Holy shit. Ho-lee-shit.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Goddamn Saints of Rage?! That they actually managed to replicate a mostly functional 2D side-scroller is one thing, but what especially impressed was how you still play as your character; no generic avatar, no default set of clothing, your entire appearance is replicated to a tee in its charming, pixelated style.

Franky the more and more I've gotten into SRIV the deeper I fall in love with it. Even though we all knew Gat was set to return, they done a great job in building it up by not only leaving him as your last recruit, but by playing the perfectly dramatic music as you bulldoze through a legion of Zin troops in your robotpower armour. Witnessing the pieces of Gat's own escape from his cell, to finally being greeted by the man himself was just so perfectly set up.

His omission, for as much as it sucked amidst SRTT, actually placed kinda helped in placing Gat into a sort of Legendary status, and it really got me pumped to finally be reunited with him. Explaining his disappearance via a premature abduction was also pretty cheap, yet still kinda brilliant and hilarious.

And I thought nothing could top the nerdgasm that Benjamin Motherfucking King's recruitment mission could bestow... Being invested in all of these characters and their story threads across the 3 prior games, it makes what is already a great game all the greater, and its overwhelming amount of fanservice throughout snippets of dialogue, to the audio logs, to all of the recruitment stuff...

I fucking love you, Saints Row IV. And there's still so much more left for me to uncover!

Oh, and Saints Row IV has sold over a million copies, and boy does it deserve it. I'll be sure to blindly buy the Enter the Dominatrix DLC once it becomes available, too. Despite the series' rocky quality level with DLC, I'd be OK in paying for it anyway regardless of how it turns out just as a means of giving a little extra thanks.

I mentioned this in another thread somewhere, but I don't think the characters in that Saints of Rage segment are actual 2D sprites. I'm pretty sure there's just some shaders and post-processing being used to achieve that look with standard polygonal characters.

I think my favorite part of Saints of Rage is that it goes. I thought it'd just be a cute one level thing. But no. It kept on going and never felt old or gimmicky. They went for it and fuck...it worked.

@chaser324: I could believe that. Still, there's a whole new set of animations and the like, and the style is evocative enough that Volition deserve all the praise (!!!), even if it's only for what amounts to a lot of smoke and mirrors.

I think my least favourite part of Saints of Rage is that it goes. I thought it'd just be a cute one level thing. But no. It kept on going.

@yummylee: Yep. The game is amazing. Still a few really good moments left too as well.

Heh. Yeah. I felt like two levels was enough. After two levels, I hit the "yeah I get it" point and that was enough.

@yummylee: I was really impressed by the way your character gets down-rezzed to this weird sidescroller low res model no matter what he's wearing or what tattoo he/she has. Maybe because I'm not a tech guy but it seems really impressive how the game can register tattoos and clothing and then make a really low detail sidescrolling version of the high res model.

It was actually decent yes. My only nitpicky complaint for this section was the music which was kind of throwaway (where Streets of Rage has probably the best music in games period).

Gat was a disappointment in the game (tho, he has always been overblown in the series, he is a boring character and this didn't change that) but it was one of the cooler parts..