SAINT NO JOKE

 The rebooted SAINTS ROW could really do with a dubstep gun

- Jody Macgregor

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT? An urban playground where the cars are made of explodium, but the tone’s not quite as incendiary

EXPECT TO PAY £60

DEVELOPER Volition

PUBLISHER Deep Silver

REVIEWED ON Windows 10, Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM, RTX 3080

MULTIPLAYER Yes

LINK saintsrow.com

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.