ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with them; however, it's very much more shoehorned in here; lets not pretend some gang members wouldn't have a problem with Kevin's gayness or whatever else have you, the gang is knowingly crass; if this game was appropriate to the Saints Row IP Kev would've been called a slur before Kevin ripped their throat out, Gat style.

This is one of those things where I'd recommend it if you *really* want it.

To be honest, after the previous remaster and this game having been successfully succeeded by Dead Rising 2, I'm already deeply exhausted by what Dead Rising 1 has to offer; there really isn't *any* thing new you're going to experience with this, despite the nice new changes. I got down to the main mall before it clicked in with me that I wasn't going to enjoy this new playthrough anymore than I have the previous Dead Rising 1 releases.

However, if I weren't a currently broke college student, I would've kept it in my library for the sole purpose of telling Capcom "Remake 2 or give us a new one." Which is kind of literally why most people are buying this; it's a really poor but well done attempt at a franchise revival.

he's pretty neat : D

thank god this game comes with an anti-cheat that has kernel/root access to your PC! now, if only we could force players to use a game service that's been hacked 7 times within the last decade

It just... kinda sucks. Y'know, it just feels like Splitgate but worse.

I want to preface my negative review by saying that I don't not recommend it, as much as it comes out to a resounding "Meh." for me.

I'll get the negative out of the way first:

I think the worst sin they committed was the "Bethesda"-esque overpromise. You know the one, where they promise this new iteration is like, a million times bigger than the previous one. Yet, you start the game, play it through, and it feels emptier and shorter than the prior releases they swore was bigger. And then you realize they were probably deceptively lying about file sizes.
Glitchy gameplay is back. For the final missions of the questline (Firestarter and Through Heaven) the game has had trouble triggering the quests. I still have yet to finish Through Heaven, despite waiting over two weeks in game for it to trigger.
There's been non-stop sound issues for me as well; half of Songbird's voicelines don't play, a few of Reed's haven't, and all of the new radio stations don't work.
Lastly, the story is interesting, yet mediocre. The worst part is that the one of the story decisions doesn't make sense. In Firestarter, you're asked to either help Reed capture Songbird, or help Songbird go free. The part that doesn't make sense, is that if you help Reed capture Songbird, Reed says he'll commit treason, and help Songbird go free if you help him. The other decision is just you and Songbird committing treason while Reed hunts you down, like he didn't just say he would commit treason to do the very thing that Songbird is currently doing. It makes virtually no sense.
The "spy thriller" stuff is underwhelming, in my opinion. There's some spy thriller elements, sure, but it never feels thrilling.
If anything, the story feels like what Studio Trigger said of CDPR's ideas when it came to Edgerunners; "Just a bunch of cool, incoherent action scenes."
Also, for whatever reason, they went from never using the word "sitch" in the main game to dropping it every other sentence here. It was cute at first, until the flaws of the DLC came through and it became... annoying.

The Relic skilltree was absolutely underwhelming; if you don't use Gorilla Arms, Mantis Blades, or the Cloak too often, you get one ability, which highlights enemy weakpoints. The Cloak skilltree also does absolutely nothing new, instead it just removed the pre-existing ability to vanish mid-combat from prior patches. This seems to be a consistent theme with the new skill trees; it feels like they took abilities from other acquirable items and cyberware, and added them to the skill trees instead. It's silly and it feels like a major step back for the RP part of an RPG.


Speaking of things said in developer interviews, another aspect I found completely underwhelming was Kurt. He has maybe... two scenes where he's active on screen, the rest of the time is just people telling you he's terrible. If anything, this made me appreciate villains like Vaas from Far Cry 3 and Handsome Jack from Borderlands, as they had actual presence in the game and Kurt's character writing could've benefited from *something* like that. Instead he's just... kinda there, which is disappointing because they stated he was based on Brazillian druglords who "do good for their community" in interviews, yet none of that character development is found.

The good?
Game performance got massively better; my frames pretty much doubled with this update/dlc combo.
Also, a lot of the clothing options are pretty neat.
Johnny Silverhand's character writing got an upgrade here, as he becomes quite a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ queen throughout this DLC, and we also get quite a good deal more of Mr. Hands, albeit with the writing inconsistency that only this game seems to create. (This guy was being an absolute ♥♥♥♥ to me in some text messages, while praising me in person.)
I like the choice of Idris Elba as Solomon Reed. Damn shame CDPR ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the writing up on this one.
The gameplay part of the game definitely improved here; they upped enemy density in Dogtown, which creates a lot of fun battlegrounds, compared to the sparsely populated areas in Night City where fights can end relatively fast if you're good at headshotting.
The game also added quite a few new quickhacks.


All in all though, it feels... middle of the road, I guess. I'm glad V gets a new ending here, hope to see it someday.

you know those games where the devs clearly spammed the enemy spawns over actually giving the game any difficulty?

yeah thats this.

gameplay doesn't feel punishing like a horror title, it just feels tedious and annoying. the enemies are bullet spongey but slow, and your second interaction with a zombie is literally a helmet wearing zombie, making the gameplay even more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tedious from the word go.

I got to the part where I met up with his wife and just couldn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do it anymore. this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass.

game continually didn't detect me hitting a walker in the skull thanks to a slight lag that happened when i swung at it.

proceeded to get turned around enough to where i punched my wall and injured my hand

jesus ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ christ man

the new hero makes it obvious they didn't learn from the brigitte situation. blizzard has brain death.

Hotline Miami for cyberpunk fans.
Red Faction 2 for Metroid and Unreal fans.
Ghostrunner for the Nintendo 64.
SuperHot for the emotionally capable.
Perfect Dark if it got a sequel.
Ultrakill for dudes who are women.