It’s been roughly one and a half year since the release of Saints Row IV. This game can be described as one that absolutely not takes itself seriously. This is highlighted into this standalone expansion (you actually don’t have to own the original base game), although I believe it’s not as a big amount as we could have expected it to use.

The developers – Volition – are not familiar for me because of the SR franchise. Instead, their name reminds me of Red Faction. In 2001, the first episode was really good; it included the GeoMod technology… which sadly wasn’t be able to be used to its full potential as we could only destruct the environment at certain places. Since then, almost 15 years flew by, so how much can we send Gat out of Hell to Hell?

Multihell

The basics of the story are short: the Saints team was about to have a birthday celebration, which was pooped by the leader getting sucked into Hell, so it’s up to Gat and Kinzie – and later on a few more teammates – to stop Satan’s plan: he’d like the Saints’ leader to marry his daughter, Jezebel. This storyline is being told to us in book-styled cutscenes (on thirty frames per second), which again, was meant to hold the flag of non-seriousness.

Multihell? Sure: the expansion was released not only for the PS4, but the Xbox One and PC as well, and I can say that the latter one is very friendly on system requirements, so don’t expect the PC version to lag…

…which can be spotted on the PS4 when it comes to the ingame cutscenes’ character movements. At some points, the movements were choppy, especially on PC – seems like they weren’t meant to be ran at 60 fps?

Gets tired

Saints Row IV was delightful because we could literally abuse our supernatural powers to rush through the map… the map, which was carbon copied from the third game. Good jokes, sometimes annoying mentality, and yet, the game wasn’t a raging success because of the skills, making the game easy.

Gat out of Hell suffers from this as well. Sure, there is a new aspect to not make it a full clone of IV, as our hero receives wings. They aren’t given to him by Red Bull, because for one, that doesn’t exist here and two, we lose our stamina quicker before the aforementioned overpriced energy drink’s effect could kick in.

So wings: thankfully they can also be improved, because in the beginning, we can only flap once while flying to not fall into the lava below… just like 2013’s worst game published also by Deep Silver, none other than Ride to Hell: Retribution just weeks after its release.

Steelport

The city of Steelport isn’t a big thing, but to me, it was a pleasant sight – it doesn’t mean that it looks good though, because I think the PS4 could push out better visuals than this. In this city we can go around to complete quests to improve our skills, buy weapons (some of them are borderline perverted…), and even our vehicles can receive a tuning treatment. You won’t be bored in Steelport, especially if you drain your resources into Gat’s skills… however, the story missions do strip you of some powers, just to not give you an unfair edge over the already not-challenging game.

But I have to say, Volition did take good use of the PS4‘s abilities: you can use voice commands to switch between skills,, swap members in the pause menu and even use the DualShock 4’s touchscreen for the quick time events!

Short, but maybe still tasty

If by any chance the Enter the Dominatrix DLC has been in our consoles, then it’s worth checking out the sequel of that DLC in form of GooH. Although the game can be beaten in roughly six hours, you won’t be really bored, especially because Volition has thrown in some random surpises here and there… like some side scrolling beat’em ups.

The game is not hard, it’s a bit short, but still ridiculously stupid in a good way! When I got to the music segment, I literally did not expect THAT to happen.

For Saints Row fans, I would say it’s a must buy, but in this genre, Grand Theft Auto V kicks it way off from the throne (and it will happen on PC as well, whenever Rockstar releases the game on that platform), which already was a success on two console generations. So it’s an okay game, not bad, sometimes a bit over the line, but worth a try anyway. I do have to say this: I’d recommend getting SR IV: Re-Elected instead: the game with its DLCs are much more refined than this expansion. Go to hell!

-V-

Editor: Deep Silver

Developer: Volition

Genres: action, GTA-like

Publication: January 2015