Review - Saints Row IV (2013, PS3)

Voliton's followup to their 2011 hit Saints Row the Third further escalates the cartoonish silliness of their open world action series while delivering some massively improved gameplay. With each game in the Saints Row series, Volition moves further and further from their original "funnier Grand Theft Auto" title to "cartoon villain simulator," ending up with the most recent installment of the series actually giving you superpowers to wreck the city of Steelport up with. On top of that, the self-made Boss of the Saints has risen from street-gang leader to the President of the United States.

Review - Saints Row: The Third (2011, PS3)

I've never really been a big fan of open world action games in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. GTA never held my attention and while Sleeping Dogs had a lot of good going for it, I still got tired of it by the end. The only game in this genre that I really loved was Pandemic's The Saboteur, an open world game set in occupied France during World War 2. The Saboteur had fantastic art direction, a well built world, and characters whose actions actually felt compatible between the cutscenes and gameplay. I was ready to write it off as a fluke, the single instance in which I was able to really get into a game like this, so I was very happy when Saints Row: The Third convinced me otherwise.